In case you missed it, AEI health expert Scott Gottlieb, MD explains the transformation of the pharmaceutical industry in a recently published piece (full text below). Drug discovery has become targeted, averse to bureaucracy, and focused on solving more difficult to cure, serious maladies.

An article in the International Business Times shows that China continues to hit the brakes on the exports of rare earths.

Three years into the nationalization of housing finance by government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Authority, it is time to start reducing their footprints. 

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not employ the nuclear option or go nuclear, as many headlines and stories suggested. He did not use an unprecedented ploy to challenge the filibuster or in any real way change Senate rules by majority vote. What Reid employed was closer to a firecracker than a nuke.

Now Pew Research has come out with figures for 2011. They're not good news for Barack Obama and the Democrats.

Setting a fixed-percentage tax credit for itemized deductions would signal Republican sensitivity to fairness, appeal to redistributionist Democrats, and create another precedent for a flat tax.

Hope springs eternal among policy makers in Europe’s beleaguered periphery. At five minutes to midnight in Athens, and with a bank run having started in Madrid, these policy makers cling to the forlorn hope that somehow Germany is going to relent on its strong opposition to euro bonds.

Young people often lead change, and two new surveys provide some clues as to where that change is headed.