Free Republic

Following Waxman, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) compared the cancellations to the government forcing drivers to trade in Fords to buy Ferraris. Under Waxman's logic, the fact that consumers might benefit from cheaper plans, even if those plans did not offer the same array of benefits, is irrelevant. The free choice of individual consumers and insurance providers offering a legal and beneficial product is defined as "abuse." Under Waxman's definition, a student graduating from a professional school who happened to be older than 26 (and hence ineligible to stay on his or her parents' insurance) and who found a job in...

The Republican Party is the “party of science deniers,” a top House Democrat said Monday. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), an ardent proponent of climate-change legislation, criticized Republicans for their attempts to block the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions during a speech at the Center for American Progress Monday. “I’ve never been in a Congress where there was such an overwhelming disconnect between science and policy,” Waxman, the former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said. “Republicans in Congress have become the party of science deniers, and that is profoundly dangerous,” he said. Waxman lamented...

In January, the documentary Gasland won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The documentary attacked the process of “fracking,” which involves pumping a solution that is 99 percent sand and water, plus a few trace chemicals, underground at high pressure. This creates fractures in the rock formations that allow oil and gas to flow to collection points. The film claimed that the process pollutes groundwater with devastating consequences. (For more on Gasland and fracking, see this article from the Examiner’s “Big Green” series in September.) Multiple EPA studies have shown fracking is safe and effective, but the...

Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) is about as able a legislator as exists in the current goat rodeo cum Democratic Congress, so if Waxman wrote a book explaining how Congress really works, it would be worth taking a look at. And so it is that Waxman has just released The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works, co-authored with The Atlantic’s Joshua Green. But the book has a serious truth-in-advertising problem: Explaining the behind-the-scenes machinations of Congress is far from the central purpose of the book. Indeed, Waxman is quite explicit about his true goal in writing it. “Sadly, the view...

While Dan exposes Henry Waxman’s [the Democrats' own Nosferatu] latest authoritarian crusade, let’s not forget the havoc that continues apace with his CPSIA (Consumer Product Safety Improvement [heh] Act of 2008). As Walter Olson writes: It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give...