As a boy, writes Kenneth Pollack in his masterful new book on Iraq, “The Threatening Storm,” Saddam Hussein would heat an iron poker until it was white-hot, then use it to impale cats and dogs. Years later, when he had boys of his own, he would take them...
POLITICS
Gun Statistics for the Second-Amendment-challenged
Maryland Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D) recently urged a ban on Saturday Night Specials and “assault weapons,” while recommending a national ballistic fingerprint database. The interviewer, CNN’s Judy Woodruff, asked no difficult...
Nancy Pelosi: A San Francisco Liberal
Now that Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is becoming the Democrats’ House minority leader, she is being celebrated as the first woman to hold such a high post. But she is also being described as a “San Francisco liberal” — which she definitely is....
Child Sacrifice, Palestinian Style
Israel is criticized for alleged insensitivity to the risks of casualties among civilians, especially children, during counter-terrorist missions. But the tragedy of unintended casualties from justified military actions cannot be compared to a society’s...
Scour the World for Stocks
In the good old days, foreign stocks provided balance. Typically, if U.S. stocks were having a bad year, non-U.S. stocks would be having a good year. One study found that for the 25 years between 1970 and 1995, foreign stocks beat U.S. by a wide margin in 12 years,...
Wins and Losses: Bush’s Dilemma
President Bush can count two unexpected victories in the past week: a broad mandate from the American people — in the form of an unprecedented mid-term congressional sweep — followed by a unanimous United Nations Security Council vote approving the...
SEC Should Support Markets and Not Central Planning
Harvey Pitt had to go. He had lost the credibility to run the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, President Bush should move swiftly to replace him. The SEC has too much on its plate for dawdling. What the country needs is someone who has the guts and stature to...
North Korea Building Nuclear Bombs? Perish the Thought
Our leaders express incredible shock that North Korea is building nuclear bombs. This emotion of shock betrays the reasons why we have the whole problem with terrorism in the first place. We are victims of terrorism because too many of us — and all of our...
Live Free or Die: Giving Real Meaning to Veterans Day
Veterans Day arouses three emotions in most Americans: solemnity, because it celebrates the veterans who have defended our great country; sadness, because so many have lost their lives in the process; and pride, because they have fought so well. The supreme value that...
Honor Veterans, Rebuff Sacrifice
As a former captain in the US Army, I can attest that I never encountered anyone who joined because of some masochistic yearning to transform himself into a sacrificial animal.
Eliot Spitzer’s Attack on the Securities Industry
Whatever you may think of Microsoft, the decision last Friday by federal judge Colleen Kollar-Kottely to approve the company’s settlement with the Department of Justice was a much needed rebuke to the scorched-earth prosecutorial mindset of today’s state...
Deformed Reform of Wall Street
The proposed restructuring of stock research at big Wall Street investment banks — if “proposed” is the proper word when NY attorney general Eliot Spitzer is doing the proposing holding a rubber hose in his hand — is an even worse-than-usual...
Do you want your child to die fighting in Iraq?
“Do you want your child to die fighting in Iraq?” This type of question is one of the subtle, insidious ways by which pacifists try to undercut the war against Islamic terrorists. To understand how this is done, we must first take an honest look at our...
Grasping the Essence of the Republican Victory: A Philosopher Analyzes the 2002 Elections
The election results were good. The outcome was, in all modesty, what I had expected for a year: Republican control of the Congress. I expected this because of 9/11, and that is in fact the explanation of the outcome. I agree with those commentators who say that the...
The Thirty Stocks That Returned the Most in the Last 30 Years
Celebrating its 30th anniversary, Money magazine recently crunched the numbers and found the 30 stocks that had returned the most, in price and dividends, since the magazine’s founding in August 1972. The No.1 stock was, of all things, an airline –...
What Will the Republicans Do with Their Victory?
The oh-so-smug and oh-so-glib media “experts” have ended up with egg on their face for the second time in a few weeks. First their “profiles” of the Beltway sniper turned out to be completely wrong — wrong car and wrong race, among other...
Bill Gates and Michael Milken: The War on Capitalism, Then and Now
It’s interesting to compare Bill Gates’ and Microsoft’s victory last Friday in obtaining a favorable settlement of their antrust case with another battle in the war on capitalism from ten years ago — one that turned out very, very differently....
The Election We Deserve
As of the writing of this column, it is mid-day on Nov. 5, and the exit polls have not even begun to predict how today’s elections will end. It might seem like a bad time to make predictions, given that this is considered one of the tightest congressional...
The Meaning of Microsoft’s Victory
On May 16, 1998, Bill Gates walked away from negotiations with the US Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and the attorneys general of 20 states to prevent the threatened filing of a sweeping antitrust suit against Microsoft. Gates had offered many...
The Stockholm Syndrome at the Wall Street Journal?
The markets, big business and Wall Street have been held hostage by politicians and regulators for so long that the hostages are starting to identify with their kidnappers. How else can you explain the October 30th Wall Street Journal front pager, breathlessly...
If You Want Growth You Need Technology
Stocks are first and foremost growth instruments — a bet on the potential upside. But the best thing I can say for the stock market right now is that it’s deeply undervalued. That has been reason enough for me to tell clients over the past several months...
Getting Things Wrong: Former Vice President Walter Mondale’s Experience
Former Vice President Walter Mondale made much of his “experience” during his televised debate with his rival for the Senate seat of the late Paul Wellstone, Republican Norm Coleman. The real question, however, is not just what quantity of experience each...
The Stockholm Syndrome at the Wall Street Journal?
The markets, big business and Wall Street have been held hostage by politicians and regulators for so long that the hostages are starting to identify with their kidnappers. How else can you explain the October 30th Wall Street Journal front pager, breathlessly...
John Allen Muhammad: Convert to Violence?
It came as no surprise to learn that the lead suspect as the Washington, D.C.,–area sniper is John Allen Muhammad, a Black-American who converted to Islam about 17 years ago. Nor that seven years ago he provided security for Louis Farrakhan’s...
Senator Paul Wellstone: A Soul in Need of Overhaul
“He represented the regular people. He didn’t represent the high and the mighty.” So says a Minnesota resident while mourning the death of Senator Paul Wellstone. It’s an interesting distinction: regular versus mighty. “Regular”...
The Rational Basis of Sex: Sexual Choices and Preferences (Part 3 of 4)
Your sexual choice reveals a lot about who you are and what you think of yourself. Some people shoot for a partner lower than themselves. For example, a intelligent guy may feel that he’s only able to hold some “dumb broad” he picks up at a bar. He...
If State Government Doesn’t Do It, Who Will?
Question 1 on the Massachusetts ballot would abolish the state income tax. If enacted it will eliminate as much as $9 billion in government revenue and force a radical downsizing of the state’s budget and operations. That is exactly the purpose for which its...
Playing UN “Survivor”
If surviving in the world most fundamentally involves producing the values from nature that are needed to sustain human life, then the hit CBS series, Survivor, hardly lives up to its name. In the current season debut, one exceptional team member, John, found the...
End the Massachusetts State Income Tax
This month, American voters will head to the polls for midterm elections. Though the names on the ballots have changed since the last election, proponents of limited, accountable government will again be forced to choose between the same contenders: Candidate No Way...
Disgruntled Conservatives
“A Record Year for Academic Pork,” said the headline on the front page of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the leading trade publication of the academic world. Whether representatives of farmers, corporate welfare recipients, and other beneficiaries of...
Random Thoughts October 2002
Random thoughts on the passing scene: People who cannot be bothered to learn both sides of the issues should not bother to vote. Considering that we all enter the world the same way and leave in the same condition, we spend an awful lot of time in between trying to...
John Allen Muhammad: Hating America
When a Ukrainian immigrant murdered Ennis Cosby, the son of Bill and Camille Cosby, Ms. Cosby blamed America. She wrote, “I believe America taught our son’s killer to hate African-Americans.” Reeling from the pain of her loss, Cosby’s...
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