By Walter Olson
We’ve often deplored the continued push of criminal prosecution into matters that were once considered more suitable for regulation or for the operation of civil law. A little-noted report a few weeks back in the Los Angeles Times may indicate the next milestone in overcriminalization: The U.S. attorney has launched a fraud investigation to determine [...]
Prison Terms for Not Installing ADA Ramps? is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Michael F. Cannon
My Cato colleague John Cochrane – who is way smarter than I am — has a generally excellent op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal on ObamaCare’s contraception mandate: Salting mandated health insurance with birth control is exactly the same as a tax—on employers, on Catholics, on gay men and women, on couples trying to have children and [...]
Cochrane on ObamaCare’s Contraceptive-Coverage Mandate is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
When Ronald Reagan said that big government undermined the economy, some people dismissed his comments because of his philosophical belief in liberty. And when I discuss my work on the economic impact of government spending, I often get the same reaction. This is why it’s important that a growing number of establishment outfits are slowly [...]
Data in New World Bank Report Shows that Large Public Sectors Reduce Economic Growth is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Neal McCluskey
Cato adjunct scholar John H. Cochrane has a terrific piece in the Wall Street Journal today on the Obamacare vs. religious freedom brouhaha. In particular, though it’s not Cochrane’s main point, I thought this was spot-on: Our nation is divided on social issues. The natural compromise is simple: Birth control, abortion and other contentious practices are [...]
Welcome to Our War-torn World, Health Care is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Chris Edwards
One of the issues discussed in my new essay on the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is the lobbying by groups of American Indians seeking official tribal status. The BIA has the power to confer tribal status, and it does so in a non-transparent manner. With official status comes tribal access to a wide range [...]
Indian Gaming: The Lobbyists Always Win is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Michael F. Cannon
Regarding legislation to create an ObamaCare “Exchange” in Virginia, the Richmond Times-Dispatch explains: Republicans at the General Assembly are falling prey to the fallacy of the false alternative… [H]ere are the real options facing Virginia: (a) federal bureaucrats determine the form of our exchange, or (b) federal bureaucrats determine the form of our exchange. There is [...]
RTD: ‘Insurance Exchange: Just Say No’ is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Neal McCluskey
Today the Obama administration will announce, according to early press reports, that ten states (of eleven that applied) will be receiving waivers from key provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act. That’s right, the 2002 education law passed by Congress and signed by President Bush that absurdly insisted that all children will be proficient in mathematics and reading [...]
Waiving Goodbye to the Constitution is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Andrew J. Coulson
The media tide of the past two days has carried in a great flood of stories on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. ABC, NBC, AP, Reuters, the Christian Science Monitor, Politico, the Detroit News, and others joined in. This torrent of attention is due to a White House science fair at which the [...]
The Irony of the President’s STEM Initiatives is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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Associated Press photojournalist Noah Berger captured this thousand-word image near the Occupy Oakland demonstrations last month. Many Cato@Liberty readers will get it immediately. They can stop reading now. For everyone else, this image perfectly illustrates the ethos of what I call the Church of Universal Coverage. Like everyone who supports a government guarantee of access to medical care, [...]
The Ethos of Universal Coverage is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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After much wrangling and consternation, the Greek government has agreed to the latest round of “drastic austerity measures,” the most significant of which is the promise to cut 15,000 government jobs. In return, the Greeks will receive 130 billion euros ($170 billion) of European bailout money to keep the Greek state afloat and, crucially, in [...]
Cutting the Government—Greek Style is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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