In a weak economy, the government should not erect barriers to hiring. But two government policies have hindered the already slow recovery: increases in the minimum wage and government unionization. Eliminating these policies would not be enough to spur a robust recovery—the cause of our current economic weakness goes far beyond these measures—but removing them […]
How’s this for a nicely polished gem of irony? Matthew Yglesias, a liberal blogger today authored a piece poking fun at Barnes Noble for attempting to diversify its bookstore model by venturing into the world of digital with its “Nook” e-reader. (Stay tuned for the irony, below.) For Yglesias, the notion that a corporation wants to […]
Standing behind a podium on a stage just outside Cleveland, President Barack Obama delivered a speech yesterday that will reverberate throughout history. No, its lasting impact will not come because of its soaring rhetoric. Instead, it will make its mark because it was at that moment on a Wednesday afternoon in Ohio that the President […]
President Obama thinks he merely stretched his powers under the Constitution in making so-called recess appointments for three members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III and counsel Todd Gaziano made clear in their Washington Post editorial of […]
The framers of the Constitution required the President to get the consent of the Senate before appointing senior government officials. They wanted to prevent the President from appointing those who would abuse the public trust. President Obama’s purported appointment of Richard Griffin to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) yesterday illustrates the importance of this […]
The White House announced today that President Barack Obama plans to attempt a “recess appointment” of Richard Cordray to direct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in addition to three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board — and that’s despite the fact that Congress is not officially in recess, as required by the Constitution. It’s a […]
The US has agreed in principle to release high-ranking Taliban officials from Guantánamo Bay in return for the Afghan insurgents’ agreement to open a political office for peace negotiations in Qatar, the Guardian has learned. According to sources familiar with the talks in the US and in Afghanistan, the handful of Taliban figures will include […]
Mazal tov to Electronic Intifada for a quite superb piece of investigative journalism, “exposing” the day job of Israeli student Smadar Bakovic. Smadar recently made news for taking on her anti-Israel professor at the UK’s Warwick University and getting her Masters degree thesis upgraded – an effort which began more than 5 months prior to […]
College campuses would seem to be ripe environments for intellectual diversity to flourish. But rather than celebrate free speech, academic institutions across America routinely censor student publications and individuals. Such was the case recently at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Professor James Miller came under attack from the campus administration when he posted a picture and […]
The violent crime rate in Washington, D.C., is up 13 percent since the Occupy D.C. protest began this fall as police officers have been pulled out of local neighborhoods and reassigned to the protest. The chairman of the local police union pinned the blame on the city’s redistribution of resources, noting that on some shifts […]
