FreedomTalks

The net neutrality debate has been rife with scare-mongering from the start, but the latest suggestion from the ACLU — that net neutrality is a necessary component of free speech — continues to annoy me:
Speakers at an American Civil Liberties Union conference today praised legislation that would ban discrimination of Internet content by broadband companies, [...]

The Lieberman-Warner global warming debated in the Senate last week went nowhere: Democratic leadership will yank it from the floor.  Why? Well, it seems as if a giant increase on gas prices — up to $0.50 a gallon — was kind of a tough sell when much of the country is reeling from $4 a [...]

Looks like the FCC is set to hold a hearing regarding he potential for regulating early termination fees on wireless phones. Now, regulating cancellation fees certainly seems like a consumer-friendly move. After all, no one wants to be stuck paying a couple hundred dollars when they decide to cancel their phone service or switch carriers.  [...]

This is sort of grimly funny:
The embarrassment of the Senate food service struggling like some neighborhood pizza joint has quietly sparked change previously unthinkable for Democrats. Last week, in a late-night voice vote, the Senate agreed to privatize the operation of its food service, a decision that would, for the first time, put it under [...]

Michael Tanner with more reasons why the only state in the country to mandate health insurance keeps proving that mandates don’t work:

Slightly less than half of Massachusetts’ uninsured population actually complied with the mandate. True, the number of people without health insurance was reduced from 13% of the state’s population to 7%, but when the [...]

Cable a la carte is an older issue, but, thanks to folks like Kevin Martin and the PTC, it keeps popping up.  And guess what: A la carte advocates, who seem to think that there are cost savings to unbundling cable packages, still don’t seem to know what they’re talking about.  Not only is the [...]

The Senate takes up the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill today, and Robert Samuelson nicely lays out the primary problems with its approach to regulating carbon emissions:
The chief political virtue of cap-and-trade — a complex scheme to reduce greenhouse gases — is its complexity. This allows its environmental supporters to shape public perceptions in essentially deceptive ways. [...]

Gallup also reported last month that many Americans assume recent jumps in gas prices are permanent.  But that’s not necessarily true. As Steve Chapman points out today, there are credible experts who believe that oil prices could well go down by more than 30%.  Lower demand as a result of high prices is part of [...]

Here’s an interesting statistic: According to the latest Gallup poll, a majority of Americans support Congress allowing oil companies to drill in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas now off limits. With oil prices hovering around $4 a gallon in most parts of the country, this is hardly a surprise. Worldwide demand is on the [...]

Michael Franc in NRO today:
Conservatives on the Hill want to believe they’ve started on that long road to recovery. Last week, Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) unveiled an exquisite and ambitious reform agenda he calls “A Roadmap for America’s Future.” In it, Ryan sets forth a credible way to address the fiscal catastrophe sure to [...]