Bon, je vois que je reprends ma mauvaise habitude de laisser ce blogue en friche pendant de longues semaines... Je suis incorrigible ! Et pourtant, à chaque fois, je me fais la promesse d'être plus assidu et fidèle, d'abreuver ce coin de toile, ...

As many expected, the California Supreme Court has overturned that state’s ban on gay marriage. So many expected it, in fact, that opponents have already submitted more than a million signatures through California’s initiative process to p...

Pages 273-276 in the text, as read by Dr. Floy Lilley. From Part 3, "The Founding of New England." [10:28] ...

Pages 271-272 in the text, as read by Dr. Floy Lilley. From Part 3, "The Founding of New England." [3:33] ...

Pages 267-270 in the text, as read by Dr. Floy Lilley. From Part 3, "The Founding of New England." [11:32] ...

Having so recently blogged about the expansion of Florida’s k-12 scholarship tax credit program, I’m delighted to be able to add that Georgia governor Sonny Perdue yesterday signed a similar program into law in his own state. Meanwhile, in...

Matt Bai has a writeup in this Sunday’s NYTimes Magazine of McCain’s vision on foreign policy. Buckle up: McCain considers national values, and not strategic interests, to be the guiding force in foreign policy. America exists, in McCain?...

If you’re like most Cato@Liberty readers, you often ask yourself, “Self, what kind of artwork does Michael Cannon have on the walls of his office?” Thanks to the folks at bloggingheads.tv, not only can you find the answer, but you ca...

Suite au scandale de la transaction de l’immeuble de l’Imprimerie nationale, qui avait coûté plus de 100 millions d’euros à l’État, le ministre des Affaires étrangères, Bernard Kouchner, et plusieurs hauts fonctionnaires de son administr...

On February 7 1945 Paraguay declared war on Germany and Japan, and on February 2 1945, Ecuador announced [...]...

"Two substantive political issues are the federal budget deficit and the war in Iraq. Now, if you're electing Democrats to control government spending, then you're marrying Angelina Jolie for her brains. This leaves the Democrats with one real issu...

Anatole Kaletsky is usually good value for his economic analysis. In a pretty scathing column today about the collapse of Brown's political reputation since becoming Prime Minister last year, Kaletsky tries to contrast Brown the bumbling PM with Brow...

(vue sur le blog d'Arthur Wneir : http://www.wneir.net)Arthur Wneir revient à la radio ! Après la suppression de sa chronique pour cause de Loi tatillonne sur la diffamation, l'injure, la discrimination, etc... le chroniqueur Wneir ne se décou...

If you a) wonder why entrepreneurs are the heroes of our world, and b) read Azeri, you´ll be [...]...

A student who just earned his M.A. sent us a picture of his graduation cake: ...

Although I believe that taxation is theft, I would gladly support any tax reform plan as long as it substantially lowered tax rates or the total amount of taxes collected. I am not a critic of the FairTax because it doesn't do enough; I am a critic o...

If this video doesn't motivate you to jump on the next raft to Finland, I don't know what will. The worst part is not that the narrator admits the country is yet another dying experiment of socialism, but that the director convinced the participa...

The analysis in Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine is hopelessly flawed at virtually every level. [...]...

Gary North on market prediction websites....

Bill Sardi on the triumph of nature over big pharma....

It's pre-Jeffersonian example, says Kevin R.C. Gutzman....

Butler Shaffer on private property rights....

Steven LaTulippe on necessary opposites....

In the UK, re: drugs. Article by Paul Armentano....

Bill Trench on the privately funded statue of Crazy Horse....

Guido Hulsmann received the following: I must congratulate you on the fine writings and historical revelations in your book on Mises-Last Knight of Liberalism. My grandfather had fought under his command in the Austro-Hungarian army in WWI....

class="right" height="200">Although I believe that taxation is theft, I would gladly support any tax reform plan as long as it substantially lowered tax rates or the total amount of taxes collected. I am not a critic of the FairTax because it doe...

Should we force our way into Burma to aid cyclone victims? Since the May 3 storm, Burma’s military regime has barred most outsiders from delivering supplies and medical relief. The regime is accepting aid shipments, it appears, but lacks the cap...

Finding myself uncharacteristically unable to give a flying fuck about what is in the news today and then murder helpless pixels merely to write about politics or world events, I took advantage of my inamorata being away on business to escape the Ivor...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger just released his revised budget proposal. To close the $17.2 billion gap between the spending desired and the revenue growth projected, the governor is recommending securitizing future lottery revenue or increasing the sale...

Former Georgia congressman Bob Barr announced this week that he wants to be the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee in 2008. Party members have only another week to kick the tires of this former Republican before they decide at their May 22 con...

Bad news: the House has just passed the farm bill by a veto-busting margin of 318 to 106. Roll call here. The measure will likely become law unless the improbable happens and scores of Republicans back up the president’s veto when it comes....

Yesterday, an announcement from the Commonwealth Foundation landed in my inbox. The subject line read: How to Achieve Universal Coverage While Lowering Health Spending A colleague received the same release, and forwarded it along with this note: C...

After noting that “some of my best friends work for think tanks,” The Atlantic blogger Megan McArdle contends that these organizations cannot be trusted because the purported ideological homogeneity of their employees renders them intellectually b...

In an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal the political liberal Thomas Frank paints a Depression-era picture of American workers and households. Real hourly wages for most workers … have risen only 1% since 1979,” he writes. Median “non-elde...

par Gilles Guénette LCN: La hausse du prix de l'essence continue de soulever la colère chez les consommateurs. Plusieurs se demandent si les gouvernements ne devraient pas diminuer le montant des taxes qu'ils perçoivent. En décortiquant les prix...

The commentariat (including Cato folks and friends) have spent the past couple of weeks sounding off on John McCain and Hillary Clinton’s proposals to suspend the federal motor fuels tax this summer. The commentary has been almost uniformly crit...

Manuel Valls, membre du Parti Socialiste (PS) et maire d'Evry, déclarait récemment dans une interview à l'hebdomadaire Le Point à propos de son dernier livre : "Je n’attaque pas le PS, je veux le refonder, car l’idée socialiste est en part...

The darling duds of May The press in Britain, just like in France, is awash with comments about the legacy of 1968. Over the coming days I mention a few that have caught my attention. The first is by the economist Paul Ormerod, and published in Pro...

One of the hottest trends in health policy — wait, where are you going? — is for insurers to pay doctors and hospitals based on the value of their services. I know: how novel. But as it happens, in the United States we generally pay prov...

For a look through the keyhole into the bizarre world of the Rumsfeld-era DOD establishment, take a look at these documents describing the DOD military analysts/”force multipliers” program. Or better yet, listen in to some of Rumsfeld̵...

En Suisse il faudra désormais 15 heures de formation pour détenir un chien....

The audio version of the Mises Daily Article for May 13, 2008. [12:45] ...

My thanks to Shane Greer for alerting me to what, on the face of it, seems like very good news, from Northern Ireland: The education minister has said she is very disappointed by grammar schools planning to set up a company to run independent entrance...

Voilà un rapport qui fait du bruit : Jean-Ludovic SILICANI, Conseiller d’Etat, vient de remettre au premier ministre et aux ministres concernés un livre blanc sur la modernisation de la fonction publique (« Les valeurs, les missions et les métie...

I just came across this. What's happened is that they've just discovered another Vivaldi opera, and classical music blogger Jessica Duchen is less than thrilled: Vivaldi was an astonishing character with a hugely colourful life. But isn't there a l...

Tim Worstall has interesting things to say about the difference between social status and economic inequality, pointing out that the two things only occasionally map onto each other, a fact which does rather undermine the egalitarian argument that red...

Press release here: Louis Michael Spadaro, Ph.D., the founding dean of the Fordham University Graduate School of Business Administration, died on May 3 at his home in Syracuse, N.Y. He was 94. Spadaro, a New York City native, joined the Ford...

Si le processus législatif sur la plupart des questions abordées lors du Grenelle n'a pas encore été entamé, les déclarations du président comme des différentes commissions du Grenelle ne laissent planer aucun doute sur la question environnementale: ...

Nicolas Sarkozy a déclaré récemment, lors d'un plaidoyer en faveur de sa future "loi de modernisation de l'économie", qu'il avait à sa disposition "trois manettes" pour augmenter le pouvoir d'achat des français : les heures supplémentai...

There are no economic causes for armed aggression within a world of free trade and free enterprise. In such a world, no individual citizen can possibly derive any advantage from the conquest of a province or a colony.... The wars of the 20th century h...

Sometimes articles are so exasperating there is no sense in even attempting a response, but usually these don't appear in the Wall Street Journal. Selection from Thomas Frank: What has overtaken America's working people is not a natural disa...

There are no economic causes, said Ludwig von Mises in this 1944 lecture, for armed aggression within a world of free trade and free enterprise. In such a world, no individual citizen can possibly derive any advantage from the conquest of a province o...

Your canoe is going over the falls, says Gary North. You can hear the roar of the water. Swim for it!...

Never mind, says Vin Suprynowicz....

Or is it the intimidation card? Article by Patrick J. Buchanan....

His lips are moving, says Paul Armentano....

Yesterday I blogged about a Washington Post column by Shankar Vedantam that began: “About 35 million Americans regularly go hungry each year, according to federal statistics.” I looked up the federal data, and the real number appears to be...

As I should have mentioned in my previous post, the House and Senate are likely to vote on the Farm Bill conference report tomorrow. The bill, an abysmal one that carries a price tag of roughly $300 billion, will likely pass easily in the Senate, whe...

Further to my quasi-post on the farm bill Friday, I may have been premature in my enthusiasm. According to an article [$] today in Congress Daily, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee Charles Grassley (R, IA) is confident that Congress w...

Après un an passé dans les affres d'un pays soumis à la loi dictatoriale d'un président omnipotent, la France peut à nouveau relever la tête et se réjouir qu'enfin le Peuple soit entendu ! Le déni démocratique dans lequel nous vivions depuis 2007, ...

WisPolitics.com reports that Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle (D) plans to take more than $20 million out of the state’s REAL ID account and transfer it into the state’s general fund. Wisconsin Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R) objects: W...

Nicolas Sarkozy et ses amis nous répètent à l'envie en ce moment que l'on n'a jamais autant réformé en France, que depuis 1 an, 55 réformes ont été menées ou sont en cours ! Qu'aucune réformes n'aient été entreprises auparavant, c'es...

I realize purists will object to any advocacy of taxation besides absolute zero, but even so I encourage people to read at least the first few chapters of my new study (.pdf) on California tax reform. I know I was surprised at some of the charts, eve...

Steve Clemons posts a heartening little video of Bush père’s National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft responding to Steve’s question “What do you think about Cuba?” It’s a rare occasion for foreign policy folks to take ...

A recent story in the Arizona Republic describes the rising practice of using “registered agents” to take care of the paperwork associated with the E-Verify system, which is mandatory for employers in Arizona. Registered agents know how to...

Last year, the federal Medicare program announced that — after 40 years of financially rewarding providers who harm patients – it would no longer pay the added costs of treating patients who fell victim to a list of medical errors known a...

Samizdata has now been going for more than half a decade, and since what I am about to say has been becoming ever more true throughout that time, I may have said what follows before. So if you have already read, marked, learned and inwardly digested a...

The soft heart of Sarkonomics Le Monde hails Sarkozy’s “liberal (i.e. pro-market) clarification”. According to the paper, the French president will be much more forceful and coherent in reforming the economy his second year in offi...

This story in the Daily Telegraph today about Burmese officials allegedly pilfering foreign aid and selling it just reinforces any prejudice one might have about the efficacy of sending aid to a country governed by thugs. It is not obvious to me what,...

I just took my last cappuccino in Stockholm for one and a halft month, and I might blog a bit less frequently [...]...

I Dagens Industri i dag (endast prenumeranter) skriver jag om hur våra klumpiga inflationsmått [...]...

Chris Anderson, a well-known business guru in the world of online commerce, imagines a world in which all internet services are free. But he has made an error. The reason some goods are given away for free in some markets has no relation to any hyp...

Actually, it is even worse than that. - An unnamed BBC news journalist who I unexpectedly found myself drinking with on Saturday, when I asked her if the BBC really is the Stalinist bureaucracy it is reputed to be....

Chris Anderson, a well-known business guru in the world of online commerce, imagines a world in which all internet services are free. But he has made an error, argues Fernando Herrera-Gonzalez. It is the competition for these resources that seems to ...

The Web is abuzz today with reports and analysis of the latest network neutrality bill to be introduced this year. The as-of-yet unnamed bill, sponsored by Reps. John Conyers (D-MI) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) seeks to amend the Clayton antitrust act ...

par Martin Masse Dans La Presse de samedi dernier, le chroniqueur financier Michel Girard présente des données intéressantes sur qui payait combien d'impôt au Québec en 2005. Des données qui viennent contredire le mythe qu'on entend parfois (m...

Those "silent patriots...critical to the nations' survival." Yeah, right, says Becky Akers....

When Murray was 22....

Joshua Katz has a different view....

Ron Paul on the housing bubble....

And tell Mother Russia the news. Article by Eric Margolis....

When it comes to international academic assessments, especially in math and science, a few Asian countries regularly kick world posterior. Many observers chalk this up to these countries having national curricula, but this seems a specious conclusion ...

Inspired by the promotional brochure I recently came across, I’ve taken a look at L-1 Identity Solutions in a new Cato TechKnowledge. Though it has better options, L-1 and its new acquisition, Digimarc ID Systems, seem likely to continue lobbyin...

On Wednesday Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is releasing his revised budget proposal against a backdrop of a massive deficit.  In my op-ed in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, I lay out the background of the “fiscal crisis” in the state (too much sp...

Testilying is a term that police officers use to describe false testimony they give in court so that an otherwise illegal search or arrest can be justified.  It’s hard to tell how common the practice is, but it much more common than most people...

A piece by Ron Matus in today’s St. Petersburg Times is the latest media acknowledgement of growing Democratic support for educational freedom. The expansion of Florida’s k-12 scholarship donation tax credit program, which I blogged ab...

Mon billet précédent était la version optimiste. Je me rends d’ailleurs compte à la relecture que mon optimisme est forcé: vu la première partie, comment croire une seconde que la vague idée puisse représenter une alternative? La guerre...

It seems that we will have some company on Thursday for the 2008 Friedman Prize Dinner in New York City. I’ve met these Bolivarian groups before in similar circumstances. Don’t expect much dialogue from them....

Four years ago the movie Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle was celebrated mostly as a “stoner” movie: smart young Asian guys smoke pot and get the munchies. When I finally got around to watching it, it was funnier than I expected. And...

Mothers of Ohio, here you go. Ohio Treasurer Richard Cordray is using your tax dollars to provide you with the gift you desired all along. Though, for some reason, you couldn't recognize that desire -- a breakdown of Thymology I suppose. Regardle...

Washington Post columnist Shankar Vedantam starts his column today with: About 35 million Americans regularly go hungry each year, according to federal statistics. But it is simply not true that 35 million are “regularly” going hungry, a...

Cato Unbound’s May edition discusses the resource curse. Numerous studies confirm that countries rich in natural resources tend to be poor in property rights, individual liberty, and the rule of law. Is this just a deep, and deeply depressing, f...

Glenn Reynold's has a review at Pajamas Media of Ron Paul's best selling new treatise, "The Revolution: A Manifesto". He has beaten me to the punch as my copy is waiting for me in New York City and I will not see it until Thursday, No problem thou...

I’ve got an oped in today’s Orange County Register on congressional efforts to smother health savings accounts (HSAs) in the cradle: In April, House Democrats passed legislation that would impose onerous and unnecessary reporting require...

The US House of Representatives will hold hearings on energy markets trying to determine who is causing oil prices to rise. The anti-market investigation will blame hedge funds and investment banks for manipulating the markets to make oil go to recor...

Yesterday - Sunday, May 11, 2008 - was the statutory deadline for state compliance with the REAL ID Act. Not a single state has begun issuing nationally standardized IDs as called for by the law. Nor are they putting driver information into nationally...

Sunday’s NY Times acknowledges that: It is time to end an outdated tax break for corn ethanol and to call a timeout in the fivefold increase in ethanol production mandated in the 2007 energy bill. But then it goes on to state: This does not mea...

Like the diarist and blogger Diamond Geezer (now that's what I call a brilliant name), I have come to value much of the scenery in the southeastern pocket of ours in England. If you are planning a daytrip and cannot face a long drive but want somethi...

28 milliards d’euros : c’est le montant de la dette de Réseau ferré de France (dont 13 milliards d’euros « non amortissables ») que l’État refuse d’éponger pour des raisons politiques....