If images of people being persecuted for “thought crimes” strike you as the stuff of science fiction — or, at worst, something that happened when communism was at its height and jackboots were storming Europe — get ready for a wake-up call. It...
POLITICS
The New Segregation: Racism in America, Then and Now
Trent Lott has changed from a nostalgist for segregation to an open advocate of neo-segregation. Lott’s old doctrine was called “separate but equal,” and kept black people out of white establishments by law, maintaining two separate sets of...
The Democrats’ Sorry Lot
The Republicans always find a way to do this: just when they have scored a sweeping victory, they find a way to turn it into defeat. And so it was that Trent Lott celebrated his party’s mid-term election win with a bizarre endorsement of Strom Thurmond’s...
Trent Lott, Race, and Hypocrisy, Part 2
Behind the endless apologies of Senator Trent Lott is the implied threat, expressed obliquely by his ally Senator Mitch McConnell, that Lott might resign from the Senate if stripped of his role as majority leader. This is denied by Senator Lott, but Washington denials...
Good Riddance, IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti
When Charles Rossotti became commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service five years ago, taxpayers hoped this marked a new beginning. Unlike all the tax lawyers who preceded him, Rossotti came from a business background. Presumably, he understood the need to end some...
Unlimited Liability
Americans believe strongly in the principle that an individual is innocent until proven guilty–and thus consider it a moral outrage to hold someone responsible for an evil he did not commit. In response to reports of a handful of innocent Arab-Americans being...
Trent Lott, Race, and Hypocrisy
Too many people have asked the wrong question about Trent Lott and have come up with the wrong answer. The real question is not so much about Senator Lott’s past statements but about the Republican Party’s future. What will Trent Lott’s continuance...
Destroy the WorldCom Zombie Already
With phony profits now expected to top $9 billion, WorldCom, Inc, the Mississippi-based telecommunications company, has earned the distinction of committing the worst accounting fraud in American history. As a result, investors have marked down WorldCom’s stock...
Thanks a Lott
Of course it was an idiotic thing to say. And of course Senator Lott’s remarks have been taken out of context. Neither of these opposing viewpoints refer to the real issue. The real issue is power. Democrats who now condemn Senator Lott for his apparent racism...
Fatwa: Coming to a Country Near You
“There is no room for play in Islam… It is deadly serious about everything.” So declared Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, in 1980. Nine years later, Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie discovered the grim consequences of free...
Digital Television and Copy Protection: Government Mandated Technology is a Bad Idea
Earlier this year, Silicon Valley was outraged at a proposal to prohibit the sale of almost any technology unless it contains copy protection standards endorsed by the federal government. While that proposal is unlikely to become law, there’s a similar...
The Foreign Policy of Doing Business With Criminals
Eight years ago, a particularly stupid U.S. Administration at a particularly stupid juncture in American history offered Communist North Korea a deal: if you don’t develop nuclear weapons, we’ll give you free American oil — at U.S. taxpayer expense....
Americans with Disabilities Act vs. The Internet
Common sense may seem in short supply in today’s litigation-happy world, but it got a boost recently from — of all places — Florida, where a federal judge tossed out a lawsuit claiming that Southwest Airlines’ Web site violated the Americans...
The Innovator’s Decision
Tom Daschle tried to turn the election into a referendum on the economy, blasting the Bush administration for “the worst performance in terms of real economic growth that we have seen in the last 50 years.” However hyperbolic, he raised a paradox: If the...
Tonya Harding’s Army
Here is an interesting quote by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz, the federal judge overseeing Sun Microsystems’ request for an injunction against Microsoft, “Capitalism is about making money, but it’s also about something else. It’s also...
Tax Credits for Health Care Coverage
It appears high on nearly every wish list President Bush has mentioned for the next Congress: health-care legislation. Why? Because lawmakers can’t wait much longer before they do something about the growing number of Americans who lack health insurance. The...
Cramer vs. Cramer: Another Day, Another Fantasy
If you’re a financial media pundit, you live every day with a fundamental challenge with respect to accountability and intellectual honesty. As your forecasts, opinions and views accumulate over the years, how do you reconcile what you are saying today (or...
Mutual Fund Failure
Despite the miserable performance of the stock market in recent years, the number of Americans owning mutual funds continues to rise. At last report, 48 million families owned stock funds. That’s roughly half of all U.S. households – up from only about...
The Case for Invading Iraq
With each passing day the United States comes ever closer to launching a new war against Iraq. And yet, before it has even begun, thousands of people are already marching in the streets demanding that our government not take any forceful action against Saddam’s...
Sowell’s Christmas Book Recommendations
Some years, it is hard to find enough good new books to recommend to buy as Christmas presents, so I have had to recommend old favorites like The Federalist Papers or recommend gift subscriptions to magazines like The Economist . This year, however, there have been so...
Lott and Thurmond: When Saying ‘I’m Sorry’ is Not Enough
The meaning of a bumper sticker “Don’t blame me–I voted Dixiecrat” is clear and unmistakable, it means regret for the end of segregation.
Senator Trent Lott’s Tin Ear and Loose Tongue
Anybody can put his foot in his mouth but making it a habit is too much, especially when you are in a position where your ill-considered words can become a permanent albatross around the necks of other people whom you are leading. That is the situation now, in the...
The Implosion of the Republican Party
It’s been nearly a week since Trent Lott got all misty for Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist campaign for president, and yet not one of his peers in the Senate has called for his ouster as Majority leader. Not one Senator has demanded the Senate censure...
The Pseudo-Science of Rubinomics
What is “economic analysis” when it comes from a newspaper? It’s usually just like Daniel Altman’s “Economic Analysis” column in the New York Times this morning: a montage of sound-bites from “experts” (or, if not...
Hope for Iran
Americans who care about Iran had something to be grateful for this Thanksgiving: The State Department finally came out foursquare in support of the hundreds of thousands of Iranians who have been demonstrating for an end to their country’s ruthless Islamic...
Venezuela’s Lonely Rebellion
Rebelling against tyranny is a lonely business these days. If the brave citizens of an oppressed country dare to resist evil, they can expect the rest of the supposedly civilized world to react with hostility or indifference. That’s the case right now in...
Majority Leader Lott Must Go
On Thursday, December 5, 2002, Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said: “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these...
A Choice Future for Students
The big winners on Election Day weren’t politicians. They were students. That’s because many of the politicians who won — Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and Senator-elect James Talent of Missouri, to name just two — are vocal supporters of school...
Capitalism is the Best Medicine
This past campaign season, Democrats such as Missouri’s Jean Carnahan ran spots bashing pharmaceutical companies for advertising prescription drugs and “passing the cost on to seniors.” While this argument wasn’t the shot in the arm Democrats...
Democrats: Still in the Dark
Last month, we saw how the American people reacted to George W. Bush’s first two years in the White House. “Republicans defied history by expanding their House majority in yesterday’s midterm elections,” reported The Washington Post on the...
Peaceniks: Warmongers for America’s Enemies
There is an increasingly vocal movement that seeks to engage America in ever longer, wider, and more costly wars–leading to thousands and perhaps millions of unnecessary deaths. This movement calls itself the “anti-war” movement. Across America and...
Government for Sale…to Saudi Arabia?
Bush administration officials and leading U.S. senators responded very differently to the news that Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, had given many thousands of dollars to a person connected to two of the 9/11...
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