FreedomTalks

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 [...]

The farm bill is pretty obviously a bipartisan debacle, one of those only-in-Washington mutual spendathons limited only by the — wait, at $700 billion over the next ten years, it appears to have been limited by basically nothing.
Well, at least it’s money well spent, right?  America’s farmers deserve our support.  Maybe, but not like this. [...]

Earlier last week Representative Barney Frank made the following statement in an interview with the New York Times, addressing the housing bailout he’s been pressing aggressively through Congress:

“The notion that this bill doesn’t keep people out of foreclosure is true,” he said. “It doesn’t combat global warming. It [...]