Brian Gongol
Comparing today's circumstances to the Great Depression makes for one big fallacy
We live in a world of broadband Internet, chemotherapy, and passenger-side air bags, and our libraries and computer networks contain the aggregated knowledge of everyone from King Solomon to Leonardo da Vinci to Albert Einstein. If we can't demonstrate the wisdom to get out of our problems with enough sobriety and confidence to show that a temporary economic slowdown is not the end of the world, then our forebears ought rightfully to be ashamed of us.
Incredible fires kill hundreds in Australia
Any natural disaster that kills hundreds of people in a wealthy, developed country comes as a shock. That's because of the lifesaving properties of economic growth.
Freedom of commercial speech is just as important as freedom of political speech
Both require some very basic rules -- mainly an obligation to tell the truth -- but when people in a nation like the UK feel the need to get so worked up over a television ad that they file complaints with a government oversight authority, then perhaps it's time for a reminder that the only real reason for rules against defamation is so that a person's character can't be unreasonably besmirched so badly that he or she can no longer earn a living. Commercial speech needs just as much to be free as political speech.
Podcast: Keynes and the free market
(Audio file) The President spoke tonight as though there's no longer any serious debate between Keynesian economists and Chicago-school economists. He's quite wrong.
Sludge spill contaminates Illinois river
