“This is the real Havana,” Miguel said as we turned from Avenida Simon Bolivar to a gritty side street cratered with potholes. “Here you see how Cubans live. Tourists don’t come to *this* street.” Well, they might if they were simply...
POLITICS
We Are Either With Israel, Or We Are With the Terrorists
We may be about to witness a major victory in the War on Terrorism, a victory as important as any in Afghanistan or Iraq. But American troops will not win this victory, and the battle will be fought without the support and even against the wishes of our president....
The Andrea Yates Verdict
The only good thing about the Andrea Yates case is that the jury was obviously not influenced by the months of propaganda for her by radical feminists, while the judge’s gag order kept the prosecution from telling the public the other side of the story. This is...
Criminality and Psychology
Q: While it is clear that you think that being insane and being held criminally liable for one’s actions are not necessarily mutually exclusive, I am unsure of whether you think those two things are NEVER mutually exclusive. In other words, might there ever be a...
Giving Back
How many times have we heard people being applauded for “giving back”? People seem to believe that, if you’ve been successful and made a lot of money, you’re somehow obliged to give back by making donations to this or that cause, program or...
Motivation: Give Action A Chance
Q: In your recent article on motivation you conclude by stating that after doing the work to achieve one’s goals ” … most often the motivation you desire will start to follow.” Would you explain further why this is? Most of us usually think...
Growing Old
Random thoughts about growing old: Despite the problems that come with aging, I would not be a teenager again for $1,000 a day plus expenses. I never really felt old until my younger brother retired. This is the period of life that Disraeli referred to as...
Stand Up to the PLO
What is wrong with a people who choose to live under a terrorist organization, as opposed to a state that respects freedom of worship, democracy and — to a great extent — individual rights? Why do Palestinian Arabs pick a terrorist dictator over an...
More Clintonian Deeds Go Unpunished
Clinton-era sleaze is like a stubborn toe fungus. It just won’t go away. Fourteen months after the 42nd president of the United States left office, news is spreading of yet another unsightly scandal under his watch. And true to Clintonian form, it looks like...
“Diversity” In India
If facts carried some weight with those who are politically correct, the recent outbreak of savage and lethal violence in India’s state of Gujarat might cause some reassessments of both India and “diversity.” This is only the latest round in a cycle...
Beware of the Library of Congress
1. Some time in the 1960s, I believe, the Library of Congress invited Ayn Rand to will the manuscripts of her novels to them. She replied that she was happy to do so. Subsequently, they sent her a form to fill out, in order to make her intention legally binding upon...
The “For Your Own Good” Police Are Coming…After You
Most Americans were pleased with the legislative attack on cigarette smokers, not to mention confiscatory tobacco taxes. We reveled in the EPA’s dishonest study concluding that second-hand smoke causes cancer. And, by the way, I’d like to hear whether the...
Shibboleths: A Great Labor-Saving Device for Rational Thinking
A recent e-mail from a reader said that he could not find the word “shibboleth” in his desk dictionary, even though he had seen this word in my column. That was an unfortunate omission in his dictionary because shibboleths explain a lot about what is said...
The SimpleCare Story
I graduated from the University of Washington and am a board-certified Family Physician. I owned five family medicine-integrated medical clinics in the Seattle, Washington area, and as a consequence was very involved with all medical insurances–including...
“West Wing” vs. Reality: Bush Dumb, Gore Bright?
President George W. Bush — despite his post-Sept. 11 performance — remains dumb, says “West Wing” producer Aaron Sorkin. Bush’s stratospheric popularity, claims Sorkin, results from our collective refusal to admit Bush’s stupidity:...
The IQ Exemption
The never-ending battle of the left to keep people from being held responsible for the consequences of their own actions is now in the Supreme Court of the United States, where the justices are being urged to exempt murderers from the death penalty if they score below...
Beware Beijing: Stand up for the Republic of China (Taiwan)
Given the warmth that’s emanating from the North Pacific as George W. Bush visits Beijing this week, it’s hard to believe that the United States’ leading foreign-policy concerns before Sept. 11 were China’s downing of a U.S. military...
Social Security: The Enron That Politicians Have In the Closet
If even half the things that Enron is charged with are true, then some of the company’s top brass should get a few decades behind bars to think over what a dirty thing they have done to so many other people, who trusted them and depended on them. But that is...
Patrick J. Buchanan’s Quest to Speed Up the Death of Western Civilization
Patrick J. Buchanan calls it La Reconquista — the steady takeover of the American Southwest by the Mexican culture from which it was wrested in the first place. He marshalls his argument at length in a new book, *The Death of the West,* and in the the March...
A New Strategy for Racial Quotas: “Comprehensive Review”
In 1996, California’s voters passed Proposition 209, which outlawed racial quotas for college admission. That didn’t mean the end of the quest for racial quotas and the euphemisms for it: affirmative action, diversity and multiculturalism. The diversity...
Cash: The Secret to Spotting Troubled Companies
Could the typical small investor have discovered a year ago that Enron Corp. was on the brink of disaster? It’s highly unlikely. Still, if you looked for the right thing, you never would have bought Enron stock in the first place. The right thing is cash. The...
Dividends: Show Me the Money
To many investors, the lesson of the Enron scandal is never to trust a company’s earnings reports and balance sheets again. But that’s nonsense. Yes, there are unscrupulous corporate managers and auditors out there, but the best way to protect yourself is...
The Cost of Academic Integrity
Since the 1960s, academic achievement scores have plummeted, but student grade point averages (GPAs) have skyrocketed. The Academy of Arts and Sciences reports that at Harvard, for instance, A’s were awarded to 46 percent of students in 1996 (versus 22 percent...
“Campaign Finance Reform” Regulates Free Speech
The Enron scandal was welcomed like an unexpected Christmas present by Democrats who, together with much of the media, have tried to tie the scandal to the Bush administration. However, as more and more information has come out about Enron, it has become clear that...
Just Wondering
The six-month anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is upon us. Here are a half-dozen unsolved mysteries still on my mind: What really happened on United Airlines Flight 93? As the Philadelphia Daily News reported back in November, many folks in Shanksville,...
The Prophets of Defeatism
The American press seems to have contracted Black Hawk Down Syndrome, a malady in which reporters and editorialists, whose military experience consists largely of watching Hollywood war movies, project a hand-wringing fear of American military failure. These reactions...
Inside the Lives of America’s Politicians: Battle of the Beltway Buttinskis
There’s a word for people like Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, who got caught last week cutting in line at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. The word is buttinski. Beltway buttinskis can’t wait around like everybody else. Long...
Back Up Blues Revisited
I can’t seem to get away from this subject. And it’s so darn important, I’m not sure I want to. My earlier column, Back Up Blues, triggered some interesting responses. One reader inquired as to whether I had considered or tried another drive imaging...
Steel Tariffs: President Bush Put Politics Above Principle
President Bush last week showed Clintonesque skill in the art of political triangulation. An alleged champion of free markets and free trade, the Bush White House last week announced plans to impose tariffs as high as 30% on steel imports to the U.S. next year. The...
Back Up Blues
In a previous article, I discussed the importance of backing up your entire hard drive (not just your data) periodically as protection against computer viruses. Of course, there are other equally important reasons to back up your entire hard drive. You can have a hard...
Why New Campaign Finance Laws Will Punish Free Speech, But Not Corruption
Newsflash: The woman who helped launder Al Gore’s Buddhist temple money has not served a single day in jail. And she probably never will. The hidden story of how funny money honey Maria Hsia escaped any meaningful punishment for corrupting our election system...
Why Imports Are Good
It was Ronald Reagan who said that “economists are people who see something work in practice and wonder if it would work in theory.” I think this is a wonderful quote. And what is working in practice — or has been working for the last two decades...
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