Government & Liberty

Smart-growth activists, especially those representing the movement’s new urbanist component, frequently talk about “livable cities”—implying that, over the past 50 years, America has developed cities that are not livable.

Table Two: First Quarter 2002 Housing Opportunity Index (HOI) and 1990-2000 Growth Metropolitan Area HOI Growth Elkhart-Goshen, IN MSA 94.9 17.0 Kokomo, IN 94.8 4.7 Fargo-Moorhead, ND-MN 94.5 13.7 Springfield, IL MSA 92.6 6.

Asbestos: Stampeding to the Exits In late September, all but two dozen of the 250 companies being sued in an 8,000-plaintiff asbestos trial in West Virginia settled out of court.

I read with deep interest the recent article “W.E.B. Du Bois: Wellspring of American Negroes’ Dilemma?” by Archon Theadore M. Pryor of Kappa Boulé (The Boulé Journal, 64:1, Spring 2002).

On August 12, 2002 the Wall Street Journal described a 350-square-foot former public toilet in south London that developers are turning into a “stylish apartment.” They expect to sell it for around $200,000.

Canadian Hookers to Sue Hollywood for Lost Wages A group representing Vancouver prostitutes, beggars, and drug addicts is threatening to sue 30 movie and television production companies for interrupting their illicit businesses.

Pinellas County, Florida, is the “smart growth” lobby’s dream. “Smart growth” is the self-description of Europe-wannabe groups seeking to pack as many of us Americans into as little space as possible. Suburbs: bad. High-rise tenements: good.

Udder Madness Reversing a lower court decision, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled in July after three vehicles consecutively hit a Black Angus cow wandering on a state highway, the only person who could be sued for the two deaths that occurred in car #3

At the Northwestern train station in downtown Chicago, commuters are met with a billboard that reads: “Odds of dying in a car crash: 6,200 - 1; dying from smoking: 3 - 1.

Tick, Tick, Tick, Mr. Motley A few months ago we noted that famed plaintiffs’ attorney Ron Motley had vowed in October 1999 to bring the former lead paint industry “to its knees” within three years or he would give them his 120-foot yacht.

The European Union took yet another step away from the rational regulation of genetically modified crop plants and foods in late June, when it became the 22nd party to formally ratify the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.

When I started farming 30 years ago, I never dreamed of how technological progress would revolutionize agriculture. We still can’t control the weather.

He’s Demanding a Lifetime Subscription to Penthouse A man who uses a wheelchair has sued a Florida strip club because an area where private lap dances are performed is up a flight of stairs and inaccessible to him.

Win Big! Lie in Front of a Train The New York Times reports a New York City woman was awarded $14.1 million by a state supreme court jury after she was hit by a subway train.

Ronald McDonald on Trial The tobacco industry warned for years that legal precedents set in lawsuits against it would lead to class action suits against other legal products. Critics scoffed, but the prediction is fast coming true.

Acne Medication Made Al Qaeda Wannabe Do It The family of the 15-year-old boy who crashed a single-engine plane into a Tampa high-rise, Al Qaeda style, has filed a $70 million lawsuit against the maker of an acne medication that had been prescribed

With two million new users being added each month, more than half of the nation now uses the Internet, and the much-decried “digital divide” is closing at a rapid rate, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

A Crushing Burden “The tort crisis,” writes Michael Freedman in the cover story of the May 13 issue of Forbes, “is really tomorrow’s news.

Six Months to Go and Counting In October 1999, notorious asbestos and tobacco plaintiffs’ attorney Ron Motley boasted to The Dallas Morning News that if he failed to bring the lead paint industry -- which he had just sued in Rhode Island -- “to its

On January 8, 2002, the United States Supreme Court reached a landmark decision in the ongoing “debate over definitions” that is the Americans with Disabilities Act. In Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc., v.

1 Europe Goes to Pot: Great Britain, EU Abandon Marijuana Prohibition UK officials branded marijuana prohibition an endangered species in 2001, announcing in October that police would no longer arrest individuals for marijuana possession, and that

"Don't you know there's a war on?" So ran one of the more popular admonitions of World War II. It meant, in effect, "What you're doing ain't exactly contributing to the effort, so you best mend your ways." The principle applies today.

As the anthrax scare has mushroomed, modern technology's solutions have emerged like a quick strike force. Medical treatment was instantly available with the antibiotic, Cipro.

My first brush with "bioterrorism" occurred in 1997, when I was working as a television producer half a block from the B'nai B'rith National Headquarters in Washington, DC.