Unlike Emma Bovary and Scarlett O'Hara, Erin Brockovich is a real, live person. She's a 41-year-old mother of three with a gift for publicity. Julia Roberts won an Oscar playing her in the eponymous movie about a legal assistant who got 650 prospective plaintiffs...
POLITICS
A Recipe for Safer Skies?
Looks like the White House has already traded in its recently adopted motto, "Let's Roll," for a new slogan: "Let's Roll Over." With a submissive stroke of President Bush's pen, nearly 30,000 airport screeners gained lifetime public employment this week. President...
Free Dr. Kevorkian
The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed last week the murder conviction of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who was sentenced in 1999 to 10 to 25 years in prison. He was convicted on charges of second-degree murder in a clear-cut case of assisted suicide. Was justice done-or...
Getting Out Of Bondage
First, a confession. Nearly 20 years ago, when I was in my mid-thirties, I got a chance for the first time to manage my own tax-deferred retirement portfolio. I was confronted with the same choices as the 42 million Americans who now have 401(k) plans and the millions...
Drugs and Politics
A tourist in New York's Greenwich Village had his portrait sketched by a sidewalk artist, who charged him $100. "That's expensive," the tourist said. "But it's a great sketch, so I'll pay it. But, really, it took you just five minutes." "Twenty years and five...
After the Sept. 11 Attacks, a Chance for Smaller Government
The Sept. 11 terror attacks have spawned a new clich
The Truth and Mr. and Ms. Clinton
Oh, those Clintons! On September 17, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-New York) appeared on "Dateline NBC." Where, Dateline asked, was Chelsea on that fateful day? Senator Clinton told NBC's Jane Pauley: "She'd gone on what she thought would be a great jog. She was...
An Afghanistan Thanksgiving
This year's Thanksgiving was an unusual one. This uniquely American holiday was punctuated with a constant flow of news ... at our house, most of it courtesy of my friend Jack, an inveterate news hound ... about far-off Afghanistan. I had feared, after Sept. 11, that...
Mary Kay Ash: One of America’s Great Entrepreneurs
Mary Kay Ash, one of America's great entrepreneurs, died Thanksgiving Day at 83 in Dallas. She was 45 when she started a company (with just $5,000) to sell cosmetics through home and office demonstrations by sales reps - the best of whom were awarded pink Cadillacs....
Tears and Toughness
The victims of American Airlines Flight 587 and their families deserve our deepest sympathy and prayers. But compassion must not override vigilance. Our resolve to enforce immigration laws in the wake of Sept. 11 must not be weakened. According to the Associated...
By the Word or by the Sword
"Islam is Peace." So explained President Bush to the American public soon after the terrorist attacks of September 11. Since then, the President has gone out of his way to assure Americans that they have nothing to fear from the religion of Islam. "These acts of...
Avoiding the Next Nightmare
The United States has buried its head in the sand for too long. Despite the continued talk of unity, some in Washington -- for whatever reason -- still want to tie up or slow down America's missile defense program. Pretend for a moment it was Israel, rather than the...
Hypocrisy in Indonesia
If nothing else, give the president of Indonesia credit for impeccable timing. First, Megawati Sukarnoputri snubs Australian leader John Howard at the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Council (APEC) meeting in Shanghai, only to have her husband suffer a heart attack a few...
The Deflation Investor’s Checklist
Iconoclastic economists have been warning of deflation for almost five years, based on subtle signs that Alan Greenspan hasn't been supplying enough liquidity to meet the needs of the U.S. economy. And now -- finally -- these warnings have come true in the form of...
Post-September 11: Another Look at Guns and Racial Profiling
Care to revisit, post-Sept. 11, the issue of racial profiling? "Civil rights activist" Al Sharpton, during the Harlem presidential debate between Al Gore and Bill Bradley, asked the first question. "Many in our community have to live in fear of both the cops and the...
Microsoft Goes to School: You’re An Evil Predator; Now Teach My Kids
The settlement of the Microsoft anti-trust case got interesting this week -- and developments revealed the laughably absurd nature of much of the suit against the company. Reports in the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere revealed that Mister...
Washington D.C., Our No-Spine Zone
Suppose one day you meet with a security specialist to safeguard your business. They're called "For Everyone's Defense" -- FED. Fed tells you what bad things could happen and how they'll protect you from them. You say okay and sign up. Your contract provides you with...
Missile Defense: No Time for Easy Assumptions
David Halberstam, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has compared ballistic missile defense to the Maginot Line, the wall built after World War I to protect France from German invasion: Brilliantly constructed. Thorough to a fault. But utterly useless against the real...
Laffer’s Curveball
Arthur Laffer's op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal (November 21, 2001) will set supply-side tongues wagging -- or more likely, supply-side teeth gnashing. The upshot is: Laffer is endorsing the idea of a 10-day federally underwritten suspension of state sales tax....
An INS Horror Story
The INS bureaucracy is a cesspool of elbow-rubbers, string-pullers, chest-puffers and cover-uppers who care more about protecting their backsides than upholding the law. Look no further than the man who currently heads the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service's...
The Trouble With ‘Timing’: It Doesn’t Work
In the stock market (as in much of life), the beginning of wisdom is admitting your ignorance. One of the many things you cannot know about stocks is exactly when they will go up or go down. Over the long term, stocks generally rise at a nice pace. History shows they...
Arianna Huffington is Wrong Again! Profit is a Virtue
It's tempting to accuse someone like columnist Arianna Huffington of profiting from capitalism, given the tirades she's launched at certain industries. Since she's attacking profit (alternately spelled "heinous"), I would expect she's raking in a sizable readership....
Protect Yourself Through Diversification
Warren Buffett, who was probably the greatest investor of the 20th century, is fond of quoting the salacious actress Mae West as saying, "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful." In the market, such a motto would lead you to avoid diversification and instead...
World Trade Center to Fly Flag Over Aircraft Carrier Stennis
Thanks to a patriotic New York City cop, this flag will serve as a constant reminder to the Stennis’ warriors of the justness of our cause: “‘Tis the star-spangled banner! O long may it wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
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