The next time a cashier asks “paper or plastic?” think of Abbie Schoenwetter. He spent more than six years in federal confinement for shipping lobster in plastic instead of cardboard. There’s no American law against doing so. But thanks to a vague, overly broad, and otherwise unjust federal criminal law, …
Buckle up, job-creators: The administrative state is set to grow steadily larger in 2013 with a slew of new regulations. “For months, federal agencies and the White House have sidetracked dozens of major regulations that cover everything from power plant pollution to workplace safety to a crackdown on Wall Street,” …
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Friday that the Obama administration is pursuing restrictions on political speech through whatever means possible, including bypassing Congress and the federal judiciary. “What they haven’t been able to achieve through the courts or Congress, they’re already attempting to achieve through regulations,” McConnell said in a …
Today’s New York Times offers a stunning revelation for anyone who hasn’t been following the news out of Washington for the past three years: President Barack Obama is bypassing Congress and using his executive authority to unilaterally implement his policies of choice, irrespective of the will of the people. The …
If you fly across the country, it’s easy to see signs of America’s ingenuity and productivity — skyscrapers in New York City, steel mills in Pennsylvania, factories in Chicago, farmland in the Great Plains, and the glittering technology of Silicon Valley. But what you can’t see, though it’s very real, …
Saturday marks the anniversary of the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act, which in 1887 created the first federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). Although those who created the ICC had no intention of establishing the modern administrative state we now have, the creation of the ICC was …
For all of candidate Barack Obama’s campaign rhetoric promising to respect Congress’s authority to draft the nation’s laws, President Obama has demonstrated a persistent pattern of circumventing the legislative branch via administrative fiat whenever his agenda stalls. And though one of the Obama campaign’s legal advisers cautioned against a President …
Once again, Obamacare shows that, when it comes to health care reform, the saying “Hey, it’s the thought that counts” just doesn’t cut it. Proponents of the new law argue that its stringent insurance regulations will help consumers, but these new regulations also threaten some existing employer-sponsored plan arrangements. To …
