Liz Mair reports that Congress is now considering a new round of bankruptcy reform in response to the crisis that has developed in the subprime mortgage business. As with most of the government regulation that’s been suggested in this area, it takes exactly the wrong approach to the problem. Earlier this month, Republican Senator Arlen [...]

There’s little doubt that pretty much everyone in America who’s paying attention realizes that Stephen Colbert’s recently announced run for the White House is an elaborate joke. A well-played, funny, timely joke that is already pointing out the absurdity of the political system, but, still, a joke. Well, everyone that is except perhaps the people [...]

The conservative blog Red State decided earlier this week to ban Ron Paul supporters from the blog: Effective immediately, new users may *not* shill for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion. Not in comments, not in diaries, nada. If your account is less than 6 months old, you can talk about something [...]

I heard this one at a legal seminar I attended today. It’s from Winston Churchill in 1943, but it seems especially appropriate to America in 2007: [T]he great privilege of habeas corpus, and of trial by jury, which are the supreme protection invented by the English people for ordinary individuals against the State . . [...]

Hillary Clinton said she give up some expanded executive powers: If elected president in 2008, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton would consider giving up some of the executive powers President Bush and Vice President Cheney have assumed since taking office. In an interview published Tuesday in Guardian America, a Web site run by the London-based Guardian [...]

It’s a well known fact that, to date, most head-to-head polls show Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama easily beating any of the Republican frontrunners (Giuliani, McCain, Romney, Thompson) in a head-to-head matchup. What about lower tier candidates like Ron Paul ? Well, the latest Rasmussen Poll seems to indicate that the result would be about [...]

According to a Washington Post report, the Republican Party may have found an issue it can ride to electoral success: When Republican Jim Ogonowski launched his long-shot bid for Congress, he prepared for an upbeat campaign in his Democratic, working-class district of Massachusetts, based on a winning r¿sum¿: affable hay farmer, former Air Force lieutenant [...]

The New York Times reports that House Democrats are set to introduce legislation to “fix” the problems that caused the subprime mortgage crisis:  WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 — House Democrats introduced legislation on Monday that would for the first time let homeowners sue Wall Street firms for relief from mortgages that the borrowers never had a [...]

This 5 minute video clip from Bill O’Reilly’s The O’Reilly Factor is a little old but I just discovered it at the Reason.tv website. In this clip, O’Reilly confronts Reason Magazine’s Jacob Sullum who just wrote the book Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use. While don’t agree that recreational drug use is a positive [...]

There’s been an increase in combative rhetoric from the Bush Administration regarding Iran over the past week or so. First, last week President Bush said that permitting Iran to obtain nuclear weapons would lead to World War III. Now, Vice-President Cheney has said that the United States will not permit Iran to obtain nuclear weapons: [...]

At last night’s debate: Well, if you believe in federalism, it’s better that we allow these things to be left to the state. My personal belief is that marriage is a religious ceremony. And it should be dealt with religiously. The state really shouldn’t be involved. The state, both federal and state-wise, got involved mostly [...]

There is another Republican debate tonight on Fox News (8pm EST). I’ve missed the last two or three, so I may sit down and live-blog this one. The candidates that will be participating are: Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo and Fred Thompson. WINNERS & LOSERS: Winners [...]

David Price at Dean’s World: A government can’t plan a society’s moral development any better than its economic development; the cost to our freedom, the pain of enforcement, and the unintended consequences outweigh the dubious benefit derived from forbidding consensual transactions between adults. Society functions most efficiently when individuals are essentially sovereign in their liberty, [...]

Jason’s post about Mike Huckabee as a threat to the GOP coalition, reminds me of this David Brooks column where he makes the following argument: Huckabee is the one candidate acceptable to all factions. To which Daniel Larison responds: Except the economic conservatives, restrictionists, libertarians and conservative opponents of the war. Other than that, he’s [...]

Erick Erickson tells us why Mike Huckabee is a threat to the Republican Party’s coalition than Rudy Giuliani: The leaders of the social conservative movement who were present, the Arlington Group members you hear so much about, were ready and willing to get on board Romney’s campaign on Saturday morning. Then Huckabee spoke. Then the [...]

Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of poll you want to place very high in: Whom would you NEVER vote for for President of the U.S.? % Clinton (D) 50% Kucinich (D) 49% Gravel (D) 47% Paul (R) 47% Brownback (R) 47% Tancredo (R) 46% McCain (R) 45% Hunter (R) 44% Giuliani (R) 43% Romney (R) [...]

Apparently Genarlow Wilson isn’t the only person caught up in the insanity of Georgia’s sex offender laws: The state of Georgia regards 28-year-old Wendy Whitaker as such a threat to public safety that it posts her photo and address on the Internet, bans her from living near schools, churches and playgrounds and forbids her from [...]

This morning George Will makes an interesting argument against what has been a traditional part of the Republican agenda — the line-item veto: The line-item veto expresses liberalism’s faith in top-down government and the watery Caesarism that has produced today’s inflated presidency. Liberalism assumes that executive branch experts, free from parochial constituencies, know, as Congress [...]

It’s gotten almost no coverage in the mainstream media, but earlier this week, Ron Paul introduced a bill that would repeal most of the Constitution excesses we’ve seen over the past seven years: On Monday, Rep. Ron Paul, the outsider Republican presidential candidate who has long upheld these values and who was an early voice [...]

Milton Friedman with one of the best explanations of the benefits of free markets and free trade ever: H/T: Cafe Hayek