<i>If so, why not address those points rather than deploy ad hominems?</i><p>I don't see it as <i>ad hominem</i>. Talking about "economic freedom" is basically pointless unless one comes out and admits what definition of "economic freedom" is being used. The WSJ story notably doesn't do this, but it's not terribly hard to infer that the economic principles applied are likely informed by the strongly right-leaning political views of the institutions behind the study.<p>Or, putting it another way: the study attributes the "loss" of economic freedom largely to the response to the recent economic crisis. Which corresponds with a time when the political opponents of the sponsoring organizations had just cemented control of two out of three branches of the federal government. If the New York Times and other politically-left-leaning organizations published a study which claimed a drastic decline at the precise moment the Republican Party gained the same level of control, would you assume objectivity on <i>their</i> part?