In a mentary criticizing the fast food tax, I wrote, the fast food industry is really too easy a target for the government. Besieged by the media and public opinion (consider the popularity of the film Super Size Me), quickservice restaurants have gotten the reputation for being extremely unhealthy. But the truth of the matter is plex. The National Restaurant Association reports that two-thirds of quickservice restaurants have added low-carb options to their menus. As usual, the service industry responds...

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I’m not sure whether this reflects the fractiousness of the European “Union,” or European unity in opposition to protection for intellectual property (or both), but yesterday the European Parliament “overwhelmingly rejected a proposed law Wednesday to create a single way of patenting software across the European Union.” “Patents will continue to be handled by national patent offices … as before, which means different interpretations as to what is patentable, without any judiciary control by the European Court of Justice,” said...

A new analysis of birth records by the Center for Immigration Studies shows that in 2002 almost one in four births in the United States was to an immigrant mother (legal and illegal), the highest level in American history. In addition, nearly ten percent of all births in the country were to illegal-alien mothers. It is currently U.S. government policy to award American citizenship to all persons born on U.S. soil, even the children of tourists and illegal aliens. In...

Today is the UN-sponsored World Population Day, which most of us have never heard of, I’m sure. From the name, I cynically (and rightly) assumed that rather than celebrating human life, this day would instead address many of the spurious “crowded planet” concerns put forth most popularly in Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (first edition 1968). Equality empowers…to do what exactly? You won’t see Ehrlich’s name plastered all over World Population Day materials, but I’m convinced that his thesis is...

As the jobless levels across the nation continues to decline, Michigan continues to lag behind. The nationwide unemployment rate decreased to 5.0% in June, to the lowest levels since September, 2001 according to reports. Meanwhile, Michigan remains at the bottom of the list with the worst unemployment levels, upwards of 7%. But the key to understanding why these improving numbers have not translated into job gains in Michigan appears in the same report: “Factory payrolls shrank for the fourth straight...

ARMAVIRUMQUE passes along an excerpt from an article posted yesterday by The New Republic, “The Killing Machine,” by Alvaro Vargas Llosa. The article is about Che Guevara, and the famous photograph that “thirty-eight years after his death, is still the logo of revolutionary (or is it capitalist?) chic.” Llosa interviews Javier Arzuaga, a former Catholic priest, self-described as “closer to Leonardo Boff and Liberation Theology than to the former Cardinal Ratzinger.” Arzuaga’s relates the following: there were about eight hundred...

On the heels of the defeat of proposed protections for intellectual property at the hands of the European Parliament, according to the AP the European Commission is addressing an aspect of the same debate: online music and copyright. With respect to the potential economic benefits, “The most effective model for achieving this is to enable right-holders to authorize a collecting society of their choice to manage their works across the entire EU,” said the Commission in a statement, adding such...

Over at OpinionJournal, Robert Bork examines the effects of “radical personal autonomy” on American jurisprudence in “Their Will Be Done: How the Supreme Court Sows Moral Anarchy.” Says Bork: Once the justices depart, as most of them have, from the original understanding of the principles of the Constitution, they lack any guidance other than their own attempts at moral philosophy, a task for which they have not even minimal skills. Yet when it rules in the name of the Constitution,...

The Thinking Toolbox: Thirty-Five Lessons That Will Build Your Reasoning Skills, by Nathaniel Bluedorn and Hans Bluedorn, illustrated by Richard LaPierre, ISBN 0974531510, 234 pp. Christian Logic, 2005. Nathaniel and Hans Bluedorn are brothers who live in Indiana (more about them at ) and The Thinking Toolbox is a follow-up to their first book, The Fallacy Detective. These books are primarily intended for use as homeschooling textbooks, and the Bluedorns’ interest in this area stems largely from their education at...