It was, of course, inevitable that after a general election, political observers would be talking about everything in Washington suddenly being new. A new president(-elect), a new administration, a new New Mexico corruption scandal; none of this comes as a surprise. What is interesting, however, is that some people are also referring to the “new leadership” in Congress.

Now, as we all know, leadership positions in Congress are often based on seniority, especially in that plush assisted living community known…

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Major newspapers around the country including the Washington Post, the LA Times, and the Wall Street Journal are urging President-elect Barack Obama to pass the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement in the lame duck session. The Los Angeles Times said it bluntly, “It’s time to stop playing games with a trade pact whose economic and political benefits are good for both nations.”

Some reports of the meeting between the president-elect and President Bush said that the president had pushed for the trade agreement in exchange…

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Check out me and Richard Morrison doing another episode of CEI’s weekly podcast, Liberty Week.  This week we cover:

The “meltdown” on Wall Street
Hurricane Ike
Nancy Pelosi’s opposition to offshore drilling
The War on Bottled Waterâ„¢
A breakthrough for Paralympic athletes

Also, this week we have Radu Burnete (our Romanian intern) joining us to consider how European Union rules have made short cucumbers, uncurved bananas and unpasteurized cheese crimes against the people.

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On the front page of the Washington Post, writer Steven Pearlstein contradicts himself by writing that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are being “rescued from the harsh discipline of markets and the consequences of their own misjudgments,” undercutting arguments for “privatization, deregulation, and a faith in free markets.”

But the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is hardly an indictment of the free market: Fannie and Freddie are “Government-Sponsored Enterprises,” not products of the free market or the…

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