Reason.com and OutloudOpinion

In Restraint of Liberty: Citizens United and the problem with conservative judicial restraint 2.5.10

Damon W. Root — Sat, 6 Feb 2010 07:15:53 -0500

In his dissent from the landmark gun rights ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), liberal Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens charged his conservative colleagues with a surprising crime. “No one has suggested that the political process is not working exactly as it should,” Stevens declared. Thus it is “clear to me that adherence to a policy of judicial restraint would be far wiser than the bold decision announced today.” Dissenting last month in the free speech case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Stevens repeated the charge of judicial activism, lambasting the conservative majority for “bypassing or ignoring rules of judicial restraint used to cabin the Court’s lawmaking power.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Are All Jobs Created (or Saved) Equal? NASA shouldn't be a jobs program 2.4.10

Katherine Mangu-Ward — Sat, 6 Feb 2010 07:13:05 -0500

The government has decided to stop doing something that it does badly. That's a rare occurrence, so pause to savor it. This week, President Obama announced that he was putting the kibosh on George W. Bush's $100 billion Constellation program, which had the short term goal of getting Americans back on the moon by 2020. This was a reasonable response to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) recent history with manned missions—a long, sad tale of bureaucratic woe, complete with unreliable cost estimates, missed deadlines, and limited scientific payoff. And even this big move is far from revolutionary: NASA's overall budget will continue to grow, if only by a modest 2 percent. But federal space money is being reshuffled along with the program's priorities, and change makes people nervous. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The People's Historian? Howard Zinn was a master of agitprop, not history 2.4.10

Michael C. Moynihan — Sat, 6 Feb 2010 07:11:41 -0500

Last week, The New York Times' somnolent columnist Bob Herbert complained that we live in a "nit-wit era," a time when it is "fashionable to bad-mouth labor unions and feminists even as workers throughout the land are treated like so much trash and the culture is so riddled with sexism that most people don’t even notice it." One person who did notice, says Herbert, was Boston University academic and radical historian Howard Zinn, who died last week at the age of 87, though not before bequeathing to America a series of books hostile to sexism and rather friendly to labor unions. "That he was considered radical," writes Herbert, "says way more about this society than it does about him." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Battering Down the Great Firewall of China: How the World Trade Organization could open up Internet access in China 2.2.10

Ronald Baily — Sat, 6 Feb 2010 07:10:11 -0500

“The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization,” declared Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto. These days, authoritarian regimes of all sorts find such "immensely facilitated means of communication” alarming, most especially the intellectual heirs of Marx who rule the People’s Republic of China. And nothing has facilitated communication more immensely than the spread the Internet across the globe in the past two decades. Now nearly 2 billion people use the Internet, some 400 million of them in China. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Trial by Ordeal 2.1.10

Radley Balko — Mon, 1 Feb 2010 22:24:37 -0500

We all know the classic scene below from Monty Python and The Holy Grail: The village mob drags onto the street a woman whom they've outfitted with a witch hat and prosthetic witch nose. They bring her before Sir Bedevere the Wise, claiming that she's a witch. Bedevere walks them through the science: Witches burn. Wood burns. Wood floats. Ducks float. Therefore, if the woman weighs less than or equal to a duck, she's obviously a witch. A couple of centuries after the age of King Arthur, much of Europe began to engage in similarly ridiculous rituals to determine guilt in cases that lacked eyewitnesses or physical evidence. These rituals, called ordeals, were usually conducted in a church by high-ranking clergy. Three ordeals in particular were popular. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Harvard Psychedelic Club: Did LSD really kill the 1950s? 1.28.10

Nick Gillespie — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:55:34 -0500

Arguably the second most-memorable Good Friday in history took place in the basement of Boston University’s Marsh Chapel on April 20, 1962, when a graduate student under the academic direction of Timothy Leary dosed 10 subjects with LSD and another 10 with a placebo. Among those getting actual acid was the generally sober and eminently respectable MIT religion professor Huston Smith, whose understanding of divinity was forever changed. Smith was known as the author of The Religions of Man and was no slouch when it came to grokking theology in all its manifestations. But Smith’s “encounter that Good Friday,” writes religion journalist Don Lattin in his thoroughly engaging (if sometimes overblown) The Harvard Psychedelic Club, “was the most powerful experience he would ever have of God’s personal nature . . . From that moment on, he knew that life is a miracle, every moment of it, and that the only appropriate way to respond and be mindful of that gift was to share it with the rest of the world.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Race to the Checkout Line 1.28.10

Greg Beato — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:54:12 -0500

Unless you’re comfortably wealthy, pathologically thin, or both, you probably go to the grocery store at least once every couple of weeks. When you go, there’s one factor that most determines the your experience there, and it’s not fluctuations in the price of ground coffee, the number of Ben & Jerry’s flavors on hand, or how gripping the National Enquirer cover stories are that week. It’s how smoothly you move through the check-out line. A country cannot be great without great grocery store baggers—their speed, courtesy, and ability to keep our spaghetti sauce from crushing our hot dog buns is crucial to maintaining public morale. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Obama's Rhetorical Retreat 1.27.10

David Harsanyi — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:54:45 -0500

Tax credits? Spending freezes? Deficit commissions? The president is starting to sound a lot like one of those fiscal he-devils the Democrats have been warning the nation about for years. Not to worry, true believers, Barack Obama only sounds as if he's making sense. The proposed three-year freeze sham accounts for less than a measly one-sixth of the federal budget, and the deficit panel already has been voted down in the Senate. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Cover Your Ears 1.27.10

Jacob Sullum — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:52:27 -0500

"This ruling strikes at our democracy itself," President Obama declared on Saturday. "This ruling opens the floodgates for an unlimited amount of special interest money...I can't think of anything more devastating to the public interest." The president was referring, of course, to the Supreme Court decision that last week overturned restrictions on political speech by corporations. Like most of the criticism provoked by the ruling, his reaction was long on outrage and short on constitutional interpretation. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Democrats' Five Stages of Grief Over Health Care 1.26.10

Peter Suderman — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:54:28 -0500

Therapists looking to study the five stages of grief-denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, in that order-need look no further than Washington Democrats struggling to come to grips with the fact that the health care overhaul they spent nearly a year crafting is now dead. Every stage but the last is well represented. The only step left for Democrats is to accept that, after Republican Scott Brown's win in the Massachusetts special election, their signature reform effort is now lost. The facts are plain for any objective observer to see. Brown, who ran a campaign focused on opposition to the Democrats' plan to remake the health care system, represents the 41st Republican vote in the Senate, meaning that Democrats can no longer break a united GOP filibuster. Consequently, for any future bill to pass in the Senate, it must have some Republican support. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Gluttony, Greed, Wrath and Other Taxable Sins 1.120.10

Katherine Mangu-Ward — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:36:16 -0500

New York is out for blood, wine, and cola. This week, Gov. David Paterson released a budget proposal. His goal: To eliminate the state's $7.4 billion budget deficit. His budget includes $5.5 billion in cuts and $1 billion in tax increases. The coverage of his budget might make you think that Paterson decided to do what other governors (ahem, Arnold) have shied away from: get serious about fiscal responsibility. The $134 billion overall budget was described as a "slash and burn" budget, but actual state spending will still be $787 million more than last year. Meanwhile, massive amounts of stimulus money are keeping the state afloat in the short term, but deeper cuts will have to be made. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

A Promise Worth Breaking: Obama’s health insurance tax doesn’t go far enough. 1.120.10

Jacob Sullum — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:01:13 -0500

President Obama’s proposed tax on especially expensive medical benefits, which he last week agreed to modify in response to complaints from labor unions, breaks at least three of his promises. It still may be the best aspect of a health care plan that otherwise does little to control costs, ostensibly one of Obama’s main goals. As approved by the Senate, the 40 percent excise tax applies to medical coverage costs above $8,500 a year for individuals and $23,000 for families. Although those cutoffs currently are far above average, they would rise more slowly than insurance premiums, and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimates the tax would affect nearly a quarter of Americans with employer-provided coverage by 2019. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Sheriff Joe's Enabler 1.19.10

Radley Balko — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:53:20 -0500

By now, most of America knows the name of Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The publicity-loving self-proclaimed "Toughest Sheriff in America" made himself famous with his desert tent prisons, chain gangs, reality TV show, and, most recently, with his almost certainly illegal crackdowns on undocumented immigrants. Arpaio is now the subject of a federal grand jury investigation. Less known, at least outside of Arizona, is Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Peyton Thomas. But prosecutor Thomas has emerged as one of Arpaio's most reliable enablers. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Obama Follows in Bush's Footsteps on Climate Change 1.18.10

Ronald Bailey — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:52:02 -0500

The collapse of the Copenhagen climate change conference in December killed the Kyoto Protocol—and not a moment too soon. Since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change came into effect, there have been 15 Conferences of the Parties (COP) in which 192 nations have tried to hammer out a response of man-made global warming. These meetings resulted in the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which came into effect in 2005. Under the Kyoto Protocol, 37 nations agreed to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases by 2012 to about 5 percent below the level they emitted in 1990. The United States never got around to ratifying the protocol and withdrew from it completely in 2001. In the meantime, only the countries in the European Union set up a carbon market as a way to implement carbon rationing aimed at meeting their Kyoto Protocol targets. Most other signatories simply ignored their greenhouse gas reduction targets. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Incredible Incompetence of Martha Coakley 1.18.10

Michael Moynihan — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:50:13 -0500

Comrades in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, stay alert for a telephone call from President Barack Obama. He "truly apologize[s] for intruding on your day," but according to recent polls, Republican hopeful Scott Brown has overtaken Democrat Martha Coakley in the race for the state's open Senate seat. So pardon the interruption, but if you don't act now there is a very good chance that a troglodyte Republican will sink ObamaCare. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Luck and Virtue in America and Haiti: Understanding the impact of the Haitian earthquake 1.14.10

Steve Chapman — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:48:02 -0500

Most Haitians may have never cut down a tree, but just as we enjoy trees someone else planted, they suffer from the absence of trees their forebears destroyed or didn’t plant. Haiti is a desperately poor place plagued by rampant corruption, bad government, and violence, and it always has been. Not coincidentally, it also has few trees: Less than 4 percent of the country is forested. That compares with more than a quarter in the Dominican Republic, with which Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola. Deforestation is economically debilitating, depriving the country of a valuable renewable resource. It’s also environmentally harmful, because it fosters soil erosion, flooding, and desolation. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Is Obama a Republican? 1.14.10

Steve Chapman — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:45:46 -0500

Anyone who was hoping the current administration would bring a modest downsizing of the nation’s defense establishment and global military role has to be feeling like Bernard Madoff’s investors. Escalation is underway in Afghanistan, the Army is expanding, and the Pentagon is on the all-you-can-eat diet. The American political system is set up to persuade citizens that they must choose between starkly different policies. In reality, campaigns are mostly a showy exercise in what Sigmund Freud called the “narcissism of small differences.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Who Wants to Tax a Millionaire? 1.13.10

Veronique de Rugy — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:54:50 -0500

Supporters of health care reform need money—a lot of money—to pay for it. So it’s not surprising that they would try to get it from the people with the most money to spare. Hence the so-called millionaire’s tax, a levy embedded in the House health care bill. As the noted philanthropist (with other people’s money) and House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), explained, lawmakers are targeting big earners because it “causes the least amount of pain on the least amount of people.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

That Other War: Reagan-era drug war rhetoric is still with us, and so is the accompanying collateral damage. 1.12.10

Radley Balko — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:59:49 -0500

In a 1982 speech, President Ronald Reagan declared illicit drugs a threat to America's national security, putting a too-literal gloss on the phrase "war on drugs." Reagan went on to liken America’s drug war determination to the obstinacy of the French army at the World War I Battle of Verdun, quoting a French soldier who implored, "There are no impossible situations. There are only people who think they're impossible." It was a telling analogy, though in a way Reagan probably didn't intend. Verdun was a bloody, brutal battle of attrition. A quarter million soldiers lost their lives; another 700,000 were wounded in the months-long battle for a tract of land that offered little practical advantage to either army. In the years since the war, Verdun has come to symbolize the futility of war—the way politicians and generals are willing to write off the mass loss of human life as mere collateral damage in pursuit of some symbolic but ultimately empty goal. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Just Say No to Airport Paranoia What the attempted bombing of Flight 253 says about the al-Qaeda threat 1.12.10

Russell Seitz — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:58:57 -0500

If we accept the premise that the naughty Nigerian on Flight 253 had 80 grams of pentaerythritol tetranitrate sewn into his underwear, it follows that the energy released by its efficient explosion could, at most, have amounted to one or two megajoules. That’s roughly the heat of combustion of a jelly doughnut. If that much energy were released instantaneously, the 80 gram fireball in the villain’s briefs would have reduced his midriff to hamburger. But that didn’t happen. Instead, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab got a firecracker-sized bang and some richly deserved second-degree burns. Which means the explosion of the powdery un-plasticized charge did not propagate. (One presumes that the bomb’s designer incorrectly hoped the first bit would set off the rest.) From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

More Than Zero. 1.8.10

Matt Welch — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 07:31:05 -0500

Anyone who has expended energy arguing for free trade, market competition, and the open exchange of ideas has repeatedly encountered the same obstacle: zero-sum assumptions misapplied to dynamic, nonlinear phenomena. Almost anywhere you see statism advancing— in economic policy, national security, even the basic conditions for free speech—you can bet that underneath there’s a faulty zero-sum argument. All complicated matters of life, according to this way of thinking, can be reduced to a simple binary scale: Press your thumb down on the bad end, and the good one will go up. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The War Over Neutrality: How the tech industry learned to stop worrying and love the FCC. 1.7.10

Peter Suderman — Thu, 7 Jan 2010 10:10:11 -0500

In the 1980s, kiddie comic Pee-Wee Herman popularized "I know you are but what am I" as an all-purpose retort to schoolyard insults. Repeated endlessly, the line worked because it turned an attack back on its originator. But in doing so, it dragged both sides into an unpleasant back-and-forth loop in which any insult, no matter how stupid, was simply slung back at its initiator. These days, "I know you are but what am I" seems to be the motto underlying the tech-world's regulatory bickering. For years, Internet search giant Google has been pushing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to step up net neutrality regulations. By forcing Internet service providers (ISPs) to treat each and every piece of information that passes through their systems equally, Net neutrality regulations would arguably give Google the upper hand in its dealings with ISPs, which would be constrained in how they choose to manage their networks. Google claims its support for neutrality is in the public interest, but the reality is that it is self-interestedly seeking to impose regulatory restrictions on its business partners and competitors. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Flying With the Enemy: It's time to get serious about airline security 1.7.10

David Harsanyi — Thu, 7 Jan 2010 10:09:16 -0500

When comedian Joan Rivers was booted off a flight from Costa Rica to Newark, N.J., this past weekend, it was not because she had perpetrated crimes against the human appearance. Rather, it was because she was a potential security risk. In a recent column, my assertion that airport security should ignore most of us and focus on bad actors (not the Joan Rivers variety of bad actor, though one sympathizes), who tend to originate from disagreeable locales (not Hollywood) and affiliate themselves with a religious denomination (not Scientology), provoked a torrent of livid e-mails to land in my inbox. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Meaning of Ists 1.6.10

Jacob Sullum — Wed, 6 Jan 2010 11:48:45 -0500

One of the Bush administration’s most pernicious legacies is the never-ending War on Terrorism, a perpetual state of emergency that supposedly authorizes the president to break the law, abridge civil liberties, and ignore due process, all under a cloak of secrecy. Last week former Vice President Dick Cheney accused the Obama administration of forsaking Bush’s War on Terrorism. If only it were true. After watching the official reaction to the failed Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, Cheney complained that “President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war.” In addition to Obama’s “low-key response” to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s fizzled underwear bomb, Cheney cited the administration’s plans to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, release some detainees held there, and try suspected terrorists in federal court. “We are at war,” Cheney insisted, “and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Who's Your Daddy? Or Your Other Daddy? Or Your Mommy? 1.6.10

Ronald Bailey — Wed, 6 Jan 2010 11:47:23 -0500

The question of what it means to be a parent has never been simple. But three recent cases highlight just how complicated things can get—and how inconsistent the courts have been in weighing genetic parenthood against the deals struck by would-be parents (gay and straight) with their partners. Case 1: Sean Hollingsworth and Donald Robinson Hollingsworth are legally married in California and are registered as civil union partners in New Jersey. The two husbands arranged for Donald's sister, Angelia Robinson, to serve as a gestational surrogate carrying embryos produced using sperm from Sean Hollingsworth and donor eggs. In October 2006, Ms. Robinson bore twin girls whom she turned over to their two fathers. In March 2007, Ms. Robinson sued for custody alleging that she had been coerced into being a surrogate. A New Jersey court ruled last week that Ms. Robinson, who has no genetic tie to the twins, is their legal mother and can sue for primary custody later this year. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The D.C. Snow Job 1.5.10

Radley Balko — Wed, 6 Jan 2010 10:56:11 -0500

Social networks, video sharing, and blogs expose Washington, D.C.'s lying police department and their media enablers. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

A Bill of Goods, Maybe 12.23.09

David Harsanyi — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:35:39 -0500

For many, the health care reform debate has only reinforced a number of richly deserved stereotypes regarding the workings of Congress and the synergetic crookedness of big government and big business. There's a little something for everyone, really. (And for the utterly gullible, there is a shimmering new make-believe birthright to go along with the mess.) From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

There Ain’t No Such Thing As a Free Lumpectomy 12.23.09

Jacob Sullum — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:32:44 -0500

This week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared that his chamber’s health care bill "demands for the first time in American history that good health will not depend on great wealth." Reid said the legislation "acknowledges, finally, that health care is a fundamental right - a human right - and not just a privilege for the most fortunate." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The States’ Failed Experiments 12.22.09

Peter Suderman — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:30:41 -0500

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously envisioned the states serving as laboratories, trying "novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." On health care, that’s just what they’ve done. Like participants in a national science fair, state governments have tested variants on most of the major health care reforms Congress is considering. The results include dramatically higher premiums in the individual market, spiraling public costs, and reduced access to care. In other words, the reforms have failed. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

How to Make Enemies on Health Care 12.21.09

Steve Chapman — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:17:22 -0500

Barack Obama hoped to unify the nation, and he is making impressive progress toward that goal. Last week, he created common ground between Howard Dean and conservatives. They agree on one thing, which is that the health care reform package produced by the Senate and endorsed by the president richly deserves to be voted down. Conservatives have always opposed ObamaCare because it involves too much government. Now liberals are abandoning the administration's plan because it involves too little. Dean and Co. are bitter that the bills in Congress offer neither a "public option" - a government-run insurance program - nor a provision letting those from age 55 to 64 buy Medicare coverage. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Green Jobs Delusion 12.17.09

Ronald Bailey — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:23:45 -0500

Copenhagen, December 17—“It’s all about the jobs,” declared U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her remarks at the Copenhagen climate change conference today. To hear Pelosi talk, saving the planet from climate doom is incidental to making sure Americans are employed making windmills, solar panels, electric cars, and weatherizing houses. Speaker Pelosi is heading up a 20-person congressional delegation here in Denmark, including such luminaries as Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), and Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). The monikers of the latter two solons—Waxman-Markey—are shorthand for the American Clean Energy and Security Act cap-and-trade bill that passed the House last June. The bill would require the U.S. to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Five Reasons for Optimism: As awful as the times may seem, they also contain seeds of hope. 12.17.09

Jesse Walker — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:22:43 -0500

It was a miserable decade. From Baghdad to New Orleans and from the Patriot Act to TARP, the last 10 years sometimes felt like nothing more than a series of colossal government screwups alternating with colossal extensions of government power. At the end of 2009, we're faced with an escalating war in Afghanistan, a growing corporate state at home, and a renewed push for protectionism around the world. There has been little to cheer in the age of Bush and Obama, especially for those of us who think Washington should be shrinking rather than swelling.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Terrorists in the Heartland? It's time to chill out about Obama's efforts to close Guantanamo. 12.17.09

Steve Chapman — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:48:56 -0500

The idea of having an al-Qaida presence in Illinois, even locked up behind bars, is a horrifying prospect. That's what we have to confront now that the Obama administration has decided to move some Guantanamo inmates to a prison in Thomson, a small town in the northwest corner of the state. How will we sleep nights with terrorists in our midst? Probably about like we do right now. From the shrieks of alarm, you'd think no bloodthirsty jihadist had ever occupied a cell in one of our correctional facilities. As it turns out, there are already some 35 domestic and international terrorists privileged to reside in the Land of Lincoln. Run into any at Wal-Mart lately? Seen one cut in line at Dunkin' Donuts? Me neither.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Can the Climate Conference Avoid Diplomatic Doom? 12.16.09

Ronald Bailey — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:47:20 -0500

Copenhagen, December 16—It’s déjà vu all over again. Another year, another climate summit on the verge of collapse. As usual, this year's conference is filled with lots of diplomatic drama, outraged activists, and high-minded rhetoric. This is the sixth time I’ve reported on the annual U.N. climate change conference and the script has not changed. Two years ago the chaotic climate change talks in Bali "nearly collapsed." The conference concluded with an thirteenth hour “roadmap” for future negotiations. That last minute deal was supposed to set the stage for a legally binding global climate treaty from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) 15th Conference of the Parties (COP-15) in Copenhagen.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Hide the Decline: Why government-funded scientists should release their documents 12.16.09

David Harsanyi — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:46:22 -0500

In this country, even a global warming denialist with a carbon fetish and bad intentions has the right to see the inner workings of government. Or, at least, he should. When leaked e-mails recently exposed talk of manipulating scientific evidence on global warming, Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at The National Center for Atmospheric Research, argued that skeptics and other evildoers had cherry-picked and presented his comments out of context.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Clarity of False Choices: How Obama’s rhetorical tricks mislead the public 12.16.09

Jacob Sullum — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:36:47 -0500

“There are those who claim we have to choose between paying down our deficits…and investing in job creation and economic growth,” President Obama said last week. “This is a false choice.” During the same speech, he asked his audience to “let me just be clear” that his administration, having racked up the biggest budget deficits ever, is embracing fiscal responsibility, as reflected in his vow that “health insurance reform” will not increase the deficit “by one dime.” For connoisseurs of Obama-speak, the address featured a trifecta, combining three of his favorite rhetorical tropes. There was the vague reference to “those who” question his agenda, the “false choice” they use to deceive the public, and the determination to “be clear” and forthright, in contrast with those dishonest naysayers. These devices are useful as signals that the president is about to mislead us.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Battle Between U.S. and China Threatens Climate Conference 12.16.09

Ronald Bailey — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:35:27 -0500

Copenhagen, Dec. 15— “We can fail,” warned Danish Minister of the Environment Connie Hedegaard, president of the COP-15 climate change conference now happening in Copenhagen. Her warning was echoed by Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, who added, “There has been some progress, but not nearly enough to present to the world as a success in Copenhagen.” These dour assessments were made at the end of the 9th day of the conference at the ceremonial session welcoming the arrival of environment ministers from around the world. Both nevertheless gamely suggested that “success”—by which they mean significant commitments to establishing some kind of global scheme to handle man-made climate change—could still be had. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Does the Second Amendment Apply in Chicago? 12.15.09

Damon Root — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:30:00 -0500

Last year’s landmark Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller definitively settled the fact that the Second Amendment secures an individual right—not a collective one—to keep and bear arms. Yet that ruling applied only to the federal government (which oversees Washington, D.C.). Does the Second Amendment apply against state and local governments as well? Through a series of legal decisions handed down over the past century, the Supreme Court has gradually held that most of the protections in the Bill of Rights apply to the states via the 14th Amendment, which declares, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Second Amendment, however, has been glaringly absent from this process, leaving state and local governments free to systematically violate gun rights. Until now. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

"The Most Important Number in the World" 12.14.09

Ronald Bailey — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:50:12 -0500

Copenhagen, December 14—"The most important number in the world," Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldive Islands, told an audience of hundreds of climate activists in downtown Copenhagen, "is 350." Why 350? That's the threshold for parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that will cause dangerous anthropogenic interference with the world's climate, according to Goddard Institute for Space Studies climatologist James Hansen. Hansen outlines his reasoning for a 350 parts per million (ppm) threshold in his new book, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Have a Coke and a Tax: The economic case against soda taxes 12.14.09

Veronique de Rugy — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:29:31 -0500

With the federal deficit reaching $1.4 trillion and most state budgets deep in the red, policy makers are desperately searching for new sources of revenue that the tapped-out American public might support. They think they’ve found one at the corner store: a tax on carbonated beverages. Charging a few more cents for a soft drink, legislators claim, will not only refresh exhausted state and federal revenues; it will make us thinner. Several versions of this year’s health care bills included a soda tax to help offset new costs. In a September interview with Men’s Health, President Barack Obama called it ‘‘an idea that we should be exploring” because “our kids drink way too much soda.” The idea had been dropped from the health care legislation at press time but is expected to resurface next year. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

When Science Becomes a Casualty of Politics: Getting to the root of Climategate 12.14.09

Cathy Young — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:05:11 -0500

In the unfolding debate over "ClimateGate," the affair of the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia that offer an inconvenient peek behind the curtain of climate science, one thing is clear. Virtually every commentator's position on the issue—is this a scandal that exposes global warming as a scientific sham, or a faux scandal stoked by climate-change denial propaganda?—can be predicted by his or her politics. You can look at the byline or the publication, and predict with near-100 percent accuracy what the article will say. It is no surprise that The Wall Street Journal deplores the arrogant and dogmatic mindset of the "warmists," or that The New Republic assails the brazenness of the "deniers." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Chicago's Thick Blue Wall 12.14.09

Radley Balko — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:03:48 -0500

Christopher Drew had every intention of getting arrested. The 59-year-old artist and executive director of the Uptown Multi-Cultural Art Center in Chicago set about his city earlier this month in a red poncho and a sign that read "Art for Sale: $1." It was a protest against Chicago’s law on unlicensed peddling, which Drew believes puts up unconstitutional barriers preventing artists from selling their work. The artist was confronted by Chicago police and arrested on December 3. Because he recorded the entire incident, on the understandable assumption that the reasons the officers gave for arresting him may prove useful to his follow-up lawsuit, Drew was also charged with "felony eavesdropping." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Artificial Housing Respiration: Government-sponsored housing inflation is locking the next generation out of homeownership. 12.10.09

Tim Cavanaugh — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:01:50 -0500

No major newspaper seriously questions the truism that foreclosures destroy neighborhoods. No news network doubts that “troubled borrowers” are overwhelmingly good Americans who have been set back by a job loss or medical emergency. And what kind of anti-American Shylock would claim that you shouldn’t give bad borrowers government-backed loan modifications, cutting their mortgage payments by 20 percent? From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Legislative Reality vs. Political Reality 12.10.09

Peter Suderman — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:00:28 -0500

"The budget," said Will Rodgers, "is like a mythical bean bag. Congress votes mythical beans into it, then reaches in and tries to pull real ones out." And the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the non-partisan office tasked with generating official price tags for legislation, is the agency responsible for helping Congress count those mythical beans. But as the health care debate has progressed throughout the year, Congressional Democrats have become far more adept at getting the CBO to count the beans just the way they want. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Obama's Fantasy Jobs Plan 12.10.09

Steve Chapman — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:52:18 -0500

This is that wonderful time of year when a roly-poly, white-bearded fellow descends from the North Pole to lavish us with presents. So when President Obama follows suit, maybe it's just his way of getting into the spirit of the season. He sounded uncannily like Santa Claus the other day in a speech taking credit for creating and saving 1.6 million jobs and vowing to do even more. The recent uptick in the economy and dip in unemployment, the president announced, came about because of the $787 billion economic stimulus package he signed last February. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Progressives vs. Democracy: The health care debate reveals a nasty tendency within liberal politics. 12.09.09

Brian Doherty — Wed, 9 Dec 2009 21:25:14 -0500

At press time, the House-Senate reconciliation over some version of a health care bill was still lurching along. Although key details were changing daily, one fact has remained constant: Any legislation that might end up passing through the Democrat-controlled Congress will involve enormous new government subsidies, onerous mandates on private insurance companies (and their customers), and tighter government controls on a large and growing percentage of the U.S. economy. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Wall Street Blues: Why the House’s new financial reform and consumer protection bill is bad for America12.09.09

Anthony Randazzo — Wed, 9 Dec 2009 21:23:58 -0500

Last week, the House Financial Services Committee approved the final piece of a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street regulations proposed by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). The full House is schedule to begin debate on the bill today, and a vote could come as early as this weekend as representatives rush to pass the legislation before the Christmas break. The 1,300-page bill, known as The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, establishes a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a systemic-risk oversight council, new capital requirements for financial institutions, and a “resolution” authority for non-banks. It also requires financial products like derivatives to be more transparent, overhauls rating agency laws, changes securitization rules, and alters the FDIC bank rescue fund. In short, it seeks to radically change the way Wall Street does business. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Should the EPA have the authority to police greenhouse gases? 12.09.09

David Harsanyi — Wed, 9 Dec 2009 21:22:39 -0500

We don't need a cap-and-trade deal. What we need is a RICO trial. Every now and then, apparently, history challenges us with a crisis far too important to be left to the democratic process or the vagaries of public opinion. In these instances, the enlightened, the powerful, the moral must act swiftly. So sayeth the Obama administration this week, empowering the Environmental Protection Agency to police greenhouse gases as a danger to public health and welfare, thus giving the agency discretion to regulate ... well, anything it pleases—or, I should say, whatever is left. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Big Blighters How developers use "blight" as a pretext to get the land they covet 12.09.09

Jacob Sullum — Wed, 9 Dec 2009 21:21:12 -0500

After Kelo v. City of New London, the 2005 decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court approved the forcible transfer of property from one private owner to another in the name of “economic development,” 43 states passed reforms that were supposed to curb eminent domain abuses. But most states still allow condemnation of property deemed to be “blighted,” and many of them define that condition so broadly that it has become a synonym for coveted, as illustrated by two recent New York cases. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Clemency on Trial: Most governors grant clemency for the wrong reasons. 12.08.09

Radley Balko — Wed, 9 Dec 2009 21:19:20 -0500

Former presidential candidate, former Arkansas governor, and current Fox News host Mike Huckabee is taking heat for his 2000 commutation of the prison sentence of Maurice Clemmons, the man now believed to have murdered four police officers in a Washington state coffeehouse. Police shot and killed Clemmons after a two-day manhunt. The coverage of and reaction to Huckabee's decision raise interesting questions about how pardon and clemency powers are—and ought to be—used. Huckabee has been criticized before for his use of pardon and clemency powers, from conservatives who say he was too easy on violent offenders to liberals who say the Baptist minister favored convicts who found Jesus in jail. Already, some are arguing that the Clemmons case will make governors much less likely to use their clemency power. That's too bad. These powers are already increasingly under-utilized. Worse, when they are used, it's often for the wrong reasons. A governor's power to grant relief to convicts ought to be used as a check against injustice. It's far more commonly used as a reward for redemption. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Why I Prefer French Health Care The U.S. system’s deep flaws make socialism more tempting 12.07.09

Matt Welch — Wed, 9 Dec 2009 21:17:05 -0500

By now I’m accustomed to being the only person in any given room with my particular set of cockamamie politics. But even within the more familiar confines of the libertarian movement, I am an awkward outlier on the topic of the day (and the topic of this issue of reason): health care. To put it plainly, when free marketers warn that Democratic health care initiatives will make us more “like France,” a big part of me says, “I wish.” It’s not that I think it’s either feasible or advisable for the United States to adopt a single-payer, government-dominated system. But it’s instructive to confront the comparative advantages of one socialist system abroad to sharpen the arguments for more capitalism at home. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Boobs in Congress: What the recent mammogram controversy reveals about health care "reform" 12.05.09

Steve Chapman — Mon, 7 Dec 2009 17:15:17 -0500

One of the ostensible reasons for reforming our health insurance system is the need to halt the growth of spending on medical treatment. So it may be a surprise to learn that in its first major vote on the health care overhaul, the U.S. Senate took a clear and simple position: Cost is no object. In November, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, a federally sponsored panel of medical experts, announced that it was recommending against routine mammography among women younger than 50. The proposal, coming amid the health care debate, was taken as a gruesome attempt to sacrifice lives to save pennies. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

We-Don't-Want-To-Talk-About-It-Gate: Why won't more politicians talk about Climategate? 12.05.09

David Harsanyi — Mon, 7 Dec 2009 17:13:48 -0500

Americans honor the courageous informant, the gutsy citizen who stands against the savagery of the profit-mongering conglomerate. Well, sometimes. It appears, believe it or not, that there are those who aren't religiously tethered to this sacred obligation. For now—because of revelations of the ClimateGate scandal, in which hacked e-mails revealed discussions among top climate scientists about the manipulation of evidence—Phil Jones, head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in Britain, has stepped down from his position. Michael Mann, architect of the famous "hockey stick" graph, is now under investigation by Pennsylvania State University. Similar inquiries should follow. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Tiger Woods and Domestic Violence 12.04.09

Cathy Young — Mon, 7 Dec 2009 17:12:23 -0500

As the news of golf superstar Tiger Woods' alleged multiple affairs spills all over the media, a fascinating—and disturbing—subplot to the story has become a revealing litmus test of societal attitudes toward gender and domestic violence. Persistent rumors allege that the November 27 car accident in which Woods hit a fire hydrant and then a tree while backing out of his driveway around 2:30 a.m. was linked to an assault on the golfer by his wife Elin Nordegren—and that the cuts and bruises on Woods' face were the result of the assault, not the accident. These claims have been strongly denied by the police and by others; the official version is that Nordegren rushed to her husband's aid after the accident and smashed the car window with a golf club to free him. Nonetheless, further tales of marital fighting will no doubt be fueled by Woods' confession on December 2 to unspecified "transgressions" against his family and by new allegations of a recorded voice-mail message in which he supposedly tells his mistress his wife has found her number on his phone. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Reading People’s Faces Tattoos, dueling scars, and other rational acquisitions 12.03.09

Katherine Mangu-Ward — Mon, 7 Dec 2009 17:05:40 -0500

It is a truth universally acknowledged that messing with a guy who has facial tattoos is a really bad idea. Getting dirty words tattooed on your eyelids—a popular choice, judging from the mug shots available online—is a serious commitment. It is, as social scientists say, a “signal that is costly to fake.” The bearer of a facial tattoo announces to the world: I expect to be in prison for most of my life, or to hang out with people who consider prison experience a character reference. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

A Penny Saved Is Effort Wasted The case against the penny 12.03.09

Steve Chapman — Mon, 7 Dec 2009 17:04:28 -0500

If the cost of assembling a Big Mac were higher than its selling price, McDonald's would soon drop it from the menu. Capitalists know that when you're losing money on each unit of production, you can't make it up in volume. The lesson has dawned on the United States Mint, which reports that because of the high price of zinc and copper, manufacturing a penny now costs 1.38 cents. This development brings to mind economist Ludwig von Mises' observation about the causes of inflation. "Government," he said, "is the only agency which can take a useful commodity like paper, slap some ink on it, and make it totally worthless." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

A Reason To Be Skeptical The lessons of Climategate 12.02.09

David Harsanyi — Mon, 7 Dec 2009 17:03:13 -0500

Who knows? In the long run, global warming skeptics may be wrong, but the importance of healthy skepticism in the face of conventional thinking is, once again, validated. What we know now is that someone hacked into the e-mails of leading climate researchers at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit and others, including noted alarmists Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University and Kevin Trenberth of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Bet Blockers The government should not expect financial institutions to stop online gambling. 12.02.09

Jacob Sullum — Mon, 7 Dec 2009 17:00:35 -0500

In 2006 Congress passed a law that instructed the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board to write regulations aimed at preventing "unlawful Internet gambling." But Congress did not define "unlawful Internet gambling," and neither did the regulators. Instead they issued rules requiring financial institutions to adopt "policies and procedures" that are "reasonably designed" to block transactions associated with unlawful Internet gambling, whatever that might be. Last week, acknowledging the difficulty of satisfying this demand, federal regulators announced that enforcement of the rules, scheduled to begin on December 1, will be delayed until June 1. The six-month extension gives Congress time to reconsider its foolish and futile attempt to stop Americans from betting in their pajamas. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Doping the Masses Exposing Britain's unholy alliance between alcohol prohibitionists and marijuana reformers 12.01.09

Brendan O'Neill — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:41:50 -0500

Back in the 1960s, hippies, rock stars, pop singers, students, dropouts, and other opponents of The Man demanded the legalization of cannabis in the name of freedom and experimentation. “Free The Weed!” they shrieked. Let grown men and women decide for themselves how to get their rocks off. Today, in Western Europe at least, things couldn’t be more different. Dope lobbyists now demand the legalization of cannabis on the basis that it is a safer, less swagger-inducing alternative to alcohol, that is more likely to make people feel zonked (which is good) rather than riotous (which apparently is bad). From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

These Boots Are Made for Talking 11.25.09

Jacob Sullum — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:43:56 -0500

The fuzzy math and goofy logic of government-goosed employment. According to a report from a shoe store in Campbellsville, Kentucky, the Army Corps of Engineers "created or saved" nine jobs when it used money allocated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to buy nine pairs of work boots. The Wall Street Journal reports that the store’s owner, frustrated by the government’s confusing online forms, enlisted the help of his 42-year-old daughter, who figured nine-the number of people who would use the boots on the job-made as much sense as any other answer. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Patients should make their own choices about mammograms, not bureaucrats. 11.24.09

Ronald Bailey — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:56:31 -0500

“The USPSTF [United States Preventive Services Task Force] recommends against routine screening mammography in women aged 40 to 49 years.” This simple statement, published on the website of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, ignited a firestorm of protest.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Where the Consumer Is King 11.24.09

Greg Beato — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:55:19 -0500

We’re three weeks into November, the biggest shopping day of the year is fast approaching, and I’ve only received a paltry 23 catalogs in my mailbox this month. Like newspapers and magazines, it seems that old-fashioned mail-order catalogs will soon be as extinct as the PalmPilot. Thousands of hands have been wrung over the death of newspapers and the threat to democracy that poses. A smaller number of people are no doubt worrying about the death of magazines and the shaky future of perfume strips. No one seems all that concerned that at some point during the next 10 or 20 years, Pottery Barn is going to stop sending us its unsolicited but incredibly informative guides to contemporary middle-class decorating trends. Can America survive without systematic, lavishly illustrated coverage of artisanal wall lanterns and fringed hand-loom rugs?
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Treating Wall Street Like the Mafia 11.23.09

Anthony Randazzo — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:42:09 -0500

Perhaps Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) thinks of himself as a modern day John Sherman. In 1890, Ohio Sen. Sherman set out on a mission to establish “just competition” laws and level the economic playing field. His quest culminated in the dismantling of monopolies—such as American Tobacco and Standard Oil—and the passage of new laws prohibiting malicious competitive practices. In a similar way, Dodd now seeks the power to tear apart any company he considers a risk to the national economy. But unlike Sherman, Dodd isn’t out to create the best possible conditions for competition to thrive. He’s out for blood.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

A New Trial for Cory Maye Mississippi's Court of Appeals affirms a right to a local jury. 11.23.09

Radley Balko — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:41:05 -0500

Last week the Mississippi Court of Appeals granted a new trial to Cory Maye, a 29-year old man serving a life sentence for the murder of Prentiss, Mississippi police officer Ron Jones. Maye, who had no prior criminal record, says he was sleeping in his home when Jones and a makeshift drug raid team kicked down his door in the middle of the night on December 26, 2001. Maye claims he thought the police were criminal intruders and feared for his life and that of his daughter, 18-month old Ta'Corianna, who was asleep on the bed in the room where the shooting occurred. Police found a small amount of mostly ashen marijuana in the apartment.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Vampire Family Values Understanding the massive appeal of The Twilight Saga: New Moon 11.23.09

Noah Berlatsky — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:18:20 -0500

It’s exhilarating to finally find a genre movie that knows how to pander. The Twilight Saga: New Moon opens with Bella Swan (Kristin Stewart) looking windblown in a barely-buttoned shirt; it moves quickly to show us bare-chested Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), and ends with the dreamy declaration from vampire-lover Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) that all the girls have been waiting for. Add in a romantic triangle as Jacob and Edward vie for Bella, a heavy dose of angst, some unrequited (and fully requited) love, and it’s no wonder the preview audience I viewed this with kept bursting into spontaneous applause and sighs.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

My Body, Their Choice Turning health care over to the government inevitably limits individual freedom. 11.19.09

Peter Suderman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:22:49 -0500

"My body, my choice" has long been a rallying cry for abortion-rights advocates on the left, many of whom have recently been vocal supporters of the Democratic health care reform agenda. But as abortion advocates are now discovering, abortion rights aren't as easily compatible with health care reform as they might have once thought. Turns out the more government gets involved in health care, the more difficult it becomes to truly retain choices about one's body.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Sarah Palin and the Decline of Conservatism 11.18.09

Steve Chapman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:52:22 -0500

The 19th century American writer Henry Adams said the descent of American presidents from George Washington to Ulysses S. Grant was enough to discredit the theory of evolution. The same could be said of the pantheon of conservative political heroes, which in the last half-century has gone from Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan to Sarah Palin. That refutation may be agreeable to Palin, who doesn't put much stock in Darwin anyway. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Where’s That Inflation? The monetary base has ballooned, yet inflation remains far off. Or does it? 11.18.09

Veronique de Rugy — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:54:29 -0500

These days, where you fall on the crucial issue of Sarah Palin tells the rest of us all we need to know about your character. You're either A) a scum-sucking, terror-loving elitist or B) a radical, tea bag-loving simpleton. Yet believe it or not, one can (as I do) admire Palin's charisma and roots, appreciate her dissent on the policy experiments brainy folks in Washington are cooking up, and, at the same time, believe she has no business running for president in 2012. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Palin Experience: Understanding the media's reaction to Sarah Palin 11.18.09

David Harsanyi — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:53:02 -0500

You can show people calorie numbers, but you can’t make them count. 11.18.09

Veronique de Rugy — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:52:12 -0500

From September 2008 to September 2009, the Federal Reserve pumped an unprecedented $2 trillion into the financial system by buying Treasury bonds and assets from banks. According to most mainstream economists, such action should create a general increase in prices. Inflation is the result of more dollars chasing the same number of (or fewer) goods. As the Nobel laureate Milton Friedman put it, in one of his main contributions to “monetarist” economics, inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon—that is, it’s caused by an expansion in the supply of money or credit. So why haven’t we seen inflation in 2009? Are we looking in the wrong places, or is it time to update monetarist theory? From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Kiss Your Freedoms Goodbye If Health Care Passes Why we cannot afford to sit out this fight 11.16.09

Andrew Napolitano — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:03:57 -0500

Congress recognizes no limits on its power. It doesn't care about the Constitution, it doesn't care about your inalienable rights. If this health care bill becomes law, America, life as you have known it, freedom as you have exercised it, and privacy as you have enjoyed it will cease to be. Last week the House of Representatives voted on a 2,000 page bill to give the federal government the power to micromanage the health care of every single American. The bill will raise your taxes, steal your freedom, invade your privacy, and ration your health care. Even the Republicans have introduced their version of Obamacare Lite. It, too, if passed, will compel employers to provide coverage, bribe the states to change their court rules, and tell insurance companies whom to insure. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

How the paths of two very different families crossed to cheer the release of a wrongly convicted man. 11.16.09

Radley Balko — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:02:32 -0500

Earlier this month, Wayne County, Michigan Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny threw out the murder conviction of Dwayne Provience, who had been convicted for a 2000 drug-related murder in downtown Detroit. After nine-and-a-half years in prison, Provience was released on $500 bond. Prosecutors are now deciding whether to retry him. Provience's mother watched from the courtroom as Kenny announced his decision. She was overcome when she realized her son would be freed. "It's already Christmas," Vonzella Battle told a local television station. "It's the holidays for me right now." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Are Tea Parties Racist? Sifting through the anti-Obama-hysteria hysteria 11.16.09

Matt Welch — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:31:32 -0500

In retrospect, I suppose I should be surprised it took as long as eight months for someone to accuse me of racism in my criticism of Barack Obama. After all, by September 11, when Salon Editor in Chief Joan Walsh wrote that my “strange slur” against the president was a textbook example of “the racial nuttiness that Obama faces,” just about every person loudly opposing the administration’s economic policies had already been tarred with the same brush. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Gay Marriage Lost, But It's Not Losing 11.16.09

Steve Chapman — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:52:07 -0500

Opponents of same-sex marriage waxed triumphant recently when voters in Maine rejected a measure allowing gays to wed. Maggie Gallagher, head of the National Organization for Marriage, crowed, "This victory in Maine interrupts the cultural narrative that was being manufactured, that somehow American opinion is shifting on the gay marriage issue." But she and her allies are the political equivalent of a Minnesota Vikings fan, gazing upon Brett Favre's middle-aged gridiron wizardry. They had better enjoy it now, because it's not going to last. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Putting a Stop to Congressional Overreach 11.14.09

Damon W. Root — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:43:05 -0500

In early September, Fox News host Andrew Napolitano asked Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, precisely what part of the Constitution authorized Congress to enact health care legislation. "There's nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the stuff we do," Clyburn replied. "How about [you] show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this?" From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Case Against Twitter: C'mon, admit it. Twitter is useless. 11.14.09

David Harsanyi — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:32:01 -0500

Twitter's popularity and usefulness are mysteries to me. Pressed by personal, professional, and cultural forces, I sporadically deploy short missives for fear of becoming one of those cantankerous technophobes who is too dense to recognize the miracle of letting "followers" know he hates raisins or that he loved the finale of Mad Men. Now not only am I expected to transmit this minutiae mere seconds after I think it but also some 20-year-old in California has decreed that I must do it within the brevity of 140 characters. This need for conciseness, in fact, induces normally articulate friends of mine to write in Prince lyrics—recklessly using "2" and "4" and "U" as words. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Glenn Beck’s Experimental Melodrama 11.12.09

Greg Beato — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:55:05 -0500

In late September, President Barack Obama conducted a series of five one-on-one White House interviews with reporters from CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and Univision. For some reason—perhaps he’s housing a secret civilian security force in the Roosevelt Room and doesn’t want any fair and balanced reporters snooping around—the president didn’t invite Fox to participate. For Glenn Beck, the host of the hottest show on cable news, this Oval Office slight offered an opportunity to provide some trenchant perspective. “Does the president consider Fox some sort of enemy?” he exclaimed, chortling with amiable resentment. “I mean, no, it can’t be that, because, no, he’ll sit down with our enemies. He’s even offered to sit down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And that guy, I mean, you call me nuts?” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Getting Virginia Off the Sauce The Old Dominion's new governor promises to end the state liquor monopoly 11.12.09

Katherine Mangu-Ward — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:17:00 -0500

Ask an immigrant to tell you about her first impressions of America—especially someone who hails from a communist or socialist state—and eventually she’ll get to the part about the grocery store. After a lifetime of empty shelves, poor selection, and unreliable hours, the cornucopia of an American Safeway or Kroger is a revelation. The colors, the music, the lights, the people! Massive stores crammed to the gills with three-dozen brands of cereal and 17 kinds of frozen potato products seem like something out of a dream. This is how I felt the first time I bought booze outside my home state of Virginia. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Muslims and Mass Murder: Understanding the Fort Hood attack 11.11.09

Steve Chapman — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:41:35 -0500

Mass murders are usually a mystery. When Maj. Nidal Hasan allegedly committed one last week at Fort Hood, though, there was no time wasted in solving the mystery by blaming the massacre on his religion, which is Islam. Maybe Hasan is just a homicidal lunatic set to work by fevered demons inside his brain. But post-9/11, you can't be a killer who happens to be a Muslim. If you're a killer, it has to be because you're a Muslim. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

We Don't Do Backlashes 11.11.09

Michael C. Moynihan — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:37:30 -0500

There has already been enough blogger outrage and cable host sputtering on the absurd notion that Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) when he shot 40 people last week at Ft. Hood, Texas, despite the fact that he had never served in a war zone. (In a masterful bit of don't-mention-the-war hypothesizing, Time magazine suggested that Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, could be suffering from some type of secondhand PTSD.) From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Remember the Veterans' Bodies: Taking war more seriously than we have. 11.11.09

Nick Gillespie — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:32:42 -0500

On Veterans Day, my thoughts always turn to my father, John Gillespie (1923-1997), who served in World War II. He volunteered for the Rangers after Pearl Harbor, was turned down due to problems stemming from childhood illnesses and poor eyesight, and then was drafted into the Army as an infantryman soon after. He landed at Normandy as part of the D-Day invasion, participated in the breakout at St. Lo, and then moved across Western Europe to Germany, where he was wounded and awarded a Purple Heart before returning to combat until the Nazi surrender. Like virtually all semi-able-bodied men of his generation (especially those relatively lucky enough to have been stationed in Europe), the interstice between V-E Day in May and what became V-J Day in August 1945 felt like being on Death Row. No one in his situation assumed that he would survive the coming invasion of Japan. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

How Green Are Your Nukes? 11.11.09

Ronald Bailey — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:31:33 -0500

The role that nuclear power might play in addressing the problem of man-made global warming is fiercely disputed among environmentalists. Two new books by big names in the movement stake out the boundaries of that debate. On the pro-nuclear side stands Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, by Stewart Brand. And parked in the (more or less) anti-nuclear corner is Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, by Al Gore. A self-described “green,” Stewart Brand founded and edited the counterculture Whole Earth Catalog back in 1968. In his first book, Earth in the Balance (1992), then-Sen. Al Gore argued, “We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization.” From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Freedom to Confuse: Thanks to the abortion amendment, liberals suddenly care about "choice" in our health care system. 11.11.09

David Harsanyi — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:00:32 -0500

If liberals are so disturbed by Congress' dictating whether abortion is a legitimate health care issue or not, it only makes sense that they should be equally troubled by government management of other health care decisions. Undoubtedly, this is zealously naive thinking on my part. Reaching such a conclusion demands a modicum of consistency. And as we've seen, health care "reform" is an ideological crusade immune from logic.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Absolute Immunity on Trial: Bush's former solicitor general tries to roll back prosecutorial abuse. 11.10.09

Radley Balko — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:37:31 -0500

In 2006, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett Grayson lined up more than 30 jailhouse informants to testify that they had sold drugs to Church Point, Louisiana homemaker Ann Colomb and her three sons. (I wrote about the Colomb case in the May 2008 issue of Reason.) Grayson had used some of these snitches before, in the trial of a Houston drug kingpin. After the Houston trial, Grayson was notified that several of his informants had lied, and that there may have been an information sharing network and perjury ring inside the federal prison system. No matter. Grayson used them again. Colomb and her sons were convicted, and spent three months in prison.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Our Dangerous Cold War Nostalgia 11.9.09

Steve Chapman — Thu, 5 Nov 2009 20:31:30 -0500

Communism was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, and one of the greatest in human history. Twenty years ago, suddenly and improbably, it fell into its death throes. The end began the night of Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall was opened, allowing East Germans to leave the prison that constituted their country. Throughout Eastern Europe, one Communist regime after another disintegrated. Within two years, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was not only out of power but banned by law. A system soaked in the blood of millions was gone.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

America Only Seems Polarized We're still a country full of political moderates 11.5.09

Steve Chapman — Thu, 5 Nov 2009 15:34:28 -0500

Barack Obama held out hope of overcoming partisan divides, lowering the temperature, and bringing Americans together. How's that working out? Not well, it appears. One year after he was elected, Americans look more polarized than ever.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Can It Be? A Party for Capitalism? Free-market populism is a political movement with staying power 11.3.09

David Harsanyi — Wed, 4 Nov 2009 15:39:55 -0500

For perhaps the first time in American history, seemingly rational adults will sit down and spend significant time dissecting the off-off-year elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York's much-discussed 23rd Congressional District. Naturally, a consensus will emerge:
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Obama’s Hidden Fees: When the president does it, it’s not a tax. 11.3.09

Jacob Sullum — Wed, 4 Nov 2009 09:00:29 -0500

President Obama’s promise to raise taxes only on the wealthy was easy to make and easy to break. He broke it barely two weeks after taking office, and he will break it again if Congress passes the health care legislation he wants. But Obama has come up with a strategy to avoid the fate of George H.W. Bush: Although he will raise your taxes, he will never admit he is raising your taxes.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

SuperFreaking Out Over Climate Engineering 11.3.09

Ronald Bailey — Tue, 3 Nov 2009 21:47:03 -0500

Freakonomics authors freak out environmental activists by suggesting a technical fix for global warming
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Tyranny of the Minority 11.3.09

Damon W. Root — Tue, 3 Nov 2009 21:44:46 -0500

James MacGregor Burns' biased and cartoonish new history of the Supreme Court
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Death of a Watchdog: Pete Shellem, RIP. 11.3.09

Radley Balko — Tue, 3 Nov 2009 21:43:03 -0500

I never met Pete Shellem. I hadn't heard of him until reading his obituary last week through a link on the blog of New York criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield. But I wish I'd had a drink with the guy. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

A Big, Fat Political Mistake 11.2.09

Steve Chapman — Mon, 2 Nov 2009 12:40:37 -0500

I have seen the future of American politics, and it is big. Big and fat. You can get a glimpse of it in the New Jersey governor's race, which pits the slim, distance-running, Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine against Republican Chris Christie, who is built for comfort, not for speed. Corzine ran a TV ad accusing the challenger of "throwing his weight around" to beat traffic tickets, accompanied by footage that did not attempt to conceal Christie's bulk.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Hollywood Comrades: Why the Soviets were such lovable movie villains. 10.30.09

Tim Cavanaugh — Sun, 1 Nov 2009 18:08:04 -0500

Long before everybody else figured out the truth from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s samizdat books, from an empire-crushing economic collapse, from a stream of defecting citizens, and from vodka’s role in the death of the martini, Hollywood recognized the central flaw of the Soviet Union: It was boring.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The White Goat's Burden: New Age hippie idealism meets can-do army spirit in The Men Who Stare At Goats 10.30.09

Noah Berlatsky — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:13:37 -0400

Besides its title, the best thing about The Men Who Stare At Goats is the premise. The movie centers on the army’s more-or-less fictionalized efforts to harness psychic powers. It opens with a brigadier general making an unsuccessful attempt to phase through a wall, and the remaining hour and a half is filled with enough errant quackery to stock a commune full of cranks.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Masterfleece Theater: The Democrats say their health care bill will provide real competition. It won't. 10.28.09

David Harsanyi — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:56:45 -0400

The King James version of the Bible runs more than 600 pages and is crammed with celestial regulations. Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica distills many of the rules of physics in a mere 974 pages. Neither of them has anything on Nancy Pelosi's new fiendishly entertaining health care opus, which tops 1,900 pages.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

A Hard Pill to Swallow: Is the stimulus turning the economy around? 10.28.09

Jacob Sullum — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:47:17 -0400

In August, Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Counsel of Economic Advisers, suggested that we think of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as an extremely expensive course of antibiotics. “Suppose you go to your doctor for a strep throat,” Romer said in a speech to the Economic Club of Washington, “and he or she prescribes an antibiotic.” If your fever goes up after you take the first pill, just as unemployment rose after the stimulus bill was enacted, that doesn’t mean “the medicine is useless,” Romer noted. It could simply be that “the illness was more serious than you and the doctor thought.”
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

No Thanks, Net Nannies: The FCC's proposals for new Internet regulations are based on bad data and bad assumptions. 10.28.09

Peter Suderman — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:46:14 -0400

In the summary of its recent notice of proposed rule-making, the FCC praised the Web's success as a platform for innovation and expression and declared its intention to "seek the best means of preserving a free and open Internet."
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Unhealthy 'Public Option': Using government-run health insurance to fix the status quo is like using a brick to improve a window 10.28.09

Steve Chapman — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:25:37 -0400

If Medicare were a bank, federal regulators would be closing its doors, selling its operations, and sacking its managers. Thanks to soaring costs, the program is fast running out of money—even though it pays such low fees that many doctors refuse to take Medicare patients. Meanwhile, Medicare fraud costs taxpayers some $60 billion a year, according to a report by CBS's 60 Minutes, making it among the most profitable fields for felons.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Power to the People: Do we really want the Supreme Court to follow public opinion? 10.28.09

Damon W. Root — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:59:22 -0400

After arguing that “the American people overwhelmingly reject the notion that unelected judges should set policy or allow their social, moral, or political views to influence the outcome of cases,” Sessions declared, “I don't believe that Judge Sotomayor has the deep-rooted convictions necessary to resist the siren call of judicial activism.”
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Mandatory Savings? Requiring people to buy medical insurance will fuel health care inflation. 10.28.09

Jacob Sullum — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:21:30 -0400

The recently revived idea of creating a government-run health plan to compete with private insurers may reinforce the impression that President Obama and his allies in Congress are standing tall against those corporate fat cats who delight in denying lifesaving care to children and old ladies. But Obama and the insurers still see eye to eye on a central element of his health care agenda: the requirement that every American obtain medical coverage.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Tragedy of Health Insurance: How the insurance industry has haplessly abetted the rise of a government-run health care system 10.27.09

Ronald Bailey — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:08:14 -0400

How the insurance industry has haplessly abetted the rise of a government-run health care system
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Financial Market Reform: Why new regulations must avoid moral hazards 10.27.09

Jeffrey Miron — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:51:23 -0400

In the coming weeks and months, Congress will be turning its attention to financial market reform, in hopes of avoiding future financial crises. According to perceived wisdom, the root cause of the 2008 financial crisis was excessive risk-taking, and proper regulation can detect and prevent such excess in the future.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Peril of Palatability A former FDA chief sounds the alarm about dangerously delicious food. 10.27.09

Jacob Sullum — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:22:55 -0400

According to The Washington Post, David Kessler’s research for The End of Overeating included late-night forays into the trash bins behind Chili’s restaurants across California. From the chain’s garbage he retrieved ingredient boxes with nutritional labels that revealed the secret of dishes such as Southwestern Eggrolls and Boneless Shanghai Wings. It turned out they “were bathed in salt, fat and sugars.”
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

No Accountability Why are bad prosecutors so rarely punished? 10.26.09

Radley Balko — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:21:42 -0400

Anthony Caravella was released from a Florida prison last month. He served 26 years for a rape and murder that DNA testing has shown he didn't commit. Caravella was 15 at the time he was arrested, and has an IQ of 67. He was convicted in part due to a confession his attorneys say was beaten out of him by police interrogators. Caravella's prosecutor, Robert Carney, has put at least two other people in prison for murder who were later cleared of the crimes for which they convicted.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Fading Print: How we will survive without newspapers 10.22.09

Greg Beato — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:15:29 -0400

To save what’s left of the newspaper industry, serial entrepreneur Steve Brill has launched a new startup, Journalism Online, which will help news organizations charge for their digital content. So far he has convinced at least 506 people in America that this is a terrific idea. They’re all publishers who have agreed to participate in the venture, but you have to start somewhere, right?
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Sanity on Marijuana? Obama's new position on medical marijuana is a step in the right direction. 10.22.09

Steve Chapman — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:38:58 -0400

In 1973, Robert Randall was going blind from glaucoma when he discovered that smoking marijuana seemed to help his condition. That didn't matter to police when they found the Washington, D.C., resident growing cannabis and arrested him. Preferring to keep his sight, Randall sued the federal government, arguing that he was entitled to smoke pot as a "medical necessity."
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

In Defense of Fox News The network is biased? So what? 10.22.09

David Harsanyi — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:33:29 -0400

Those of you paying even the slightest attention these days realize that President Barack Obama has been the target of a near-criminally biased and antagonistic mass media.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Myocardial Infractions A government-commissioned report promotes smoking bans by tweaking the evidence. 10.21.09

Jacob Sullum — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:55:34 -0400

Six years ago, when I asked an epidemiologist about a report that a smoking ban in Helena, Montana, had cut heart attacks by 40 percent within six months, he thought the idea was so ridiculous that no one would take it seriously. He was wrong.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Myth of the Multiplier Why the stimulus package hasn't reduced unemployment 10.18.09

Veronique de Rugy — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:35:58 -0400

Give us money, and we’ll give you jobs. That was the promise President Barack Obama made when he asked Congress for a $789 billion stimulus bill.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

We're All Felons, Now Perpetual public fear of crime has turned us all into criminals. 10.18.09

Radley Balko — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:34:18 -0400

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Mortgage Madness, Again The trouble with the Federal Housing Authority's easy-money policies 10.15.09

Steve Chapman — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:20:01 -0400

Watching Washington policymakers in action, I sometimes think they make mistakes because of unrealistic goals, flawed thinking, blind obedience to party, or dubious information. And sometimes I think they make mistakes because they are—how to put this?—clinically insane.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

They're Tragically Delicious: Confronting Big Cereal, unregulated garage sales, and other evils 10.14.09

David Harsanyi — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:28:31 -0400

How can Americans be expected to wrestle with the myriad dangers that confront them each day? Insalubrious cereal? Unregulated garage sales? Pools of death? Sometimes it's too much to process.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Fresh Kidneys for Sale: International organ markets aren't the same as slave markets. 10.14.09

Ronald Bailey — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:00:04 -0400

“Part of the notion of treating individuals with dignity is that they have control over what is done with their own bodies and their parts.” Who could disagree with that principle? From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Bigot Bonus: Under a new federal law, the wrong beliefs can trigger a second trial and extra prison time. 10.13.09

Jacob Sullum — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:53:16 -0400

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which President Obama plans to sign soon, is named after two men who were murdered in 1998. Shepard, a gay college student, was beaten to death in Wyoming. Byrd, a black hitchhiker, was dragged to death behind a pickup truck in Texas. Bigotry seemed to play a role in both crimes. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Elinor Ostrom on the Market, the State, and the Third Sector 10.13.09

Paul Dragos Aligica — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:07:13 -0400

When economists show that market arrangements fail, they usually make the simple recommendation that “the” state should take care of these problems. Elinor Ostrom has demonstrated empirically that “the” state may not be “the” solution. Her work argues for the wisdom of institutional diversity, looking to individuals to solve problems rather than relying on top down, one-size-fits-all solutions. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Unknown War 10.13.09

Matt Welch — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:06:06 -0400

The defeat of communism 20 years ago was the most liberating moment in history. So why don't we talk about it more? From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Fattening the Nanny State: The folly of menu labeling laws 10.8.09

Steve Chapman — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:45:04 -0400

Obese people and public-health scolds have one thing in common: a compulsion to keep behaving in a way that does not produce helpful results. The obese tend to keep eating too much and exercising too little regardless of what others say. Disciples of maternal government persist in meddling in individual choices whether it works or not. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

When Public Power Is Used for Private Gain 10.8.09

Damon Root — Thu, 8 Oct 2009 23:20:51 -0400

It's time for New York's highest court to say no to eminent domain abuse From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Will Our Robot Overlords Be Friendly? Notes from the Singularity Summit in New York City 10.7.09

Ronald Bailey — Wed, 7 Oct 2009 18:52:56 -0400

The singularity grows nigh. A happy band of technophiles, futurists, transhumanists, and, yes, singulatarians gathered in New York City this past weekend to talk about prospects for life before and after the technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Marching with Michael Moore: After a rally, union toughs get a sneak peak of Capitalism: A Love Story 10.6.09

Sean Higgins — Tue, 6 Oct 2009 20:07:35 -0400

Life can take you on funny paths. Sometimes things just happen. For example, last week I marched with Michael Moore to end capitalism. From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Scenes From a Crackdown: Police overkill at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh 10.5.09

Radley Balko — Mon, 5 Oct 2009 23:29:20 -0400

Having lived in the Washington, D.C. area for the better part of the last 10 years, I've attended my share of protests, though, again as a resident of the Beltway, I've spent far more time trying to avoid them and the traffic nightmares they spawn.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Keeping Lone Wolves from the Door: Why Congress should not renew the PATRIOT Act's "lone wolf" provision. 10.5.09

Julian Sanchez — Mon, 5 Oct 2009 23:26:10 -0400

The USA PATRIOT Act, a vast expansion of the American intelligence community's search and surveillance powers, was passed in haste in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Tragedies of Afghanistan: Will America's new strategy work? 10.1.09

Steve Chapman — Thu, 1 Oct 2009 09:43:35 -0400

If Shakespeare had ever written a play about Afghanistan, it would have been a tragedy, not a comedy. For the United States, Afghanistan has been one tragedy after another, with more looming ahead.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Obama Is No Radical: But maybe we'd be better off if he was. 9.30.09

Jesse Walker — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:42:38 -0400

he conservative firebrand David Horowitz has declared the Obama White House a "radical regime." For the Republican radio host Sean Hannity, the ousted ex-communist "green jobs" czar Van Jones "signifies the radicalism of this administration."
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Leave Them Kids Alone 9.30.09

David Harsanyi — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:24:50 -0400

Where's the evidence that longer school days produce smarter kids?
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Criminal Records: The federal ban on depictions of animal cruelty violates the right to free speech. 9.30.09

Jacob Sullum — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:35:59 -0400

Does Conan the Barbarian have serious artistic value? That's one of the intriguing questions raised by a case the U.S. Supreme Court will hear next Tuesday.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Does High-Tech Medicine Mean Higher Health Care Costs? 9.29.09

Ronald Bailey — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:23:14 -0400

A new report finds that medical innovation boosts life expectancy, but doesn't cost more
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

5 Myths We Need to Can About Soda Taxes: Why do politicians keep trying to tax your Coke? 9.29.09

Katherine Mangu-Ward — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:36:13 -0400

Like bears to honey or zombies to brains, politicians find something irresistible about soda taxes.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Using Unions As Weapons: UPS and FedEx face off in Congress instead of the marketplace. 9.28.09

Veronique de Rugy — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:55:15 -0400

A similar situation underlies a vicious fight between United Parcel Service (UPS) and its main private competitor in the delivery business, FedEx, over archaic labor rules that classify the companies based on their favored forms of transportation. Because 85 percent of FedEx deliveries go by air and 85 percent of UPS deliveries go by truck, the two companies are obliged to obey different labor laws.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Infallible Prosecutor: Should prosecutors who manufacture evidence be susceptible to lawsuits? 9.28.09

Radley Balko — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:54:06 -0400

A prosecutor manufactures evidence in order to win a conviction. After the convicted serves 25 years in prison, exculpatory evidence pointing to another perpetrator surfaces. The convicted is released. Should he be able to sue the prosecutor who concocted the false evidence used to convict him?
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Obama and the Afghan Abyss: Why it's time for the U.S. to get out of Afghanistan 9.28.09

Terry Michael — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:08:52 -0400

As President Barack Obama ponders the moral case against tossing more young American soldiers into the Afghan abyss, he faces several political obstacles, including some of his own making.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Sweet Lies About Kids and Smoking: The FDA's new ban on flavored cigarettes won't prevent teen smoking9.28.09

Steve Chapman — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:36:44 -0400

At least since 1994, when seven tobacco executives testified before Congress that they didn't think cigarettes were addictive, the public has not put great trust in those who sell carcinogens for a living. What Americans may not realize is that they also shouldn't believe the people who are supposed to protect us from tobacco.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

How to Lose Friends: Why Obama should reaffirm the importance of our relationship with Israel 9.28.09

David Harsanyi — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:18:58 -0400

The United States does not negotiate with terrorists—but we insist that Israel do so without preconditions.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Obama, Race, and Health Care: Understanding America's real and imagined grievances 9.25.09

Shikha Dalmia — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:14:18 -0400

After an exceedingly disappointing 10 months in office pursuing a hyper-partisan agenda, President Barack Obama reminded me last week of why, for a brief moment during his campaign eons ago last year, he actually won my heart.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Anarchy in PA: The last thing Pittsburgh needs is the G-20 Summit 9.24.09

Bill Steigerwald — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:57:03 -0400

Dear President Obama, We Pittsburghers sincerely hope you enjoy your visit to our beautiful city later this week, when you'll be chairing the exciting G-20 Summit that you so thoughtfully chose our city to host without finding out whether we could handle it or afford it.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Internet's New Enforcer 9.24.09

Peter Suderman — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:13:05 -0400

The FCC chairman appoints himself top cop on the World Wide Web.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Alaskan Oil Abundance Versus Washington's Wasted Billions 9.23.09

Jon Basil Utley — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:35:04 -0400

The case for new oil drilling in Alaska and off America's coasts
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Smile, You're on Hidden Camera 9.23.09

Greg Beato — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:34:27 -0400

The ACORN videos and the future of investigative journalism
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Climate Change and the Nanny State 9.23.09

David Harsanyi — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:02:20 -0400

Do we need the government to save us from ourselves?
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Coverage Story 9.23.09

Jacob Sullum — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:01:58 -0400

Does the cost of uncompensated care justify forcing people to buy health insurance?
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Doubling Down on Climate Change 9.23.09

Ronald Bailey — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:48:49 -0400

Activists want America to reduce emissions to 1960s levels. Is that even possible?
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Race and the Opposition to Obama 9.21.09

Steve Chapman — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:22:19 -0400

Hating presidents is an irrepressible American tradition.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Civility Is Overrated: We have no duty to be nice to elected officials 9.18.09

David Harsanyi — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:10:15 -0400

If you've been paying attention lately, you may be under the impression that the United States is spiraling into mass incivility.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Lochner and Liberty 9.18.09

Damon W. Root — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:10:28 -0400

Dissecting the Supreme Court case that unites the new regulatory czar and his conservative critics
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Trading Blows: Chicken feet, rubber tires, and the rule of law in international trade 9.18.09

Katherine Mangu-Ward — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:51:14 -0400

“The trade decision was the president’s first down payment on his promise to more effectively enforce trade laws, and it’s very much appreciated,” AFL-CIO chief economist Thea Lee said of the Obama administration's Friday decision to slap a 35 percent tariff on tires from China.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Sarah Palin Maverick at Last: Mama Grizzly becomes the first real politician of the Internet era. 9.17.09

Greg Beato — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:37:56 -0400

When Sarah Palin aborted her gubernatorial career in its final trimester, pundits and political insiders reacted with shock, bafflement, scorn, and dismay. “Resigning strikes me as very strange,” National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg offered with charitable restraint. “Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy,” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd echoed, holding the charity. “I wouldn’t call this a strategy,” Republican campaign strategist John Weaver told Time magazine. “This makes no sense.”
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Revenge of Ross Perot 9.17.09

Steve Chapman — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:16:21 -0400

Obama's policies are making Americans worry about the national debt
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

One, Two, Three, Four, Let's Have a (Minor) Trade War! 9.16.09

Michael Moynihan — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:58:59 -0400

What ever happened to the free trade Democrat?
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Why Can't We All Just Get Along? 9.16.09

David Harsanyi — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:39:36 -0400

There's nothing racist about opposing the president
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Consumer Is Not the Customer 9.15.09

Jacob Sullum — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:07:04 -0400

Both parties promise to preserve one of the health care system's central problems.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

The Politics of Memory 9.15.09

Matt Welch — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:41:24 -0400

What's too painful to remember we simply choose to repeat.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Prolonging Futility in Afghanistan 8.28.09

Steve Chapman — Fri, 4 Sep 2009 10:26:17 -0400

It's time to reassess America's presence in the country
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Obama Hits Anti-Government Nerves 8.28.09

Steve Chapman — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:41:36 -0400

Barack Obama came into office championing change, and he apparently assumed that if Americans voted for him, it was because they wanted the future to be different from what went before. Actually, what they wanted was a future much like the not-so-distant past -- before the financial crisis, before the recession, before the Iraq war, before the most unpopular president since the invention of polling.

From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com

Rationalizing Torture 8.26.09

Steve Chapman — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:02:53 -0400

Americans are practical people, which is why they tend to pay heed when Dick Cheney says the harsh methods used by the CIA on suspected terrorists were not merely efficacious but indispensable. The intelligence derived from these interrogations, he assures us, "saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks." From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com