Eli Lehrer's Page

The National Transportation Safety Board is an investigative agency with almost no actual power besides the ability to ask questions about serious transportation-related incidents and crashes. Because it doesn't have any actual rule-making authority, it has a well deserved reputation for true independence. Recently, it has suggested that all people on airplanes, even children under 2 years of age, be… Continue

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has announced he wants to privatize state liquor stores as part of a plan to interject more funding into Virginia's transportation infrastructure. On it's surface, it's a good idea: as McDonnell has said, there's really no reason for the government to run liquor stores in the first place while there's a clear role for government in building transportation… Continue

Some libertarian groups are trying to claim a "victory" for on a challenge to the Sarbanes-Oxley Law launched by the Free Enterprise Fund and the law firm Jones Day. Technically, in that the court did decide in favor of the "right" side since it ruled that the a tiny part of the law violated the Constitution's appointments clause. But the entire government-knows-best, overbearing structure of the law has remained in force. Quite simply, the challenge to the law was flawed from it's inception. A… Continue

On a cross-country flight yesterday evening, I watched Tim Burton's new Alice in Wonderland. I'm hardly the first to note Burton's source material--replete with a hookah (bong) smoking caterpillar, talking animals, and a generally twisted world view--seems pretty much like a drug trip. But did anyone notice the end of the movie? In Burton's version (which tells a story based… Continue