Libel Tourism, and Specter and Lieberman’s Proposed Federal Law

Senators Arlen Specter and Joe Lieberman have a joint commentary in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (July 14, 2008), promoting a federal law to discourage so-called “libel tourism."  Libel tourism refers to the practice of a plaintiff suing for libel in a plaintiff-friendly jurisdiction – i.e., the UK – and then seeking to have the judgment enforced in US and other...

  I missed Bastille Day celebrations in Paris on Monday – got on a plane back to DC early in the morning.  But let me extend my best wishes on Bastille Day to all our French readers.  And everyone else, too.  My friend BP, a magazine editor in France, commented at dinner the other night that the thing about America and...

The Copenhagen Consensus is the brain child of self-described 'skeptical environmentalist' and statistician Bjorn Lomborg; housed at the Copenhagen Business School, it seeks to apply cost benefit analysis to the world's leading problems in development, poverty, the environment, etc., with the assistance of a range of leading economists, and come up with not just a list of issues, but a...

In today’s Washington Post, a front page article titled, “Multitude of Forces Drains the Spirit of Giving,” by staff writer Philip Rucker. Compared with the tsunami of 2004 and Katrina, the natural disasters of Burma and China have not produced anywhere near the outpouring of American charitable aid donations: In the weeks since a cyclone laid waste to Burma's delta...