Government-financed terrorism insurance? Republicans hope it will ‘stimulate’ the economy. It just might, short-term — but at the expense of making individuals ever-more dependent on government handouts; and at the expense of reinforcing the false...
POLITICS
A United Nations World Order: Building the Capitol Building of the World
The UN is the protector of the innocent, the poor and the hungry. I know it’s true because I read it in United Nation’s propaganda. And, pity the unappreciated UN, with its noble mission. Because greedy nations like the United States just won’t pay...
The Islam Twist
“Suicide bombers twist true Islam.” So goes Muslim apologists’ standard song and dance. Well, let’s test their theory out with a little dance of our own, one I call the “Islam Twist.” Here’s how it’s done. First we...
The Corruption of the Concept Sovereignty
No more corrupt yet popular reason exists for opposing military strikes against Islamic terrorist states out to destroy America. The reasoning goes like this: these states are “sovereign” and thereby immune from preemptive attacks. “We are really...
America’s Two Wars: Strong on Iraq, Soft on Islamic Terrorists
Has anyone noticed the difference in the way America’s two wars are approached? When the subject is Iraq, the U.S. government is proactive, articulate and specific. But when it comes to militant Islam, officialdom is reactive, awkward and vague. Take the issue...
Race to Judgment
Some call it a necessary step to heal long-standing racial inequality. Others call it a system of racial discrimination no better than apartheid in South Africa. It’s affirmative action on campus — and thanks to the Supreme Court, the controversial...
Tax Holidays
You know that when politicians start talking “tax holidays” and “temporary tax cuts” that something’s amiss. For years, conservatives have argued that tax cuts (especially across- the-board tax cuts which lower the marginal rate and the...
Merck and Pfizer: Time for a Drug Binge?
In turbulent times, tastes typically turn to the tried and true. For instance, investors usually flee volatile stocks in favor of shares in the big drug companies, which keep churning out good profits, whatever the economic conditions. After all, people get sick...
Campus Diversity Fraud
Anyone familiar with the argot of modern identity politics should be able to fill the blanks in this quotation from the student newspaper at Amherst College. The speaker is explaining why the minority group he belongs to should be granted its own...
The Uncertainty Principle
“There remains an illusion among investors, especially professional money managers and analysts, that with enough digging and number-crunching, uncertainty can be conquered.” Unfortunately, it can’t. That’s the thrust of one of the best essays...
Media Bias on Media Bias
After Senator Tom Daschle created a stir by attacking Rush Limbaugh and other conservative voices in the media as somehow responsible for death threats to politicians like himself, his total absence of any evidence made him look ridiculous. However, this charge was...
Terrorist attacks in Kenya
The recent terrorist attacks in Kenya (and in Bali on Oct. 12) should be a wake-up call to all those who want to fight terrorism. Islamic terrorism will continue and worsen as long as there exists dictatorial regimes — Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc....
Judging Judges, Part 2
Although Republicans have regained control of the Senate, in a numerical sense, controlling the Senate in reality is a much tougher job. The ability of a minority in the Senate to filibuster things they object to means that real control may require 60 votes to shut...
Simplify the Tax Code with a Flat Tax
It’s come to this: The federal government has accumulated such a huge backlog of uncollected tax debts that the IRS is thinking about hiring private bill collectors to help track down the missing funds. They’re also offering deals to taxpayers who use...
Judging Judges
While the most immediate effect of the Republicans’ election victories has been to strengthen President Bush’s hand in dealing with the threat of Saddam Hussein, the most important long-run effect may be on the kind of federal judges who will shape the...
Red-Tape Conservationists
Environmentalists are up in arms about a recent Bush administration proposal to reduce red tape on logging in federal lands. But what this controversy is really about is not just the “conservation” of forests, but the conservation of the vast, arbitrary...
Which Way Will the Democratic Party Go?
Given the unequivocal rout in the Nov. 5 election, there’s been no shortage of friendly advice on how the Democratic Party can resuscitate itself. From Sen. Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, looking at the prospect that Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco will...
War and Morality
The hallmark of our political leaders today is moral uncertainty–a quality that is shaping President Bush’s shapeless policy toward Iraq. Despite his repeated assertions about the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein, Mr. Bush chose to embrace the appeasing...
A Physician Comments on Abortion and the Morning After Pill
I was recently confronted in the Emergency Department with a situation I rarely encounter: a woman requesting “the morning after pill.” Since I practice in a largely conservative state, for a few minutes I introspectively debated whether I should provide...
What Would Jesus Drive?
A group of Evangelicals claims a hazard lies in the road ahead. Is their concern radical Islam, you may wonder? Violent crime, you may ask? Smothering taxation, you may guess? No, these Christians got wrapped around the axle about the sinister sport-utility vehicle,...
Washington’s $782 Billion Spending Spree
“If we don’t … reaffirm our commitment to fiscal responsibility, years of hard work could be squandered,” Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently told Congress. Considering the ever-climbing spending levels on Capitol Hill these days, his...
Gun Control Myths and the Facts
Most people who are in favor of gun control laws support such laws because they believe that these laws will reduce the number of firearms deaths. Such people are not the problem. Their minds can be changed when they learn that the facts are very different from what...
Enough Analyst Bashing
There’s been a lot of tough talk about how “tainted” Wall Street stock research is — and what should be done about analyst recommendations influenced by investment-banking fees and other conflicts of interest. It’s an important question...
Gun Control Myths: Gun Restrictions and Murder Rates
Talking facts to gun control zealots is only likely to make them angry. But the rest of us need to know what the facts are. More than that, we need to know that much of what the gun controllers claim as facts will not stand up under scrutiny. The grand dogma of the...
Islam’s Ugly Assault on Beauty
Beauty pageants are not usually events fraught with geopolitical significance. But then again, they are not usually held in the middle of a battleground in the war between Islam and the West. The collapse of the Miss World pageant in Nigeria is an important case study...
Gun Control Myths: The Case of England
Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm of Bentley College deserves some sort of special prize for taking on the thankless task of talking sense on a subject where nonsense is deeply entrenched and fiercely dogmatic. In her recently published book, “Guns and...
Free Speech for Me, But Not For Thee
The financial media is in an uproar over proposed new New York Stock Exchange and National Association of Securities Dealers rules that would require stock analysts to stop talking to reporters who didn’t include mandated disclosures when the analyst is quoted...
Phony Diversity
You’ve written a tuition check, carted your son or daughter off to college, given those last minute admonitions and made those tearful good byes. For those thousands of dollars, the anguish of seeing your 17- or 18-year-old pack up and leave home for the first...
Thankful to Be American
Before the Berlin Wall came down, I worked at a supermarket where a regular customer, a refugee from Communist Yugoslavia, once told me, “In my old country, we were lucky to have small shops that sold some food; in America, we have supermarkets for toys.”...
Senator Daschle vs. Rush Limbaugh: Who is Promoting Violence?
The change from Senate majority leader to Senate minority leader has apparently led Senator Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, into more of the kind of wild and reckless rhetoric that may have contributed to the Democrats’ defeat in the recent elections. According to...
Class sizes and Academic Achievement
Election Day brought some surprises, but the fact that voters in Florida passed an amendment that would reduce class sizes in their state isn’t one of them. Naturally, most parents would rather see their children in classes with just 19 other kids and a...
Quarter One 2000 Upside Down?
When an investment celebrity like Pimco’s Bill Gross calls for Dow 5,000, we can’t help but see it as a sign of extreme investor pessimism suggesting that we must be getting near a bottom. It reminds me of the kind of thing we heard at the top in 2000...
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