Over at the Master Resource Blog,  law professor Gail Heriot points out the similarities between global warming, fear-monger Al Gore and Xhosa Prophetess Nongqawuse:
Nongqawuse was a teenager and a member of the Xhosa tribe in South Africa.  One day in April or May of 1856, she went down to the river to fetch water.  When [...]

Homeowners’ Associations are one of life’s little sour tastes of government. Petty meddling nannies who tell you that you can’t do X, or that you must do Y, in order to keep the neighborhood “uniform” or somesuch. Sadly, it’s also a microcosm for most peoples’ reactions to government. When it’s a neighbor [...]

I happen to live in Arizonas 5th congressional district; and am currently represented in the house by Harry Mitchell.
Congressman Mitchell and I disagree about a lot of things. Abortion, social security and government health care, school choice and education policy, many economic issues, government intervention and regulations in general, and the overall wisdom of his [...]

Barack Obama is making the same disastrous mistake that George Bush did, and I am amazed that neither he nor his advisers are aware of it.
Many people have commented that Obama has effectively given Pelosi and Reid free rein to insert as much prok as they wish into their spending bills while pontificating in mock [...]

This is the single best, and clearest, explanation of the Rationalist Position on global warming I’ve Ever Seen

Key line: “So, why don’t we ever talk about the suns contribution to global warming? …Well, because we can’t regulate it, tax it, or make it feel guilty for what it’s doing“.
Got it in one there friend.
There’s [...]

Last week, I posted about my belief that oil has currently dropped to a price level that is damaging to the long-term stability of the oil market, and that while it seems wonderful right now, it won’t last.
Today we find a bit of evidence that may only support this point:
The $25 low-end estimate [Francisco] Blanch [...]

No, not for the reason these guys think:
Venezuela will back repeated cuts in OPEC oil production until prices stabilize, Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez says, and Russia is proposing closer cooperation with the oil cartel.
Ramirez said Wednesday that his country will back a proposed 1 million barrel per day cut when OPEC meets Saturday in Cairo. [...]

In IEEE’s flagship magazine, Spectrum, there is a fairly idiotic editorial warning Europeans against buying natural gas from Russia.
Why can’t the European Union just adopt a strategy of energy independence and wean itself from Russia and the “stans”?
Of course, there is no way for Europe to be “independent” with respect to natural gas. [...]

The City Club of Cleveland extended an invitation to the top six presidential candidates*. Of the six candidates, Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr, Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin, and independent candidate Ralph Nader participated; Democrat Barack Obama, Republican John McCain, and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney were no-shows.
Unlike the debates we have already seen [...]

Ed Schafer, US Secretary of Agriculture, seems to think we need to bail out the ethanol industry:
Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer’s statement on Oct. 17 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture could provide ethanol companies that got into trouble by speculating on corn with up to $25 million per company in refinancing has caused a firestorm [...]

Cont’d from Part 1
What motivates these very nice people to be such tyrants? Some will vote in ignorance of the issue* and others out of a sense of ‘social justice.’ Very few will intentionally vote to take liberty or property from a fellow citizen; most will vote to do so out of a well intentioned [...]

Now that the conventions are over, it’s time to separate the facts from the fiction. With so much misinformation being peddled by the political campaigns (not to mention rumors spread through e-mail, the internet and the MSM), this is very often a difficult task. My approach is to be skeptical until I am satisfied that [...]

Ron Paul spoke in front of a crowd of approximately 10,000 at the “Rally for the Republic” (AKA the “Ron Paul Convention”) across the river from the Republican National Convention.
Below are the first 3 parts of his speech, the full text of the speech can be read here.

Other speakers on the last [...]

California, in an attempt to fix the housing mess* by making houses less affordable by making you buy features you wouldn’t otherwise**, has announced new statewide building restrictions to go “green”.
From the Governator on down, nanny statists in California are more than willing to use force to make your life more expensive, and are quite [...]

Senator Warner has a brilliant idea how to reduce gas prices; force Americans to consume less at gun point:
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to look into what speed limit would provide optimum gasoline efficiency given current technology. He said he wants to know if the administration might support efforts in Congress [...]

In barbaric cultures, when people find themselves facing unpleasant changes, like the failure of crops or natural disasters, they look for scapegoats to blame. In the Europe and early colonial America, all to often the quest for a scapegoat took the form of a persecuting old women, who were charged with having used magic to [...]

The government likes to support biodiesel. It has all the buzzwords. “Recycling”. “Sustainable”. “Environmentally-friendly”. So they subsidize efforts to blend diesel with biodiesel.
One main problem here. Americans don’t use much diesel. So they’re subsidizing foreign, not domestic, use. In fact, they’re simply sending money for non-American-produced diesel [...]

From the AP, sure to be an environmentalist’s wet dream:
High gas prices have driven a Warren County farmer and his sons to hitch a tractor rake to a pair of mules to gather hay from their fields. T.R. Raymond bought Dolly and Molly at the Dixon mule sale last year. Son Danny Raymond trained them [...]

With record-high corn prices, and plenty of subsidy money floating around, an interesting thing is happening. Less farmers are growing corn!
Why? Because the inputs used in growing corn are rising in price even more quickly:
The amount of corn planted in the U.S. is expected to dip this year. Rice acreage in California, which [...]

In an earlier post, I discussed the economic damage that “energy independence” would cause to U.S. consumers. In a recent conversation in meatspace, I ran into someone who acknowledged this problem, but argued that the price is “worth it” because when we trade with people who make oil, those people use the wealth to [...]