Archive | May, 2005

The clock is ticking. Unless Congress acts — who knows? — we could see a wave of suicides, patricides, matricides and rich-uncle killings in 2010. That’s the year that the federal tax on estates — also known as the “death tax,” the most hated tax exacted by the U.S. Treasury — will be repealed. If [...]

“Visualize… what would happen if a man missed his wallet, concluded that he had been robbed, broke into every house in the neighborhood to search it, and shot the first man who gave him a dirty look, taking the look to be a proof of guilt.” (Ayn Rand, “The Nature of Government”, Virtue of Selfishness) [...]

Ministers Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Washington, D.C.’s Mayor Anthony Williams and others recently met to discuss plans to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the October 1995 Million Man March. Whilst reading about the plans, I thought of an excellent topic for the event: how not to be poor. Avoiding long-term poverty is not [...]

People striving to create free societies properly deserve the moral support of anyone who loves freedom. So it is dismaying that, despite President Bush’s rhetoric about freedom, the United States shuns one brave group of people attempting to escape the clutches of a mighty totalitarian regime–but endorses another group seeking to establish a tyranny. These [...]

Recently a friend described a meeting with a nasty-tempered leftist who was from a rich family. Unfortunately, there are a lot of leftists who were born with a silver spoon in their mouth — and, instead of being grateful, are venomous against American society. Conversely, there are people like yours truly who were born on [...]

President Bush is in Russia to participate (wrongly) in Monday’s Red Square celebration of the 60th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazis. The good news is that Bush just made an anti-Soviet speech in Latvia. As the NY Times reported on Sunday, Bush “had said only the day before in a speech in Latvia [...]

The latest liberal crusade is against the Wal-Mart stores. A big headline on a long article in the New York Times asks “Can’t A Retail Behemoth Pay More?” Of course they can pay more. The New York Times could pay its own employees more. We could all pay more for whatever we buy or rent. [...]

A man’s home is his castle. Or at least it used to be, before years of property rights started being eroded. But the tide finally may be turning back in the right direction. A little history is important here. Until about 90 years ago, there was no zoning in the United States. The Fifth Amendment, [...]

The murder of a young woman in a remote corner of Afghanistan challenges its central government’s efforts to extend the rule of civil law [N.C. Aizenman, “A Killing Commanded by Tradition