I’m glad that various leftish writers are condemning the Family Research Council’s absurd suggestion that the recent study showing the ineffectiveness of abstinence education just proves the need to pour more money and resources into abstinence programs. I can now rest assured that I’ll never hear them making that kind of argument the next time […]

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Here’s the AP today: High-deductible health insurance plans favored by many employers often wind up being an unfair burden to women, a new study says, largely because women need many routine medical exams that quickly add up. [….] “High-deductible plans punish women for having breasts and uteruses and having babies,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, the […]

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My interest was piqued by the first line of this Slate review of the new film Shooter, which describes it as a “libertarian action thriller.” Then I realized that by “libertarian” they mean “about a survivalist crackpot who blows up lots of government stuff.”

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Cato’s executive VP has a post up noting the frustrating frequency with which one encounters the view that markets and free trade are good and desirable except for this or that special case—often some pet project or regulation that benefits the person making the exception—and defends holding fast to “dogmatic” principle, lest all these exceptions […]

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Megs on school choice: I can build a pretty cogent argument in favour of single-provider education based on equity. We could conceivably say that we want every child in the country to receive a uniform educational product, in the interests of levelling the playing field as much as possible before we send them out to […]

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Ed Feser responded to my post below in the comments a few days back, and I promised a reply, but didn’t get around to it until today. Here it is, in case anyone’s still interested. Feser writes: Re: the remark you find “truly weird,” you have simply ignored the context in which it was made, […]

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Ed Feser’s central thesis in this piece up at TCS Daily—that Hayek’s thought may provide the best basis for a “fusionist” coalition between libertarians and conservatives, but remains in tension with tenets cherished by both—actually seems plausible enough on the whole. You’d be forgiven for not noticing, though, as over the course of a very […]

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Almost 30 years ago, Robert Nozick wrote that Israel’s kibbutzes provided “the acid test for voluntary socialism,” and concluded that the results to date had not provided a ringing endorsement. Well, hate to say I told you so, but according to The Guardian, the oldest and best-known kibbutz in Israel has just decided to go […]

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Via Volokh Conspiracy, I see that Richard Posner and Gary Becker have a pair of posts on the idea of “libertarian paternalism” (a notion introduced a couple years back in a paper by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler). The idea behind this “libertarian” or “soft paternalism” is that government rules seek to shape or influence […]

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Jill at Feministe has a long post about a recent Hoover study on obesity and food stamps. I haven’t read the study, nor do I particularly care to, so I don’t want to get into its merits or demerits. (Though, as an aside, does “the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer” seem […]

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