Last week I wrote:
Full-out patent war against an equally matched competitor means mutually assured destruction … so large companies inevitably settle and use their patents to keep new innovators out.
As if to prove my point, Fortune quotes Oppenheimer’s Yair Reiner who says that is exactly what is happening:

Nancy Pelosi may be convinced that we have to pass health care
reform in order to find out what's in it, but if it passes, there's
at least one provision we can already count on: an individual
mandate to buy health insurance.

By David Rittgers

The
Cayman Island Sea Turtle Farm was established by entrepreneur and
libertarian hero Antony Fisher in 1968. Unfortunately, the farm
went bankrupt when the trade in sea turtle products was banned
internationally. Now a government-owned corporation, the farm is a
huge tourist attraction supplying turtle meat to the local market;
it also releases thousands of turtles into the wild. Aware of the
vexed history of the farm, Reason Science Correspondent
Ronald Bailey traveled to the Cayman Islands to discover just how
tasty sea turtle can be.

By Julian SanchezSen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has just fired off a letter to Barack Obama urging him to finally appoint some members to the long-vacant Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, echoing a similar recent request from a coalition of civil liberties groups.

Great piece in the Portland Oregnonian about how
factory workers in China, far from being slaves, are now earning
enough to buy real estate and send their kids to colleges so that
they won't have to work in factories. Here's the beginning:

WUHU, China -- Years after activists accused Nike and other
Western brands of running Third World sweatshops, the issue has
taken a surprising turn. [...]

Supertrain 2010 = Supertrain 1979!
President Barack Obama has pledged $8 billion in tax dollars to
build a national network of high-speed rail—trains that can carry
passengers at speeds in excess of 150 MPH.
But the Supertrain fantasy was a mistake back in the 1970s, when
it gave rise to one of the most
expensive—and rotten—TV shows in history. And it's just as much
of a wreck in the 21st century for at least three reasons:

By Julian SanchezA new BBC poll is garnering plenty of press attention for its striking finding that 78% of global respondents believe that Internet access “should be a fundamental right of all people.” Fascinating!  Except… what exactly does that mean?