As previously posted, scientists from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)—including a nationally-respected cancer expert and members of the National Academy of Scientists—are seriously concerned that they do, and now TSA union reps in Boston have cited a “cancer cluster” among TSA workers there. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has obtained documents under the...
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Perhaps if I only blog about the positive developments in politics it will save time. Well, here we go. House Republicans are pushing to preclude the government from banning incandescent light bulbs. This is an idea I can get behind. Incandescent bulbs are a glorious thing. They bring light, the essence of civilization, into...
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A self-described former climate alarmist, now skeptic, Dr. David Evans served as a full-time consultant for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time from 2008 to 2010, modelling Australia’s carbon. He is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees, including a Ph.D. from Stanford...
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Here is Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs speaking on “Ethanol Subsidies Have Many Bad Consequences,” from the Mises Circle seminar, “Agricultural Subsidies: Down on the D.C. Farm,” held May 14th in Indianapolis. Download audio file (27:51 minutes) Please also see the following books: Plowshares & Pork Barrels: The Political Economy of Agriculture, by...
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Robert Nelson, in the Independent Institute’s recent book, The New Holy Wars, points out that environmental religion owes its moral activism, ascetic discipline, reverence for nature, and fallen view of man to the Protestant theology of John Calvin. Manhattan’s new Church of Earthalujah is perhaps the most striking—though hardly rare—expression of this new religion....
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The Obama administration has detained the alleged Wikileaks whistleblower under torturous conditions—for almost a year, he has been subjected to solitary confinement in a windowless 6×12 cell for 23 hours a day, under constant surveillance, prevented from exercising, lacking a pillow or sheets. For the remaining hour every day, he is allowed to walk...
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The devastating earthquake in Japan has damaged multiple nuclear reactors, and at least one of these facilities is said to pose the potential of Chernobyl-levels of contamination. Germany is responding to this tragedy by temporarily closing down seven nuclear reactors, while France, the second-largest user of nuclear energy in the world, is reportedly planning...
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[Cross-posted in The Lighthouse, 3/1/11] Politics makes strange bedfellows — including alliances of idealists and opportunists who lobby for the same regulations, but for vastly different reasons. The classic example is that of bootleggers and Baptists, both of whom supported local laws to stop the sale of alcohol on Sundays, but scholars have found...
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In a recent piece in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Ralph Nader bemoans President Obama’s failure to use his position and standing to advance the non-profit sector: Yet, though he rhetorically urges more volunteerism, as all presidents do, in his travels around the country, he stops most often at factories and campaign fund-raising events patronized...
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After BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama demanded that BP turn over $20 billion to the federal government, to be paid as compensation to those who were harmed by the spill. At the time critics lashed out at Obama for his strong-arm tactics, extorting that money from BP, but as...
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