What do a wasteland full of weeds, Pfizer, and the Supreme Court have in common? The answer is the power of eminent domain. In the 2005 case of Kelo v. City of New London, the Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London was
Millions of Americans choose to continue smoking despite known health risks. Presumably, the value they get from smoking is (rightly or wrongly) worth the risk to them. But for a short time, it appeared that smokers had a healthy third alternative: electronic cigarettes. The electronic cigarette
Capitalism is in crisis, claims Richard Posner on the pages of the Wall Street Journal today. This crisis happened, he says, because “a capitalist economy, while immensely dynamic and productive, is not inherently stable.” Furthermore, he suggests that “the banking crash might not have occurred
Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis has sparked controversy in his recent testimony to regulators. Lewis has revealed that he was threatened, by then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Chairman of the Fed Ben Bernanke, to buy Merrill Lynch, a company drowning in financial losses of
In the aftermath of the substantial Democratic victory in last November’s election, Republicans nationwide are reported to be doing a great deal of “soul searching." Indeed they should. After all, times are not looking good for the Republican Party. Former President Bush left office with
When we hear the word “regulation,” most people immediately think of the government. After all, the government regulates nearly every industry that we rely on in our everyday lives, such as banking, aviation, education, medicine, and countless others. But in addition to government regulation, there are
A recent news article describes a new law in France which, if passed, will make it illegal to promote “extreme thinness.” This ban outlaws images of excessively skinny models in the media and on websites that incite people to severely restrict the amount they eat.