Amid all the controversies over medical care, no one seems to be asking a very basic question: Why does it take more than 1,000 pages of legislation to insure people who lack medical insurance? Despite incessant repetition of the fact that millions of Americans...
Thomas Sowell
The Obama Vision: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part IV
The serious, and sometimes chilling, provisions of the medical care legislation that President Obama has been trying to rush through Congress are important enough for all of us to stop and think, even though his political strategy from the outset has been to prevent...
Obamacare’s Phony Arguments: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part II
When famed bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he said: "Because that's where the money is." For the same reason, it is as predictable as the sunrise that medical care for the elderly will be cut back under a government-controlled medical...
Obama Cronies vs. American Citizens: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part I
There was a time when rushing a thousand-page bill through Congress so fast that no one has time to read it would have provoked public outrage. But now, this has been attempted twice in the first 6 months of a new administration. The fact that they got away with it...
Random Thoughts for August 2009
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Different people have very different reactions to President Barack Obama. Those who listen to his rhetoric are often inspired, while those who follow what he actually does are often appalled. New York and Chicago have both...
Utopia Versus Freedom
"Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." We have heard that many times. What is also the price of freedom is the toleration of imperfections. If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom...
Disaster in the Making
After many a disappointment with someone, and especially after a disaster, we may be able to look back at numerous clues that should have warned us that the person we trusted did not deserve our trust. When that person is the President of the United States, the...
A Post-Racial President?
Many people hoped that the election of a black President of the United States would mark our entering a "post-racial" era, when we could finally put some ugly aspects of our history behind us. That is quite understandable. But it takes two to tango. Those of us who...
Obama’s Magical News Conference for Socialized Medicine
Distracting the audience's attention is one of the ways magicians pull off some of their tricks. President Barack Obama's televised news conference on medical care shows that he is something of a magician when it comes to politics. The big trick for the president is...
Medical Care Confusion
Is there a coherent argument for government-controlled medical care or are slogans and hysteria considered sufficient? We hear endlessly about how many Americans don't have health insurance. But, if we stop and think-- which politicians hope we never do-- that raises...
A Personal Inequity: Me and Michael Jordan
Sometimes, when I hear about "disparities" and "inequities," I think of a disparity that applied directly to me-- the disparity in basketball ability between myself and Michael Jordan. When I was in school, I was so awful in basketball that the class coach wouldn't...
A Tangled Web: “Disparate Impact” Dogma (Part 2)
Much of the backlog of cases in our over-burdened courts has been created by the courts themselves, with adventurous judicial "interpretations" of laws that leave a large gray area of uncertainty around even the most plainly written legislation. Lawyers of course fish...
A Tangled Web: “Disparate Impact” Dogma (Part 1)
While the recent Supreme Court decision in the New Haven firefighters' case will be welcome news to those who don't think that a gross injustice is O.K. when those on the receiving end are white, the reasoning behind the 5 to 4 decision is a painful reminder that the...
Judge Sotomayor’s “Qualifications”
For the fourth time in six cases, the Supreme Court of the United States has reversed a decision for which Judge Sonia Sotomayor voted on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. If this nominee were a white male, would this not raise questions about whether he should be...
Alice in Obama Medical Care Land
Most political and media discussions of medical care have an air of unreality reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. There is an abundance of catch-phrases but remarkably few coherent arguments. Let's start at square one. Why is there alarm about American medical care?...
College Education: To Much of a “Good Thing”?
Even if the "stimulus" package doesn't seem to be doing much to stimulate the economy, it is certainly stimulating many potential recipients of government money to start lining up at the trough. All you need is something that sounds like a "good thing" and the ability...
Republicans in the Wilderness
A Gallup poll last week showed that far more Americans describe themselves as "conservatives" than as "liberals." Yet Republicans have been clobbered by the Democrats in both the 2008 elections and the 2006 elections. In a country with more conservatives than...
Sonia Sotomayor: Equality or Pay-back?
Back when I was on the receiving end of racial discrimination, it was to me not simply a personal misfortune, or even the misfortune of a race, it was a moral outrage. But not everyone who went through such an experience sees it that way. When it comes to subjecting...
The Character of Nations
In an age that values cleverness over wisdom, it is not surprising that many superficial but clever books get more attention than a wise book like "The Character of Nations" by Angelo Codevilla, even though the latter has far more serious implications for the changing...
Varieties of Nothing
Doing nothing might seem to be simple and easy. But there are many varieties of nothing, and some kinds of nothing can get very elaborate and complex. In courts of law, for example, "concurrent sentences" mean that nothing is being done to punish a convicted criminal...
“Out of Context”, Part 2 — Judge Sonia Sotomayor and Rush Limbaugh
As the mainstream media circles the wagons around Judge Sonia Sotomayor, to protect her from the consequences of her own words and deeds, its main arguments are distractions from the issue at hand. A CNN reporter, for example, got all worked up because Rush Limbaugh...
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