The US-sponsored “road map” to peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not a very challenging document. The text, which is posted at the State Department website, is only 4-1/2 pages long, and most of it is written in reasonably clear English. Anyone...
POLITICS
Cameras in the Courtroom
It is fascinating to watch special interest groups seeking privileges for themselves in the guise of protecting the rights of other people. A recent issue of Editor & Publisher magazine — the trade journal of newspapers — argued for allowing the use...
Hypocrisy, The Name is Rockefeller
Bleeding-heart liberalism for thee, but not for me. That is the expedient philosophy of the wealthy Rockefeller family. Last week, the Rockefeller rule was on full display at a little-noticed hearing in Arlington County, Va. There, Mrs. Sharon Percy Rockefeller...
Islam’s Image Problem
Americans are increasingly negative about Islam and Muslims – or so found an important survey that the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press published last week. Perhaps the most dramatic change has been the jump in Americans who find that Islam, more...
George W. Bush: A Liberal Republican on Domestic Policies?
In recent weeks, George W. Bush has started to come in for the first meaningful criticism from mainstream conservatives during his presidency. While nascent, it could become the only real barrier to his re-election next year unless dealt with quickly. To be sure,...
Race Board Needed
The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Grutter vs. Bollinger permits colleges to award a “plus” to black, Hispanic and American Indian student applications for admission. As sure as night follows day, we can expect racial fraud. You can bet the rent money...
Patriotic Farce: Losing Our Liberty in the Name of Fighting Terrorism
America may have reached a turning point on July 22, 2003 in the battle to restore and protect civil liberties threatened by the Patriot Act. On that day the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass two amendments that restore the rule of law by denying...
Authentically Black: Essays for the Black Silent Majority
Black leaders in America have an unflinching allegiance to the political left and are part-and-parcel to the Democratic Party. They see no reason to change or reform existing race-based affirmative action programs. They are also out of step with the times. This is the...
Treason, by Ann Coulter
Treason , by Ann Coulter, is a book of great value and great danger. For Objectivists, who are immune to its horrendous philosophical claims, its integration of the political events of the last 50 years will be of great value. But the excellence of those very points...
Investors Are Terribly Myth-Guided
Lord knows where these things come from or how they get started. Another one of those emails is making the rounds — the kind that everyone seems to get and forward on to everyone they know, so you end up getting a dozen copies of it. So maybe you’ve...
A Tale of Two Premises: California’s Deficit and Budget Crisis
The California legislature’s “solution” to the state budget crisis reeks with evasiveness and self-contradiction. Pretending that they were not raising taxes, the Assembly in fact raised automobile taxes around $5 billion. Pretending to leave local...
America: Under Rights or “Under God”?
Does the assertion that individuals possess inalienable rights square with the belief that a nation should be “under God”?
Peers and Pied Pipers
Some years ago, while walking across the campus of Stanford University, I happened to encounter the late Glen Campbell, then head of the Hoover Institution, where I work. Glen was also a regent of the University of California and the regents had just made some...
Bond Markets and Interest Rates
Largely unbeknownst to the general public, the bond market has been collapsing in recent weeks. For some odd reason, the liberal media have failed to trumpet this news as proof that President Bush’s economics policies have failed. It may be because the reason is...
Slavery in Our Time
If you went to public school any time in the last 20 years, you can be forgiven if you think slavery is a uniquely American and Southern experience. That belief, fueled by the political correctness movement, is dead wrong. The evil system we call slavery existed long...
Are Cops Racist? How the War Against the Police Harms Black Americans
If an incident involves a white cop and a black criminal, you don’t need to know the facts to know how many in the media will react.
Drug Industry Destruction
Last week, the House voted 324 to 101 to make it easier for Americans to import lower-priced prescription drugs sold in Canada and Europe for their own use. It rejected a more sweeping proposal to allow such imports by drug wholesalers and pharmacies. The fact of the...
Liberal Segregationists in the Schools
The spirit of George Wallace is alive and well — among left-wing zealots in some of America’s most “progressive” taxpayer-funded schools. In Oberlin, Ohio, local school board president Tony Marshall argues that only black high school teachers...
Republicans Ought to Recall Theocratic Principles, Not Gray Davis
The nation’s most frenzied electoral battle since the 2000 presidential election — the effort to recall California Gov. Gray Davis — offers dramatic evidence that the GOP is intellectually bankrupt. The Republican philosophy was once represented by...
The New York Times: Poster Child for Inaccurate Reporting
Say what you want about The New York Times, but it still makes more news than any other paper in the United States. By this, I don’t mean in the sense of printing the news, as other papers do, but rather in the sense of news about the Times itself. Consider...
Blame Bush’s Unprincipled Foreign Policy
The 900-page Congressional report criticizing the operations of the FBI and CIA in the months prior to the September 11 attacks misses the fundamental point. Whatever incompetence on the intelligence agencies’ part, what made September 11 possible was a failure,...
Help Bring Honesty to Government Contracts: Shine the Internet’s Light on Them
You want honesty in government, right? Enough to take 15 minutes out of your busy day to encourage Uncle Sam to jumpstart an obscure but potentially historic project that could shine more light on Washington than ever before? There is no formal name for the project,...
Early Birds Get Returns
To invest is to defer. When you buy a company’s stock or a government agency’s bonds, you decide not to consume your cash today but to entrust it to an institution that, you hope, will produce rewards for you in the future. History shows that, if you make...
Unintended Consequences are Still Consequences: The Faith-based Initiative is a Trojan Horse
The Bush administration’s Faith-based Initiative (S.476) is misguided and will not achieve its stated goal to use private organizations and private charitable programs as a means to cut the federal budget and return “caring” to its proper place in...
President Bush’s Secret Service Buffoons
Shame on the Secret Service. This week, it investigated renowned editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez like he was some left-wing homeless crackpot who had sent President Bush an anthrax-laced death threat — all because Ramirez drew a provocative cartoon that was...
Measuring Wealth
Recently, I discussed new IRS data showing that the share of total income going to the richest 400 individuals has increased. However, income is an imprecise measure of well-being. That is better measured by wealth. A new study by the Federal Reserve sheds important...
Martha Stewart is Attacked Because of Her Business Success
Why do so many people hate Martha Stewart? How does a home-decorating expert with a wholesome public persona come to be portrayed as a major cultural villain? Consider the latest media frenzy over Stewart’s indictment for obstruction of justice. If the...
Random Thoughts for July 2003
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Have you ever heard a single hard fact to back up all the sweeping claims for the benefits of “diversity”? Some people were upset, not by Dusty Baker’s off-hand remark that races differ in their responses to hot...
Global Anti-Tobacco Treaty
When I served in the Army, the sergeant would say, “Smoke’m if you have’m.” Most of us would, too. I am still a cigar smoker. The question is—how long before some storm trooper busts in the front door to tell me I can’t smoke any...
Weapons of Political Destruction
The Vietnam War showed how dangerous it is to allow a President of the United States to lie us into armed conflict, as Lyndon Johnson did by inflating a minor incident in the Gulf of Tonkin into a means of stampeding Congress into authorizing an escalation of military...
How Did We Ever Make It Before Nanny Government?
Whenever someone says that this or that government program is absolutely necessary, I always wonder, “What did people do and how did they survive before the program?” If someone says food stamps are absolutely necessary for poor people’s survival, I...
Fortney “Pete” Stark: Poster Boy for Democrat Double Standards
Rep. Fortney “Pete” Stark, D-Calif., is the foul-mouthed poster boy for Liberal Double Standards. There he was on Capitol Hill last week, sounding more like Eminem than an eminent lawmaker, hurling epithets such as “fruitcake” and...
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