Although democracy now comes closer than anything else to serving as a world religion, it has never lacked critics. For millennia those critics, such as Aristotle, had large followings among political thinkers and practicing politicians. Even as late as 1787, when a group of prominent men met in Philadelphia to compose the U.S. Constitution, democracy [...]

President Obama has declared that “the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.” Yet the State of Hawaii, where Obama himself graduated from a top private high school, has just signed a budget-cutting contract with its teachers’ union paring 17 Fridays from the remainder of school year, but leaving teachers [...]

Leon County, Florida, where I live, is selling carbon credits for methane gas it is burning from the county landfill, going part-way into turning our garbage into cash.  Here’s the story (facts come from the local paper, the Tallahassee Democrat, October 19, page 3A).
Because of complaints of nearby residents of odors coming from the landfill, [...]

Charlatans posing as representatives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a press release, sent out emails, and held a press conference at the Washington, D.C. National Press Club today, announcing the Chamber’s new “Free Enterprise Climate Policy” pushing for “strong climate legislation.”
One mystery is how Reuters and other news agencies could have been taken [...]

Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs is interviewed on Fox News’ “Freedom Watch with Judge Andrew Napolitano” on how Barack Obama is Herbert Hoover’s true “Progressive” heir as an economic interventionist, corporatist and protectionist. Hoover’s policies caused the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt then continued and greatly expanded such policies as his New Deal, deepening [...]

One of the interesting things about the Baucus health care reform bill now under consideration by Congress is that it will place a large financial burden on state governments, while state governments already consider themselves fiscally overburdened.  You would think that governors and state legislators would be up in arms about this, but I’ve heard [...]

I debated with myself whether I should even post this blog, because the statement I made in the title seems so obvious.  Yet that’s what Sen. Max Baucus has proposed, and it’s under serious consideration.
President Obama has forecast annual budget deficits in excess of a trillion dollars as far out as forcasts are being made.  [...]

In direct contrast to Barack Obama’s nationally televised talk on his government-mandated health care plan, here is John Stossel’s recent, very incisive, special segment on ABC-TV’s 20/20, “Health Care Mystery: What’ll That Cost?”, in which he examines government-created third-party payers and asks why it is so hard to find out what health care actually costs:

When Nancy Pelosi convenes her new House Un-American Activities Committee to call forth ObamaCare protestors (see her “‘Un-American’ Attacks Can’t Derail Health Care Debate“), I hope she’ll find room on the docket for a few other, arguably more egregiously un-American activities—and bring their perpetrators to account:
Torture
In the black-and-white films I loved as a child, the [...]

In a blog post last week I questioned the fairness of the $33 million settlement Bank of America had agreed to with the SEC for concealing information related to its merger with Merrill Lynch.  Now U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff has put that settlement on hold, saying he is not convinced the settlement is [...]