Archive | June, 2009

Gregory Mankiw evaluates the risk of a public health care plan. Even if one accepts the president

As you undoubtedly know by now, Congress voted on Friday to change the weather — or more accurately, the climate. The idea that a government of one country could appreciably change the world’s climate over the next 40 years is the ultimate hubris. Legislators may think they are God, but they’re not. The blogger Maxed […]

John Calfee on the dangers of a “public plan” for health insurance: a public plan would possess formidable and perhaps overwhelming competitive advantages — generated not by efficiency but by the artificial advantages of “public” status. This would have two disastrous consequences. The first will be to cause most Americans now covered by private insurance […]

A CEI short film, “The Silence of the Regulated,” in which a Dr. Lecter asks: “You know what you look like to me with your good perfume and blunt white paper? You look like a libertarian.” Having worked for Fred Smith, I found this quite amusing. Your mileage may vary. (LvIP)

Today’s WSJ has an interesting story about the potential impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, a 5-4 decision rejecting Javaid Iqbal’s effort to sue various high-level government officials for his alleged mistreatment and detention after September 11. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, released in May, will make it harder to bring a lawsuit […]

The Texas Court of Appeals disagrees, holding that a Texas statute that gives procedural protection to “electronic or print media” defendants covers Internet journalists on par with print journalists (and reaffirming that the First Amendment does as well). The case is Kaufman v. Islamic Society of Arlington, Texas; Kaufman is the defendant in the underlying […]

An interesting tidbit about the late Michael Jackson and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Earlier this week, the White House officially abandoned President Obama’s “Sunlight before Signing” pledge (which I discussed here and here). As the NYT reported: During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that once a bill was passed by Congress, the White House would post it online for five days before he signed it.

is here.

How Appealing noted an opinion by Judge Frank Easterbrook last week, to point out (among other things) that “Judge Easterbrook does not forgo using ‘forego’ to mean ‘to do without.’” (The full phrase in the opinion was “the insurers contend that Freedom

At 4:05pm ET [some] Republicans on the floor of the House are asking where they might get a physical copy of the bill, in particular the 300-page amendment added in the middle of last night. They’d like to see what they are voting on before they are asked to vote. The Chair doesn’t know, which […]

Some scholars who discount the dangers of widespread political ignorance argue that voters don’t really need to know much to make good decisions. They can simply reward incumbents who do well and punish those who perform poorly – an approach known as “retrospective voting.” Unfortunately, effective retrospective voting requires citizens to be able to tell […]

Justice Thomas’s partial dissent in yesterday’s school near-strip-search case contains this paragraph: The majority

Powerline has a depressing post (tip to Instapundit) suggesting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have obtained the votes to pass cap-and-trade by making concessions to farm state congressman. It seems that they are willing to support the bill if the government is willing to continue its anti-environmental policy of promoting ethanol. Before the last […]

The proposal to allow a public plan (also called a