THE TERM “LIBERAL” originally referred politically to those who wanted to liberate people — mainly from the oppressive power of government. That is what it still means in various European countries or in Australia and New Zealand. It is the American...
The Fed’s surprise 50 basis point cut in the fed funds rate yesterday took the markets — and me — completely by surprise. And yet the stock market’s reaction was strangely muted. Don’t get me wrong: yesterday was great. But the rate cut...
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-Ariz., makes a lot of political hay portraying himself as the hero for campaign finance reform and against influence-peddling. He’s for restrictions on the “soft money” millions that flow into the campaign coffers of the...
Former President Clinton has just received another fitting addition to his legacy. Two years ago, he sent U.S. troops to Kosovo to protect ethnic Albanians against attacks by Serbia. Now our troops are stuck trying to protect Macedonia against attacks by these very...
Q: How would you correct the problem of education in this country if you had complete control of the system? A: I would not seek “complete control of the system.” Nor do I — or anyone else (be it George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, the NEA, or whomever)...
“Jesse slowly suffocated and died.” A jury heard those chilling words this week in the opening statement of a little-noticed Arkansas trial. A mother heard those heartbreaking words spoken about her 13-year-old son, Jesse Dirkhising, whom prosecutors say...
President George W. Bush’s support for Social Security reform, together with strong public support for allowing workers to place some of their payroll taxes in personal retirement accounts, makes it much more likely that Congress will soon consider the issue....
THE ONCE-POPULAR GAME SHOW “Dialing for Dollars” has its present-day counterpart in courts of law — Demonizing for dollars. The most spectacular bonanza to come out of this process has been the hundreds of billions of dollars shared by lawyers and...
Who remembers Ian Smith? Unless you are a graybeard, you may not know that Ian Smith was the (white) prime minister of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) when the country was a British colony. In 1964, Smith led an independence rebellion against Great Britain when it became...
Random thoughts on the passing scene: In trying to get away from the pardon scandals, Hillary Clinton has said everything except “Bill who?” After the tragic death of auto racer Dale Earnhardt, no one suggested banning the sport. Yet that is exactly what...
The other day, I talked about the tremendous broadband opportunity that Bellsouth has in the Atlanta area — the opportunity to use its strengths in reliability and technical support to crush Charter Communications’ cable modem business with its Fast Access...
How would you feel if you needed an organ transplant to keep you alive, but could not get one? How would you feel if someone you loved had to stand in line for years waiting for a transplant that might never come? Would you be willing to pay for a liver or a kidney if...
It’s as if Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has hung out a sign at the Pentagon: From now on, U.S. missile-defense policy will be made in accordance with how things are, not with how they used to be. That’s the upshot, anyway, of what the secretary...
There is a computer mouse that glows in the dark and the state of Michigan is sending more than 4,000 of them to businesses in California. This is to remind these businesses of the electrical blackouts that have plagued California — and of the fact that Michigan...
If to govern is to choose, then President Bush made a clear choice in the budget he released two weeks ago; National Missile Defense (NMD) is a big winner, while the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a mild loser. In the short run, this might be...
When Wall Street analysts talk about defensive stocks, they usually mean providers of food, tobacco, consumer goods — things that people will buy no matter what the economy is doing. Since this seems to be the season for defensive stocks, you may be looking for...
Every once in a while I like to go out on a limb with a wild prediction. And my prediction today is that the Dow will experience a major league crash in 2001. If you thought Monday was scary, in the words of Al Jolson, “You ain’t seen nothin’...
It may be easier than you think to get rich quick. Let’s take a fairly common situation in California. A couple buys a little square box, two-bedroom house on a modest-sized lot during the 1970s for $30,000 or $40,000. Then, over the years, they pay off their...
It’s generally agreed that American primary, secondary and, increasingly, undergraduate education is a failure. But that assessment depends upon just what evaluation criteria is chosen. By some criteria, American education might be deemed a remarkable success....
When the Berlin Wall collapsed, one would have expected the poisonous Marxist ideology of class warfare to disappear along with it. But this year’s tax debate has shown the politics-of-envy is alive and well. Demagogues are vilifying President Bush’s plan...
Willy Sutton, in case you are wondering, is the 1930s outlaw who achieved immortality when a reporter asked him why he robbed banks and Sutton replied, simply, “Because that’s where the money is.” It is an amusing reply because it so utterly misses...
Although few know how to stop the escalating violence in the Middle East, many think they know who to blame: Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon. Surely, they say, the landslide election of such a hard-liner means the end of the peace process–and serves as...
Reparations advocates are not concerned with individual justice. They subscribe to the collectivist belief that individuals are merely interchangeable members of a group.
A major crusader failing is that they seldom look back to their last crusade to see how it turned out. During my several South Africa visits during its apartheid era, up to three months on one occasion, I lectured at nearly all of its universities. I had the...
Foes of President Bush’s tax-cut plan are getting desperate. They haven’t reached the point of claiming that tax cuts cause cancer and road rage, but they’re close. Depending on the day of the week, we’re told that cuts will cause inflation,...
The last two months have witnessed a fresh outbreak of violence in Israel and the death toll keeps rising every day. The “peace process,” which started with great fanfare when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands in front of a beaming Bill Clinton...
Test scores are not the only things that tell us how bad our public schools have become. In San Francisco, the school board voted unanimously to have the city’s students take Friday, March 9th, off to go to Berkeley, in order to stage a protest demonstration,...
After every tragic school shooting — and many other shocking murders — the question gets asked: “How could he do such a thing?” This has become the centerpiece of a whole set of rituals. Another part of these rituals is the appearance of...
Have pigs grown wings? Is it snowing in Hades? Ralph Nader actually said nice things about President Bush this week. The devil’s tail must be blue with frostbite. In an opinion piece Nader co-authored for The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, the standard-bearer...
Ex-Klansman Robert Byrd, the senior senator from West Virginia, casually used the phrase “white nigger” twice on national TV this weekend. Enraged civil rights groups organized a protest campaign against Sen. Byrd and demanded that he undergo sensitivity...
“Year after year in Washington, budget debates seem to come down to an old, tired argument: on one side, those who want more government, regardless of the cost; on the other, those who want less government, regardless of the need. We should leave those arguments...
It’s odd to hear people campaigning for a tax that’s aimed at them. But it’s happening. Some rich people are arguing that the government should keep the death (or estate) tax that was created decades ago to break up the holdings of the so-called...
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