After a political campaign noted for its divisiveness, President Bush is about to begin his second term. If form holds, his inaugural address will lay claim to a political mandate for what he thinks the government should do and try to portray government under his administration as a source of American unity. Unfortunately, however, those conclusions do not follow from America’s electoral results. Majority votes do not determine what government ought to do, when it exceeds our limited Constitution, as it does every day.

Cato’s Tom Bell is starting up the “Simon Market in Science Claims.” From what I can gather, it will orchestrate a market for “idea futures” in various environmental claims. (It’s named, of course, in honor of Julian Simon’s famous bet with Paul Ehrlich.)

In this way, Monsanto is attempting to protect its business from pirates in much the same way the entertainment industry does when it sues underground digital distributors exploiting music, movies and video games.

New York state attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer reached a $600K settlement with Macy’s department stores in his race profiling investigation of the company. The store must also train its security guards to avoid racial profiling.

I love to read economist Steven Landsburg, even though I almost always disagree with him. In the present article, I’ll focus on a chapter from Landsburg’s forthcoming book entitled “More Sex Is Safer Sex,” which could pass as a parody of economic analysis worthy of Swift.

It seems that the FBI can’t get its $170 million computer system to work right. So of course it will spend $2 million to evaluate the problems. While this evaluation takes place, “the bulk of the internal reports and documents produced at the F.B.I. must still be printed, signed and scanned by hand into computer format each day.”