On Thursday, November 29, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Watters v. Wachovia Bank, which will decide whether federal law preempts state regulators from compelling many national bank subsidiaries to register with them.

CEI filed an amicus brief with the Court on behalf of economists and legal scholars in support of the bank, pointing out that state lending regulations and red tape can increase the cost, and reduce the availability, of credit to borrowers.

The State of Michigan sought to compel a subsidiary…

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Quick quiz: what political types are more likely to donate to charity - lefty liberals or crochety conservatives? The Chronicle of Philanthropy has an interesting article on the answer:

At the outset of his research, [economist Arthur] Brooks had assumed that those who favor a large role for government would be most likely to give to charity. But in fact, the opposite is true.

Several times throughout the book, Mr. Brooks quotes Mr. Nader, the political activist, who said during his 2000 presidential…

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There’s more scientific evidence that moderate consumption of red wine is good for you:

New research from the William Harvey Research Institute and the University of Glasgow shows that red wines from areas of greater longevity in southwest France and Sardinia have higher levels of procyanidins - a type of flavonoid polyphenol with potent protective effects on blood vessels.

A number of population studies have revealed that moderate drinkers of red wine have less heart disease than non-drinkers. As a result it has…

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One comment from yesterday’s Supreme Court hearing that’s getting a lot of press is Justice Scalia’s question to the attorney for the petitioning states about the imminence of harm to the states: “I mean, when is the predicted cataclysm?”

The attorney answered: “The harm does not suddenly spring up in the year 2100; it plays out continuously over time.”

I suspect that this exchange will be portrayed, by some, as illustrating the gap between the scientifically uneducated and the scientifically erudite. After…

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Yesterday the Supreme Court heard argument in the global warming case. Today is the last day of the 2006 hurricane season, the quietest in the a decade. Personally, I hope the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case ends up being as disappointing to global warming alarmists as this year’s hurricane season has been.

Of course, one quiet hurricane season doesn’t disprove the alarmist forecasts. On the other hand, Katrina didn’t support those apocalyptic forecasts either, but you didn’t see much in…

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There’s an op/ed in the New York Times today that essentially claims that Malthus was right and that Julian Simon just got lucky when he made his famous bet with Paul Ehrlich and his doomsinging colleagues. John Whitehead of the Environmental Economics blog has a perceptive comment:

Increases in energy prices, with the energy return on investment (EROI — a new term for me that showed up in the comments section on this blog) falling from 25 to 1 to 15 to…

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CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman is on-site for two important cases being argued at the U.S. Supreme Court today. He phoned in his quick take on the EPA case:

The first, Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is a lawsuit brought by a group of state attorneys general, trying to force the EPA to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. The AGs aim to have CO2 emissions reduced and thus impede global warming.

Massachusetts went first. They got a lot of…

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Dr. C.S. Prakash alerted me to yesterday’s list in The Guardian of the top environmental campaigners of all time. Not surprisingly, Rachel Carson tops the list, and one of her chief achievements was the eventual banning of DDT. Readers might be interested in John Berlau’s DDT article today, which puts that “achievement” in a human context.

Here’s the list of the top twenty. One who really accomplished something that helped save the earth — the people on it — was number 19,…

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Today, both the U.S. Treasury Secretary and the U.S. Trade Representative vowed that the Bush Administration would push hard on global and regional trade agreements and reach out to the Democratic Congress. In separate speeches today, Secretary Henry Paulson (in London) and USTR Susan Schwab (in Washington, DC) said that the U.S. is committed to completing the World Trade Organization’s Doha Development Round.

In separate articles yesterday, journalists Morton Kondracke and the team of Cokie and Steven Roberts both strongly supported the need for more…

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Some Illinois political observers are raising their eyebrows about a stack of greeting cards that Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s office sent out before the election congratulating new parents on their bundles of joy (and reminding them to get their kids immunized). The implication here being that Blagojevich wanted to spend a little government money to get his name in front of potential voters just before the election. I kind of doubt that, but in any case, focusing on that ignores the much more…

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A federal judge in Washington, D.C. has just ruled that America’s money bills, such as $1, $10, and $100 bills, discriminate against the blind, in violation of the federal Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits the federal government and recipients of federal funds from discriminating against the disabled.

Unlike some foreign currencies, such as the Euro, American money bills don’t vary in size, color, or texture based on denomination, making it harder for blind people to distinguish them.  Blind people often end up folding each denomination differently in order to keep track…

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The current direction of the Conservative Party leadership in the UK could serve as a case study of how not to implement value-based communication (VBC).  The idea of VBC is that you tune how you market your principles and policies to reflect the values people feel are most important in choosing leaders and/or policies.  According to the classification of the late Aaron Wildavsky, there are three main values groups: libertarians, who value freedom; hierarchists, who value order; and egalitarians, who…

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The European Union claims that unsolicited email –spam– accounts for between 50 and 80 percent of all Internet traffic. But that can’t be true, because a 2002 EU directive outlawed spam. Worse, an EU spokesman yesterday called the United States the biggest offender, blaming us for 22 percent of the torrent. That can’t be true either, since here in the U.S. we passed the CAN-SPAM Act in 2003, and as everyone knows, especially the politicians and activists who pushed for that…

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Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, with 25-plus years of dictatorship under his belt, is now cracking down on cell phones in the name of national security. His military, with a record of expropriating land, torching and looting small businesses, and police brutality, now says that Zimbabwe’s citizens are endangering national security by having independent connections to the outside world.

According to their military spokesperson, the mobile phone providers should have to route their international calls through the state-owned TelOne so that people couldn’t…

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I’m a big fan of Tony Bourdain, but he describes himself as a socialist. At the same time, he clearly hates what the nanny state has done to food. Here’s an excerpt from his book A Cook’s Tour that I used in a debate on the Crunchy Con blog this March:

These are dire times to be a chef who specializes in pork and offal. The EU has its eye on unpasteurized cheese, artisanal cheese, artisanal everything, shellfish, meat, anything that carries…

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Idea Channel TV has the classic 1980 Milton Friedman series Free to Choose streaming on your desktop. One can only assume Milton would have approved.

Hat-tip: ConservativeHome

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Dr. Crippen, a doctor who has the misfortune to work in the British National Health Service, has an interesting story about the critical faculties of the BBC. Blessed Auntie Beeb simply posted a news release from a firm that makes artificial milk posing as a healthcare advocacy group as a news story, then when found out altered the story without notice. I wonder what could have attracted the BBC to the story in the first place? Claims of babies dying -…

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Chrissie Thompson of the Washington Times has written the best newspaper story of the day: a profile of Bureaucrash and our very own Jason Talley. You’ll want to read the whole story, of course, but I particularly liked the quote from Fred:

Fred L. Smith Jr., president of CEI, said he founded the think tank with the goal of using left-wing groups’ vertical organization formats, in which they focus on one issue and sponsor both policy analysis and activism on it.…

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In the current issue of Doublethink, Baylen Linnekin, founder of the libertarian blog “To the People,” asks the burning question: “Is Anthony Bourdain a libertarian?” To get to the answer, you’ll need to read the interview of the celebrity chief and TV travel host. But to whet your appetite (no pun intended), consider these choice bits of Bourdain in his own words:

On New York City’s smoking ban:

“We’re in such a headlong rush to become the next Singapore, I find [it] horrifying and completely, well,…

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In his latest column, The Miami Herald’s Andres Oppenheimer gives reason for hope for Latin America’s water supply challenges, and offers policy makers there good advice. While many parts of the region suffer water shortages, and some conspiracy theorists claim that the United States is out to take over water supplies there, he cites experts who claim that “water is not likely to become a rapidly disappearing natural resource.” He goes on:

“On the contrary, water may become more easily available in the future,…

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