At NRO, Henry Olsen explains why every argument House Republicans and conservative activists make against food stamps — they “cost too much, have grown too quickly, encourage government dependency, and discourage work” — applies even more to crop insurance, yet Republicans only seem to care about the former. America’s crop-insurance program is obscene. Farmers receive […]
Author Archive | Jonathan H. Adler
EPA Proposes New Carbon Standards for Power Plants
Today the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing carbon dioxide emission standards for new power plants that will, in effect, bar the construction of new coal-fired power plants without costly carbon capture technology. The proposed standards would require both natural gas and coal-fired power plants to meet stringent new limits — limits that most new natural […]
Can You Hand Out the Constitution on Constitution Day?
Ken White at Popehat reports on the bureaucratic blindness of officials at Modesto Junior College, where a student was told he needed to fill out a form in order to obtain permission to handout copies of the U.S. Constitution on campus in honor of Constitution Day, and that he could only hand out the materials […]
Triggering the Second Amendment: Lund v. Rosenthal
This afternoon, in honor of Constitution Day (and because the Byrd Amendment requires it), Case Western Reserve University hosted a debate between Professor Nelson Lund of George Mason University School of Law and Professor Laurence Rosenthal of Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law. The forum, “Triggering the Second Amendment: The Constitutionality of Gun Rights and […]
Don’t Cry for Argentina
It’s not every day that a sovereign nation files a petition for certiorari in the Supreme Court. This year, however, Argentina has filed multiple petitions, and another could be on the way. The South American nation is particularly eager to get the Court to review adverse rulings from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the […]
2008 Restrictions on NSA Lifted in 2011
The Washington Post has a story that begins: The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified […]
Corsi’s Life of Political Crime
By Jonathan H. Adler on September 8, 2013 11:30 am in Election Law, First Amendment, Restrictions on Campaign Contrbs. and Expenses
If you want to get together with friends to talk about politics, hear speakers on policy issues, and perhaps create a website promoting policy ideas, do you need to register as a political actin committee even if you don’t endorse candidates or get involved in elections? In Ohio the answer can be “yes,” as Ed […]
President Warren?
A story in The Hill begins: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will address a key faction of the liberal base Monday as speculation intensifies that she will someday seek the presidency. Todd Zywicki, call your office.
A Hands-Tied Presidency?
By Jonathan H. Adler on September 8, 2013 9:26 am in Executive Branch, Separation of Powers, War and Armed Conflict
In an essay for the NYT Sam Tanenhaus argues that President Obama “holds office at a time when the presidency itself has ceded much of its power and authority to Congress.” No, really. This is what he says. It is, frankly, a rather bizarre claim. As a great deal of academic work has documented (including an […]
Could Global Warming Reduce the Threat Posed by Atlantic Hurricanes?
National Geographic reports on a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that suggests that climatic warming could actually reduce the likelihood that hurricanes make landfall along the Atlantic Coast. Here’s the abstract: Superstorm Sandy ravaged the eastern seaboard of the United States, costing a great number of lives and billions of dollars in […]
How a “Free” Program Could Cost Over $500 Million
The National Law Journal has an interesting report on the rising costs of the federal “Rails-to-Trails” program. What seemed like a neat way to create hiking and biking trails has spawned substantial amounts of litigation by landowners who assert the federal government cannot convert abandoned railroad easements to other uses without paying compensation. According to the […]
Coase on Contemporary Economics
One of Ronald Coase’s last essays was a short co-authored piece in the Harvard Business Review lamenting the current state of academic economics. Here’s a snippet: In the 20th century, economics consolidated as a profession; economists could afford to write exclusively for one another. At the same time, the field experienced a paradigm shift, gradually […]
Coase and UVA
The Charlottesville Hook has an article suggesting Ronald Coase and James Buchanan were both pushed out of the University of Virginia due to ideological objections to their work. (HT: Michelle Meyer) If true, UVA got its just deserts, as both were awarded Nobel Prizes in Economics after their respective departures. More here.
Henderson on Coase
In Wednesday’s WSJ economist David Henderson has an op-ed on Ronald Coase’s legacy. As henderson notes, the primary thrust of Coase’s work was a rejection of “Blackboard economics” in favor of careful examinations of the real world, with a particular focus on institutions. This was the theme that unified his work across various subjects. Although […]
The Collapse of the Anti-War Movement
An interesting chart from Slate.