A few days ago, Bill Gates received a rather malicious piece of hate mail singed, “Ralph Nader.” It wasn’t his first. Presumably, the infamous “Consumer Advocate” left his return address off of the envelope, because someone at Microsoft accidentally opened it instead of just throwing it in the pile of America On Line CDs and [...]
Liberal Conspiracy Theories: Bush and Enron
Robert W Tracinski (2002.01.21 ) Copyrights, Politics
The U.N., the Trilateral Commission, the international conspiracy of Jewish bankers — these are the conspiracy theories for which right-wing nuts are infamous. But what about the conspiracy theories of the left? I’m sure you have heard of them: the Military-Industrial Complex, the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” and, of course, the international conspiracy of multinational conglomerates. [...]
The New Math: Why Students Can’t Add or Subtract
Andrew Bernstein (2002.01.20 ) Politics
Imagine that your child comes home from school one day and announces that in his math course there are no textbooks, no teaching — and no right answers. Instead, students form groups to construct their own math “strategies.” They add fractions by folding paper strips, without ever learning how to convert to common denominators. They [...]
Blame America First
Ralph R. Reiland (2002.01.20 ) Politics
I was in the university section of Pittsburgh for a meeting right after the attacks of September 11, just an hour after thousands of people had been burned alive or crushed to death or jumped to their deaths from the top of the inferno that had been the World Trade Center, before any of us [...]
Infallible Haters?
Thomas Sowell (2002.01.20 ) Politics
Anybody can be mistaken — except haters, apparently. Whenever others express their hatred of Americans, in words or deeds, the hand-wringers among us want us to ask: “Why do they hate us?” Apparently we should automatically go in quest of those causes so dear to the ideology of the left, instead of realizing that many [...]
Guns in the Hands of Private Citizens Make Us All Safer
Jeff Jacoby (2002.01.19 ) Guns, Politics
For the gun controllers, the year gone by was bleak. As 2001 began, their lawsuits against gun manufacturers were being dismissed in one city after another. An attorney general nominee they bitterly opposed was confirmed. Soon after, he wrote to the National Rifle Association, “unequivocally” backing its view that the Second Amendment guarantees the freedom [...]
Does Poverty Cause Militant Islam?
Daniel Pipes (2002.01.19 ) Politics
The events of September 11 have intensified a long-standing debate: What causes Muslims to turn to militant Islam? Some analysts have noted the poverty of Afghanistan and concluded that herein lay the problem. Jessica Stern of Harvard University wrote that the United States “can no longer afford to allow states to fail.” If it does [...]
The Daschle-Harkin Proposal: Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s Scam to Help Swindle Taxpayers
Mark Tapscott (2002.01.18 ) Politics
Basketball star Scottie Pippen played for some great Chicago Bulls teams and won multiple NBA championships. Then, as now, he also pulled down some hefty paychecks. This year, for instance, Pippen will make $18.1 million playing pro hoops for the Portland Trail Blazers. Believe it or not, Pippen is an accomplished farmer as well. He [...]
Interview of Wade Dokken: The Social Security Crisis and What to Do About It
James K Glassman (2002.01.17 ) Politics, Social Security
“By creating private accounts, you’d create private assets and private assets could be passed onto another generation as capital. And I think that would change the lives of millions of people,” says Wade Dokken. And Wade would know. A former advisor to Hillary Clinton, he is the President and Chief Executive Officer American Skandia, Inc. [...]
“Islamic Americans” vs. America
Daniel Pipes (2002.01.17 ) Politics
An odd controversy briefly dominated the sports pages in March 1996. A player in the National Basketball Association, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, refused to follow the league’s rule requiring that players stand in a “dignified posture” during the national anthem. Instead, since the beginning of the 1995-96 season, Abdul-Rauf had remained seated during the playing of the [...]
Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News
Bernard Goldberg (2002.01.16 ) Politics
Bias meticulously documents what everyone outside the media and the Left establishment knows – that news coverage has a left-wing bias. Even more, this book makes clear the critical role the news media play in our lives, and the life-threatening default on responsibility the media is guilty of – all the way from the AIDS [...]
Protect National Security and Individual Rights with Military Tribunals
Donald H. Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (2002.01.15 ) Politics
On September 11th, Americans found their nation under attack. Terrorists hijacked civilian airliners, turned them into missiles, and used them to kill thousands of innocent Americans–men, women and children–as well as people from dozens of nations. Today, three months after the attack, the ruins of the World Trade Towers are still burning–and bodies are still [...]
Argentina’s Economic Crisis: An “Absence of Capitalism”
Ana I. Eiras and Brett D. Schaefer (2002.01.15 ) Politics
As U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill explained to The Financial Times in February 2001, the key factor underlying recent financial crises is not a failure of capitalism, but an “absence of capitalism.” Argentina provides a cogent example; its lack of economic freedom–the necessary environment for capitalism to work effectively–resulted in continual economic decline [...]
Fading Shock and Fading Resolve
Robert W Tracinski (2002.01.14 ) Politics
Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett’s famous fictional detective, tells a story about one of his early cases: An accountant, he says, was walking down the street when a steel beam fell from a construction site and smashed into the ground, narrowly missing him. After his brush with death, the accountant re-examined his life, quit his job, [...]
Kick This Baby Killer Out
Michelle Malkin (2002.01.14 ) Politics
If homeland defense means anything, it means being able to dictate who can and cannot call our country home. The case of Melanie Jeanbeaucejour shows that America does not yet have the guts or willpower to swiftly throw out unwelcome guests. This story is sure to bring smiles to sleeper terrorists in our midst. Jeanbeaucejour [...]
Early Warning Signals: Bin Laden Before Sept. 11th
Daniel Pipes (2002.01.13 ) Politics
This article was first published as “Bin Laden and Herndon, Virginia” in the The Jerusalem Post (June 20, 2001). Unfortunately, no one listened to its dire warning until after September 11th.–Editor Islamist terrorism has afflicted nearly every Western country and is likely to get worse. One reason is the radicals’ aggressiveness; another is the feeble [...]