Raise a glass to 21st Amendment!

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In an unexpected announcement on Tuesday, Verizon Wireless announced that it will allow any device or application to access its network starting in mid-2008. This decision marks a water-shed moment in the history of wireless communications, as never before has a national network allowed such a wide range of devices to communicate on a shared medium.

Whether Verizon Wireless can live up to its bold claims remains to be seen, but at the very minimum we’ll witness a proliferation of original…

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The federal government is rewarding irresponsible people who chose to live for the moment, on borrowed time. It is planning to bail out people who used adjustable-rate mortgages to buy homes bigger than they needed or could afford, in the myopic belief that interest rates would never rise.

When I obtained a home mortgage in March 2004, I had a choice between a fixed interest-rate mortgage with a 5 percent interest rate that would never rise, and an adjustable-rate mortgage that would…

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In recent years, conservatives and libertarians have gone up in arms over the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). CEI’s own take on it, from Doug Bandow, is found here. I am a bit torn over the treaty because a number of Navy friends, all of whom I like and respect, tell me that LOST really will make the seas a lot safer.

But, whatever the case, I’ve always had the most interest in the treaty provisions related to seabed…

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Yesterday, I wrote about the “Massive Bond Rating Scam,” and how irresponsible bond-rating agencies, shielded by regulation against competition, have contributed to the mortgage meltdown by giving high credit ratings to risky mortgage-backed securities and reckless bond-insurance companies, even while giving poorer credit ratings to reliable borrowers who pose no risk of defaulting.

Here’s an additional perspective on how bond-rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s have failed their task. I don’t agree with everything in it (for example, the…

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Overlawyered has more coverage of the indictment of Dickie Scruggs, the rich trial lawyer who helped bring about the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement that settled lawsuits by 46 states. I earlier discussed how the settlement made undeserving trial lawyers obscenely wealthy, and how it ripped off consumers — in whose name many of the lawsuits leading to the tobacco settlement were brought — here. Even the American Bar Association’s publication has taken a dim view of the settlement, as you can…

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McAffee, a company that makes cyber security software, has released a report warning of a new “cyber cold war.”

I’m skeptical of how big a deal this is from a national security standpoint. Many businesses that have neglected security may face real problems. But I think most have done a decent job. On the whole, however, things that are really important (say, the electric grid, nuclear missile launches) are probably less vulnerable to outside attack than they were before computer systems. Although…

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The Brady Campaign has spent years trying to convince the courts to strike down a federal law, passed with bipartisan support, that bans suits against gun makers for acts committed by criminals. It has spent great effort to get judges to override a popular law, under a novel “separation of powers” argument.

But yesterday, its head, Paul Helmke, wailed about “judicial activism” that supposedly overrides “the will of the people” in an editorial in the Atlanta Journal. His complaint is like…

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A new report today warns that increased use of CT scans and subsequent increased exposure to radiation could account for nearly 2 percent of cancer (a figure some say is an exaggeration). The usage of CT scans has increased dramatically over the last couple of decades, and the authors of the study are apparently concerned about the public health risk that the scans pose. I doubt however that they’ve quantified the number of lives that CT scans have saved by…

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Dickie Scruggs, one of the lawyers who helped bring about the 1998 tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, has just been indicted on bribery charges.

Under the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), trial lawyers received $15 billion (not million, billion) from the big tobacco companies, in a deal which also provided the tobacco companies who joined the deal with protection against competition from little tobacco companies that refused to join the deal and pay off the trial lawyers. 46 States and 6 territories entered into…

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Even the most poorly-run state has less chance of defaulting on its debts than a typical well-run company. That’s because states, unfortunately, have the power to tax the living daylights out of their citizens — a prerogative businesses, which make money off of voluntary transactions, lack.

Yet the bond-rating agencies maintain the ridiculous pretense that states and local governments are risky creditors, by giving states low single “A” ratings while giving the municipal-bond-insurance companies that insure the states’ bonds a top “AAA”…

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Apparently California attorney General Jerry Brown believes that bureaucracy is the answer to alleged environmental woes. He and ten other state attorney generals have launched a lawsuit against the Bush Administration for trying to cut a little bit of bureaucratic red tape for America’s small business. At issue is Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to reduce paperwork for small companies that contribute a total of less than 1 percent of “releases” under the Toxics Release Inventory. Jerry Brown complains in today’s in…

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The Financial Times today has a very perceptive article, “Too much safety in America’s playrooms,” by Patti Waldmeir. Waldmeir points to the current issue of Chinese toy recalls, and American parents’ search for perfect safety:

Americans will never admit it, but there can be such a thing as too much safety - even when it comes to toys from China. At the best of times, America’s attitude to its children borders on saccharine sentimentality (I should know: I have two of…

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A new bill proposed in Massachusetts would make it illegal for parents to spank their children. Much of the discussion centers on spanking and how harmful or effective it is. Toddlers don’t have the ability to reason as adults can, and they cannot comprehend why certain behavior should be avoided (often for their own safety). Spanking is a visceral tool parents can use to teach their children which actions are unacceptable.

This line of reasoning however, neglects the bigger issue at the…

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At CEI, we like to celebrate inventors, innovators, and those bold souls whose unyielding curiosity help make the world better. Such a person was Dr. Robert Cade, who passed away yesterday. His invention is one so ubiquitous that today it’s hard to think of the world without it: Gatorade. Reports The Gainesville Sun:

Cade, a former professor of nephrology at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine, was something of a Renaissance man. When he wasn’t concocting the strange brew that would…

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The Seattle School District says that celebrating Thanksgiving is racially insensitive.  This is the same school district that claimed for several years that “individualism” is a form of “cultural racism,” that only whites can be racist, and that planning ahead is a white characteristic that is racist to expect minorities to exhibit.  Those claims were mocked in Supreme Court opinions.  The Seattle Schools now tell parents that Thanksgiving is a “time of mourning” and a “reminder of 500 years of betrayal” of Native Americans.

Glenn Singleton, the Seattle Schools’ “diversity” consultant, has recently been hired by California…

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Writing from Beijing, New York Times columnist David Brooks in his column today notes how American sentiment is increasingly against trade and globalization and points to reasons why the Dobbsians are wrong.

Brooks says that among politicians this trend is also prevalent — different from earlier periods:

Once there was a bipartisan consensus behind free trade, but that’s not true anymore, either. Even Republicans, by a two-to-one majority, believe free trade is bad for America, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll.

Once upon…

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An interesting article in today’s Washington Post highlights the trade-offs and market realities associated with green products. It addresses the packaging challenges faced by organic ice tea maker, Honest Tea. The company employs a variety of measures to keep energy costs and environmental impacts of its packaging low. As a result, Honest Tea comes in plastic bottles.

While most people simply assume that plastic packaging is worse than allegedly more recyclable glass when it comes to environmental concerns, this piece shows…

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The FCC today is going to consider expanding its authority to saddle cable TV with many of the same regulations as broadcast. That, to be concise, is a bad idea. Our very own Wayne Crews expands on why:

The Federal Communications Commission’s potential enlargement of its power is a giant step backward for the entire communications realm, not just cable. Chairman Kevin Martin’s job is to safeguard and enlarge economic liberty in the communications sector. His — or someone else’s — leadership…

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As the joke goes, there’s good news and bad news. Which would you like to hear first?

Upon hearing no answer from the readers of Open Market, I’ll begin with the bad news. On November 15, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act” as an answer to mortgage woes. This “absurdly patronizing government-knows-best bill,” as my colleague Eli Lehrer called it in a CEI press release, goes beyond the goal of improved disclosure to ban…

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