As much as I enjoy most of the messages from readers, there is no way that I can answer more than a small fraction of them. The messages I don’t reply to at all are those from obviously ignorant people who offer insults instead of arguments. However, a recent...
“This is your eyewitness news team, reporting from the big, posh April Fools’ Day party at the Dewdrop Inn out at Moot Point, overlooking Dyer Straits. Everybody who is anybody is here. “There’s the karate expert Marshall Artz, timber heiress...
Religious conservatives are calling the death of Terri Schiavo a betrayal of “the sanctity of human life.” We must, they say, replace our existing culture with a new “culture of life.” “It should be our goal as a nation,” proclaims...
Here’s my question to you: Should we be governed by good ideas? You say, “Williams, what do you mean?” Here’s an example: I regularly bike for fun, cardiovascular fitness and, hopefully, for a longer, healthier life. In my opinion, that’s...
Federal Election Commissioner Ellen Weintraub says the FEC has no interest in regulating political speech on the Internet. She opened a recent hearing by saying no one at the FEC has sought to manipulate it “as a vehicle for shutting down the right of any...
We have the military power; we have the moral right. The defense of our lives only requires that we properly identify our enemies and eliminate them.
The widely hailed diplomatic effort led by Britain, France and Germany is touted as a reasonable way to settle the dispute over Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program without any losers. By enticing Iran to the negotiating table, we are told, the West can...
The new report by the Social Security trustees, claiming that Social Security will go broke in 2041, is bound to fuel the nationwide debate over Social Security. One side, led by President Bush, says the system is in crisis and must be saved via “partial...
Senators Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rick Santorum, R-Pa., both introduced proposals to increase the minimum wage from its current $5.15 an hour. Sen. Kennedy’s proposal would have raised the minimum wage to $7.25 in three steps over 26 months, while Sen....
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Nolan Ryan’s baseball career was so long that he struck out seven guys whose fathers he had also struck out. (Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonds, for example.) Why do some people use a fancy mathematical term like...
In return for Iran’s agreement to temporarily cease the work needed to produce a nuclear bomb, President Bush has agreed to allow Iran to buy civilian airplane parts, and to drop opposition to Iran’ s membership in the World Trade Organization. These...
Throughout the West, Muslims are making new and assertive demands, and in some cases challenging the very premises of European and North American life . How to respond? Here is a general rule: Offer full rights — but turn down demands for special privileges. By...
Dr. Larry Summers, Harvard’s president, remains under siege for remarks (www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html) made in his Jan. 14 address to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Dr. Summers suggested that there might be three major...
Back in the 1980s a White House staffer told about a revealing incident on Capitol Hill. The staffer was walking down the corridors of one of the buildings on the Hill when a Senator motioned to him to step inside his office. “I’m going to make a speech...
This past Tuesday, President Bush gave an important, and generally excellent, speech on our foreign policy re the middle east. He reiterated, and further explained, his Forward Strategy of Freedom. The highlight of the speech was this remarkable passage, strategically...
In a recent report, humorist Andy Borowitz writes, “in an effort to confuse the insurgents, President Bush said the U.S. will begin airdropping copies of his Social Security plan over Iraq.” Social Security is a complicated program, so attempting to reform...
For a free people in the age of terrorism, what is the proper balance between civil liberties and national security? This debate wracks every Western country. Looking at America, the “united we stand” solidarity that followed September 11, 2001, lasted...
Ordinarily, the retirement of a TV newsman would be something to be more or less passed over in silence by friend and foe alike. But the retirement of Dan Rather as anchorman of CBS news has caused so much spin in the media that some of this spin may become...
In a romantic mood, I was reading “Anna Karenina” flying down here and stumbled across one of Tolstoy’s brilliant insights. At a party at the home of his friend Prince Oblonsky, Konstantin Levin, the philosophical farmer, muses about the futility of...
A fortnight ago, I explained some of the congressional deceit that has become part and parcel of Social Security. One was the 1936 promise of maximum wages subject to Social Security tax of three percent — $3,000 — which, controlling for inflation, comes...
Those of us following the development of Islam in America have for years worried about the unhealthy influence of Saudi money and ideas on American Muslims. We watched apprehensively as the Saudi government boasted of funding mosques and research centers; as it...
The President has made fixing Social Security his number-one domestic objective, but the fight won’t be easy — in part because of fierce opposition by the AARP, the seniors’ lobby, with 35 million members. The AARP is using an old strategy: trying to...
“Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. Social Security. It’s Time for E*Trade.” That’s the message on a San Francisco billboard. It’s saying that stock trading on the Internet provides a better shot at a secure retirement than depending on the...
Should municipalities be allowed to build and operate broadband networks in competition with private companies? States around the country are considering laws making it difficult for cities to do so. Informed, honest debate over municipal broadband is rare. Advocates...
In the wake of the Enron and WorldCom corporate scandals, the purveyors of envy have found another opportunity to preach about what they consider the evils of high CEO salaries, retirements and bonuses. After all, according to them, evil must be afoot when a corporate...
The prescription drug benefit is a monster that should be killed before it is hatched.
On December 15, 1791, 213 years ago, the American Bill of Rights was ratified. Thus ended a long and difficult process by which the American people first liberated themselves from tyranny and then established the first government in history founded on individual...
“60 Minutes” strikes again. Earlier this month, the program broadcast a segment on international, “transracial” (black/white) adoptions involving American-born babies. It turns out, according to “60 Minutes,” a growing number of...
In “Die in Britain , survive in U.S. ,” the cover article of the February 2005 issue of The Spectator, a British magazine, James Bartholomew details the downside of Britain’ s universal healthcare system. Among women with breast cancer, for example,...
President Bush’s call to allow Americans to take a portion of the money they pay as Social Security taxes to set up private retirement accounts has to be a good idea. Why? The more of what a person earns that’s in his pocket and under his control, the...
Random thoughts on the passing scene: How many other species’ members kill each other to the same extent as human beings? How can you be an “insurgent” in someone else’s country? Yet despite the fact that the wave of terrorism in Iraq is led by...
Gas prices are on the rise again. While no one has begun to complain yet (at least not too loudly), gas prices are still higher than they need to be. Many think oil companies are to blame for high gas prices. In fact, in May 2004 a poll showed that 77% of Californians...
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