Big-spending President Bush is at it again. His latest bright idea is to spend billions of tax dollars on job training programs. Democrats rage because this is their turf. Bush seeks to out-bid them. Lost in all this silliness are the important questions: What...
POLITICS
Jamie Olis’s Tragedy, And Ours
While Washington was preoccupied with the melodrama of Richard Clarke, I was moved by a more obscure event in Houston that could have greater significance. Earlier this month, a 38-year-old Korean immigrant named Jamie Olis, with a wife and a six-month-old daughter,...
Brains and Things
One of my heroes is the late Julian Simon, the University of Maryland economist who challenged the conventional wisdom that the world was getting overpopulated and would soon run out of food and other critical resources. The best evidence of increasing demand and...
Defending Defense: Budgeting for an Unpredictable Future
With President George W. Bush’s $401.7 billion defense budget under consideration, some Members of Congress are entertaining the idea of cutting defense–at least modestly–to help reign in ballooning federal spending. However, cutting defense spending...
“The Passion” of Howard Roark
“The Passion of the Christ,” a movie that highlights Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion, has met with both strong praise and heated criticism. Yet virtually no one has condemned this movie for championing the anti-life ideas fundamental to religion. By...
U.N. Plan for Internet Control Tiptoes Forward
The phantom of government-controlled Internet has raised its menacing head again, this time on the global level. “Even the definition of what we mean by Internet governance is a subject of debate. But the world has a common interest in ensuring the security and...
A Tale of Two Books: One Critical of Clinton and One Critical of Bush
“Counterterrorism czar” Richard Clarke spent nearly 30 years in government service, including eight years in that capacity during the Clinton administration and briefly retained by the current Bush administration. Now comes Clarke’s book,...
American Appeasement in Iraq
As U.S. soldiers respond to attacks in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq, many commentators warn that a forceful, self-assertive campaign to wipe out the militant resistance would be disastrous. Disaster may indeed be looming–but only because of a lack of...
National Heritage Areas: The War Over Words
Based on the testimony of A. Durand Jones, the Deputy Director for the National Park Service (NPS) at a March 30th congressional hearing on National Heritage Areas, it would appear private property owners should now rest easy if their lands become targeted for a...
Fighting Terrorism and the Case for Pre-emption
Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines magician as “one who performs tricks of illusion and sleight of hand” and “one skilled in magic,” a “sorcerer.” That’s an apt description for the parade of Democrats, leftists and...
Counting the Costs of Government Regulation of Land Development
A dispute about how tall the city of San Mateo, California, will allow buildings to be built may seem like a completely local problem that no one outside of San Mateo should care about. But the principle involved touches everyone from coast to coast, on issues having...
Jobless Recovery My Foot
The Bureau Labor Statistics released its payroll jobs report for March earlier this month, and the reported growth of 308,000 jobs for the month is a blessed relief in what has been called a “jobless recovery.” But this should really be no surprise. As I...
Fixing the Jury System
Now that the case against Tyco executives has ended in a mistrial, there is much outcry against the juror whose holdout will cause a $12 million trial to have to be done all over again from scratch. Whether that juror was principled or just pig-headed, this trial...
Socialist Bush Busted
When George W. Bush further socializes medical care, he not only harms patients; he also harms the case for capitalism.
Diverting the Blame for September 11th
The squabbling and finger-pointing surrounding the 9/11 commission only serve to obscure the fundamental lesson of that horrific day. Whatever errors or incompetence on the part of a particular individual or intelligence agency, what made September 11 possible was a...
Senator Kerry’s Problem: The Likability Gap
If Kerry goes down in the fall, trace the blame to . . . Butchy Cataldo. Kerry’s critics point to his shifting stands on NAFTA, the war in Iraq, the No Child Left Behind Act and the Patriot Act. Kerry detractors expect the public to catch on when Kerry — a...
Random Thoughts for March 2004
Random thoughts on the passing scene: The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all...
The 10-Year Mistake
With the Federal Reserve holding official overnight interest rates at 1.00%, the yield on the typical money-market fund is about one half of one percent, after management fees. With yields this low, you’ve got to be tempted to do something — anything!...
Minimum Gasoline Prices
A couple of weeks ago, heading down to George Mason University, I pulled into my favorite Wawa gasoline station just off the Bel Air, Md., exit on I-95 South. At each of the 20 gasoline pumps, there was a sign posted that Wawa would no longer dispense free coffee to...
Capturing Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden’s capture or death, the focus of renewed American military attention, would greatly help the war on terror — but not in the way you might expect.
Celebrate Individualism, Not Ethnicity
On St. Patrick’s Day, I wore no buttons that read: “Proud to be Irish.” While I’m of Celtic stock, I’m neither proud or ashamed to be Irish, but indifferent to this fact — as I would be if I were of any other ethnicity or race....
The Government Vs. Your Doctor: A True Story
Like many doctors in today’s medical profession, I am the victim of a violation of individual rights. While I continue to practice medicine, many others do not. Personally, I can testify: the assault on doctors is real, it matters, and it is getting much worse....
Water Shortages: Subsidies Are All Wet
For years we have been hearing about a water shortage in the western states. To most people, that might suggest that there just is not enough water for all the people in those states. But, when an economist hears the word “shortage,” it has an entirely...
The U.S. Institute of Peace Stumbles
Last week, I became a whistleblower. (According to Merriam-Webster, a whistleblower is someone “who reveals wrongdoing within an organization to the public or to those in positions of authority.”) This is not a role I expected or sought, but I felt...
America’s a Safe Bet
Earlier this month marked an anniversary most investors would rather forget. On March 10, 2000, the Nasdaq composite index hit a high of 5049. The high for the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index came two weeks later at 1527. Despite strong rallies...
The “Counterterrorism Czar”: Born-Again Critic of the Bush Administration
Richard Clarke, President George W. Bush’s former “counterterrorism czar,” accuses the Bush administration of seeking a tie between Iraq and 9/11, and pushing America into an ill-advised war in Iraq . Clarke claims that Bush attempted to...
Rattling the Chains of Slavery
The president of Brown University has appointed a committee to look into the history of the connections of that institution to the slave trade. This is to be no academic exercise of scholarly research. There is obviously supposed to be a pot of gold at the end of this...
Price Gouging
The Virginia Senate just passed the Virginia Post-Disaster Anti-Price Gouging Act of 2004, which now awaits Gov. Mark Warner’s signature. In part, the act says, “During any time of disaster, it shall be unlawful for any supplier to sell, lease, or license,...
Outsourcing Foreign Policy and “The International Community”
Spain’s decision to turn tail and run, in response to a terrorist bombing, not only tells terrorists how to get their way in the future, it should also tell us about the dangers of outsourcing our foreign policy to our allies or to the United Nations, as so many...
The Purpose of an Iraqi Constitution
On December 15, 1791, 212 years ago, the American Bill of Rights was ratified. Thus ended a long and difficult process by which the American people first liberated themselves from tyranny and then established the first government in history founded on individual...
Politics Without Mirrors: The Culture War Between the Religious Right and the Secular Left
In a current Supreme Court case, Michael Newdow has challenged the constitutionality of reading the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. Newdow, an atheist, argues that the Pledge’s reference to America as “one nation, under God,” constitutes...
Get Ready for the Vitamin Police
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now seeking to expand its considerable powers into the regulation of vitamins and nutritional supplements. The FDA has evidently discovered that Americans, after centuries of experience doing so, cannot now be counted on to...
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