In the old days, miners brought canaries down into the tunnels to detect methane. The birds were more sensitive to the deadly gas and worked as an early warning system. When they died, it was time to get out. For conservatives, Sen. Edward Kennedy, Massachusetts...
POLITICS
Economics Lesson in a Kit
Who’d have thought an inanimate object could teach a lesson in economics? Yet that’s exactly what a first-aid kit did. Several kits, actually, wall-mounted cabinets in the buildings where I work. Now we’re not just talking Band-Aids and iodine here....
Lies My Mother Never Told Me About Single-Payer Health Care
The nature of a lie is such that if you repeat it often enough it takes on a life of its own, always at the expense of truth. While some lies–“your hair looks great”–are harmless enough, and lies like “I never had sex with that...
Review of the Prime Movers: Traits of the Great Wealth Creators
We’ve all heard about the alleged “robber barons.” For decades the world’s successful wealth creators – from Rockefeller to Gates – have been brushed with that smear. But Dr. Locke shows that the smear just can’t stick. The...
Is High Tech Really Back?
Is high tech really back, or are we headed for Dubble Bubble? Whitney Tilson, venerable and circumspect columnist for the Motley Fool, has no doubts: “Times like these make me sigh, hold my head in my hands, and groan, ‘How is it possible that, in less...
The NY Time’s 9-11 Scam
The New York Times — unrelenting champion of the underprivileged, mighty battler against all corporate evils, and vehement opponent of Republican tax cuts for the “rich and powerful” — lives by a far more self-serving motto: All the corporate...
Deficits, Fiscal Policy, Tax Cuts, and Inflation
Last week’s announcement that the federal budget deficit will reach $455 billion this fiscal year (which ends on Sept. 30) brought predictable denunciations from the Democratic side of the aisle. It’s not so much that Democrats care about deficits —...
Foreign Policy and Self-Interest: Liberia Campaign Would Be a Moral Crime
Those who claim that the United States has a moral obligation to send troops on a “humanitarian” mission to Liberia have it exactly backward: our government has a moral obligation *not* to send its forces into areas that pose no threats to America’s...
Seven Years Later: Was TWA Flight 800 a First Strike By Jihad Terrorists?
It’s been seven years since the July 17, 1996, crash of TWA Flight 800 near Long Island, New York, and the cause remains unknown; the lingering mystery of one of the nation’s worst aviation disasters is now a forgotten media spectacle. The $ 40 million...
Pass a Law! The Evils of Toy Guns
What would you do if a seven-year-old kid walked into a store where you were working or shopping and brandished a gun and said he was robbing the place? I’d slap his rear and take him home to his mother. Liberals shake in their shoes and misplace their backbones...
Why U.S. Troops Should Not Be Sent to Liberia
President Bush should not commit any United States troops to an international peacekeeping force in Liberia. At some point in the future an international peacekeeping force could help stabilize Liberia. However, refusing United Nations Secretary General Kofi...
Who’s Rich, Part 2
Someone once pointed out that there are at least 50 colleges that claim to be among the top 25 colleges in the country. There is a similar congestion among the 400 “richest” Americans, as shown in data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service....
Vile 9-11 Vultures
The fraud trial of Cyril Kendall begins this week in New York City. Kendall is a 52-year-old Guyanese national who has apparently used every chance he has had in America, including the September 11 attacks, to scheme and scam. He faces felony grand larceny and forgery...
A Balanced Budget Amendment: A Bad Idea
With federal budget deficits rising, pressure is on once again to enact a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. On June 25, a discharge petition was initiated to force a vote in the House on H.J. Res. 22, the latest in a long line of legislative efforts to...
Insider Trading and Asymmetric Information
Some of us know more about some things than others, and we often exploit that advantage. I know more about my driving habits than my auto insurance company. Borrowers know more about their repayment prospects than lenders. The seller of a car knows more about the...
Who’s Rich?
Congressman Patrick Kennedy, a Rhode Island Democrat, recently declared to fellow party members at a Washington night spot, “I don’t need Bush’s tax cut” and added that he had never worked a day in his life. A number of other rich people have...
Stocks Can Mean Cash
The stock market has been rising impressively, but practically all I hear these days are complaints about low interest rates. Readers lament that they can make only three-quarters of a point in a money-market fund such as Merrill Lynch Ready Assets, or just 1.3...
Numbers Can Be Deceiving
Let’s dig deeper into the bull-versus-bear debate that has dominated my last few columns. I’ve taken the bullish position — but I’m not rabid about it, and I’ve discussed the things that worry me, too. I’ve gotten tons of email from...
Principles for Peace in the Middle East
In our quest for peace with the Palestinians, three imperatives unite Israelis: Terror must end, our borders must be secure, and the Palestinians must abandon the goal of destroying Israel. That is why we insist that the terror organizations be dismantled, that we not...
WSJ Out of the Money on Microsoft’s Stock Options
The financial press is grave-dancing on Microsoft’s decision to no longer award stock options to employees — and instead to award shares of stock itself. A Wall Street Journal column by Jessie Eisenger crows “Microsoft, once the bullying monopolist,...
United Nation’s International Criminal Court is an Evil Institution
The international community cried crocodile tears when the United States withdrew its support of the UN’s International Criminal Court (ICC). Supporters of the court laughed when the US expressed concern that our soldiers could be prosecuted for war crimes....
“The Door of No Return” in Perspective
An Associated Press photo was flashed around the world last week showing President Bush standing in “The Door of No Return,” the doorway of a slave warehouse on Goree Island, in Senegal, the place from which millions of able-bodied Africans, centuries ago,...
“A Shot at Peace”: Can the U.S. Enforce the “Road Map”
The goal, everyone needs firmly to keep in mind, is not the signing of more agreements but (short-term) the ending of terrorism and (long-term) the Palestinian acceptance of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state.
Day Care and Dead Toddlers
Every summer, the stories come. And the tiny bodies pile up. “Toddler trapped in hot van dies.” “Kids die from heat in SUV.” “Baby boy dies in hot van.” Some of the tragedies involve outright parental neglect — a father who...
Summer Reading, Part 2
In an era when so many uninformed people act as if they know it all, it is refreshing to get requests from people who want to educate themselves on particular subjects or just to get the basic education that they feel they missed when they were in school or college....
The IRS 400
On June 26, readers of The New York Times saw this headline at the top of page one: “Very Richest’s Share of Income Grew Even Bigger, Data Show.” One would have thought that important news was being broken. But in fact, the reporter, Pulitzer Prize...
Summer Reading, Part 1
From time to time, parents write to ask how they can counter all the steady diet of slanted political correctness their children are getting in the schools and colleges. The summer vacation is probably as good a time as any to get them something to read to let them...
U.S. to Israel: Do As We Say
In an agreement brokered last month by U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Palestinian terrorist groups agreed to a temporary cease-fire on condition that Israel ceases its practice of “targeted killings” (executing would-be terrorists before...
A Cry from Zimbabwe
Since the 1980s thousands of individuals have been displaced from their homes, beaten, tortured, raped or murdered.
“Saving” Bay Meadows
In typical California style, T-shirts have begun to appear with the slogan, “Save Bay Meadows.” What are Bay Meadows? A lovely pristine natural vista? Not really. Bay Meadows is an old race track that has seen better days, both physically and financially,...
European Constitution vs.British Sovereignty
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has survived with a wrist slap the first parliamentary committee’s report on the false claims he made about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But other, more determined, inquiries are underway, and a new imbroglio is brewing...
America’s Spy Software Scandal, Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Justice
Did Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have access to a U.S. computer tracking program that enabled them to monitor our intelligence-gathering efforts and financial transactions? If so, who is responsible for allowing the program to fall into their hands? And who else...
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