Robert W Tracinski

Memo to the world: Reality cannot be cheated. Politicians and diplomats like to pretend that you can cheat the laws of logic, that there is no need to commit to absolutes, and that there is something to be achieved by "constructive ambiguity." The past week has been a...

There has been much talk recently about using lawsuits or congressional hearings to challenge the expansion of presidential power since Sept. 11. Immediate congressional action on this issue is crucially important -- not to revoke these powers, which are mostly...

"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." So declared Winston Churchill after an early allied victory in World War II. It was a reminder to his nation that the war would require many more years and a...

According to a breathless report in the morning news, American jets over the Taliban's front lines have engaged in "one of the fiercest bombardments yet, unleashing more than 15 bombs in the space of hours." Get that? A whole 15 bombs. Within hours. Is this a real war...

They condemn us for the "arrogant imperialism" of our foreign policy. They claim America is motivated by a predatory greed to plunder the world's natural resources. They say that we are the real terrorists and that we deserved Black Tuesday's attacks. Why do these...

Now that we have officially more or less committed ourselves to war, many will now object that this mission poses too many strategic pitfalls -- that the Middle East is a vast quagmire, that the enemy is too elusive, that this will be "another Vietnam." As always,...

Everyone acknowledges that Tuesday's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington were acts of war. But, liberal commentators have been quick to object, we do not know whom to attack, how to attack, or how to escape a so-called "cycle of violence." They have raised...

Last month, the capital of an oppressive dictatorship has just been selected as the host city of a symbol of peace and civilization: the Olympic games. If you want to know how this happened, remember that it was done, not over the objections of civilized governments,...

For 10 months, Yasser Arafat and his legions of rioters and terrorists have been waging a war against Israel. Now it looks as if Israel will finally choose to fight that war. Faced with a new wave of terror attacks, Israel is now weighing whether to invade the West...

The president's recent decision on embryonic stem cell research has been described in most reports as a compromise that balances the views of scientists, who want to move forward unrestrictedly, against the views of the religious right, who call for a total ban on...

The leaders of the world's most advanced nations, plus Russia, met recently at the G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, to discuss ways to increase trade and international cooperation -- about the most peaceful and civilized thing that the world's leaders could possibly do....

Gao Zhan has seen the cruelty of the Chinese dictatorship firsthand and up close, as a native of China and through the last five and a half months of captivity under trumped-up accusations of spying. But she has emerged unbowed. Here are her words upon returning to...

The clones are coming! Lock your doors, hide your wives and children -- or, better yet, hold congressional hearings and pass a law. Angry villagers in academia and on Capitol Hill are crusading for a ban on human cloning -- a ban potentially so sweeping that it would...