A Muslim solder, Nidal Hasan, shot dead 13 people at Fort Hood yesterday. Hasan had earlier exhibited extremist, anti-American propensities, including applauding terrorist attacks against U.S. soldiers. There are different theories as to how this could have happened.

One school of thought attributes the tragedy to politically-correct double standards imposed on the military that kept the alarm bells from going off.

Other commentators point to a gun-control policy that disarms soldiers while on military bases to create “gun-free zones,” leaving them defenseless in the face…

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In a time when the federal government’s involvement in the economy appears to only grow, it’s encouraging to see at least one industry where the trend may soon move in the opposite direction, even if at the state level. Virginia Governor-elect Bob McDonnell has proposed priviatizing the state’s liquor stores — known as ABC stores, for Alcoholic Beverage Control.

As Garrett Peck, author of The Prohibition Hangover, notes in The Washington Post, this is long overdue. (The op ed is due to…

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Ed Crane writes today in the Los Angeles Times that “Limited-government conservatives have been undermined by big-government neoconservatives,” and that “it is difficult to find noninterventionists in either party.”

The Democrats demonstrate a disdain for capitalism, free trade and the validity of contracts. They cheer the restriction of certain types of speech on campus and in federal law….Lately, the Democrats have been popularly associated with principled opposition to waging war in far-flung corners of the globe. But evidence on the…

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The Free Kareem protest is going on today at 12 pm outside of the Egyptian Cultural and Educational Bureau on New Hampshire just south of Dupont Circle. If you’ll be in the area, please stop by and show your support for Kareem Amer, the blogger who is serving a four-year prison sentence for criticizing the Egyptian government.

UPDATE: Check out photos and video from today’s rally.

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A new ordinance in Dudley, Massachusetts makes it illegal to own more than three cats without government consent. (Hat tip: Drudge)

Having solved all of the community’s other problems, regulators now have the time to turn their attention to what is apparently a spat between neighbors. One resident is upset that the 15 cats (!) owned by a neighboring woman have been sullying his yard.

I might suggest that Coaseian bargaining might be a better solution than a law.

A fiat decision in favor…

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It’s been a year since the president was elected, and he’s already piled up an impressive list of lies and broken promises.

The broken promises include his pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” his promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, and his promise not to sign bills without first giving the public five days of notice.

The Congressional Budget Office says that Obama’s proposed budgets will explode the national debt through massive spending increases, increasing the already large deficits…

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The small country of Honduras did not agree to return its authoritarian ex-president to power after all.  Press reports said it did, but The Wall Street Journal says it merely agreed to submit a request for his return to Honduras’s Congress and Supreme Court, which previously backed the ex-president’s removal, in exchange for an end to U.S. sanctions and U.S. recognition of upcoming election results.  Under continuing U.S. pressure, they may soon allow his return to office, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The…

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Under U.S. pressure, Honduras’s leader has reportedly agreed to return to power its authoritarian ex-president, Manuel Zelaya, in exchange for an end to U.S. sanctions and U.S. recognition of its upcoming election results, and Zelaya’s agreement to turn over control of the military to a tribunal. It is not absolutely certain, however, that Honduras’s Supreme Court or Congress will approve the agreement, which appears to violate Honduran law.

Honduras removed ex-president Zelaya after he systematically abused his powers: he sought to circumvent constitutional…

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The Obama administration and congressional allies like Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) are seeking to silence government lawyers who point out their mistakes and misinterpretations of the law:

“A month ago, the Law Library of Congress reviewed the removal of Manuel Zelaya from his post as President of Honduras, an act that the Obama administration called a ‘coup’ and demanded reversed for its illegality.  To the embarrassment of the White House and State Department, the Congressional body determined that Honduras acted lawfully in removing…

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Today, President Obama signed into law a bill that will dramatically expand the federal hate crimes law, enabling prosecutors to bring federal charges against people who were previously found innocent of hate crimes in state court.  The hate-crimes provisions were added to a defense appropriations bill, which the President signed in a White House signing ceremony this afternoon at around 2:30 p.m.

The new law dramatically expands the reach of the existing federal hate-crimes law that was already on the books, by…

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My colleague Richard Morrison brought to my attention a new FDA rule that requires oysters harvested between April and October to be sterilized before they are eaten. The goal is to prevent a rare – and sometimes fatal – bacteria from harming anyone.

An unintended consequence is that the state of Louisiana is up in arms. The sterilization rule essentially bans raw oysters, a local delicacy, for seven months every year. Sterilization also affects the flavor of cooked oysters, a common ingredient…

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After months of talk about solutions that would rev up job growth and the economy, today the House Financial Service Committee may finally adopt a true bipartisan stimulus. Led by Democratic Reps. Carolyn Maloney of New York and John Adler of New Jersey, two amendments will likely be introduced to the Investor Protection Act that would truly stimulate the economy by partially liberating investors, entrepreneurs and innovators from the shackles of a seven-year-old “investor protection” law that has added billions…

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Liberals are busy sending each other twitters falsely claiming that Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the more conservative members of the Supreme Court, said that he would have voted to uphold school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

There’s just one problem: he never said any such thing. He said the very opposite!

A liberal reporter for Capitol Media Services, Howard Fischer, made the claim that Scalia said he would have voted to uphold segregation, in a story carried in the East…

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“Supervisors in Dunkard Township say they are taking the steps for safety reasons,” reads a recent news article describing a new regulation. Regulators often cite safety to explain their latest doings. But it might be a bit of a stretch for justifying what Dunkard Township is doing: banning trick-or-treating.

That’s right. Regulators have banned a staple of childhood. Trick-or-treating is dangerous. Far too dangerous for children. Yet some parents were going to let their kids go anyway. Officials were left with…

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A few years ago, environmental guru, Merry Prankster, and Whole Earth Catalog author Stewart Brand caused a minor stir with an article he wrote in the MIT publication, Technology Review.  Brand, who was an early advocate of the “back to the land” movement of the 1960s and 1970s, had done some re-thinking, and concluded that environmentalist opposition to things like urbanization, population growth, biotechnology, and nuclear power generation, was wrong and needed to change.

Now, Brand has written a new book, called Whole Earth Discipline:…

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It’s not just bottled water. It’s not just soda taxes. It’s not just fast food. There seems to be a never-ending crusade by big government do-gooders to chip away at the family budget and our personal freedoms. Why?  They think know what’s best for the rest of us.  As usual, California leads the way with this stupidity.  They’re now mandating that California automakers use “metallic reflective window glazing” on the windows of all new cars in the state starting 2012.…

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A quick point to add to Fran Smith’s excellent post on Sweden’s experiment in labeling food and menus for their carbon footprints: don’t read too much into the labels.

The New York Times notes that “the emissions impact of, say, a carrot, can vary by a factor of 10, depending how and where it is grown.” With that much imprecision built in, if the labels change consumer behavior as much as supporters hope, it’s entirely possible that eco-concsious diets could result in more…

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Yesterday, Congress approved a measure to dramatically expand the existing federal hate crimes law, by adding it to an unrelated defense appropriations bill.  The measure would expand current law to cover virtually all hate crimes already covered by state law (both by adding gender, sexual orientation, disability, and transgender characteristics to a law originally designed to protect racial minorities, and by getting rid of the requirement that a hate crime effect federally-protected activities to be prosecuted in federal rather than state court.)

The…

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CEI Weekly is a compilation of articles and blog posts from CEI’s fellows and associates sent out via e-mail every Friday. Also included in the Weekly newsletter is a brief description of CEI’s weekly podcast and a feature on a major CEI breakthrough made during the week. To sign up for CEI Weekly, go to http://cei.org/newsletters.

CEI Weekly
October 23, 2009

>>Support Builds for Supreme Court Case Against Sarbanes Oxley
The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to hear a case that could have a major…

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If you sell poultry or livestock, it’s a good idea to weigh them first. Makes it easier for buyer and seller to agree on a fair price.

For some reason, seven sections of the Code of Federal Regulations (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) deal with the use and maintenance of the scales used to weigh the animals, the people operating them, proper procedure, and finally, weighing the animals again.

Is this really a federal matter? If so, what…

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