May 28, 2009
It is one of the signs of our times that so many in the media are focusing on the life story of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States. You might think that this was some kind of popularity conte...
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May 21, 2009
The media have an obvious vested interest in constantly urging that cameras be allowed in more places where governmental decisions are being made, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Like so many things that are said to be good for the public, this is somet...
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April 30, 2009
It used to be said that self-preservation is the first law of nature. But much of what has been happening in recent times in the United States, and in Western civilization in general, suggests that survival is taking a back seat to the shibboleths of poli...
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April 9, 2009
From time to time, readers ask me what books have made the biggest difference in my life. I am not sure how to answer that question because the books that happened to set me off in a particular direction at a particular time may have no profound or valuab...
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April 2, 2009
Someone once said that for every rookie you have on your starting team in the National Football League, you will lose a game. Somewhere, at some time during the season, a rookie will make a mistake that will cost you a game. We now have a rookie president...
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March 26, 2009
Death threats to executives at AIG, because of the bonuses they received, are one more sign of the utter degeneration of politics in our time. Congressman Barney Frank has threatened to summon these executives before his committee and force them to reveal...
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March 19, 2009
As if it is not enough that they have been decimated by the Democrats in the past couple of elections, the Republican survivors are now turning their guns on each other. At the heart of these internal battles have been attacks on Rush Limbaugh by Republic...
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March 12, 2009
Now that the federal government has decided to bail out homeowners in trouble with mortgage loans up to $729,000, that raises some questions that ought to be asked, but are seldom being asked. Since the average American never took out a mortgage loan as b...
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March 5, 2009
They say talk is cheap. But in fact it can be devastatingly expensive. Among the generation of Germans who were enthralled by Hitler’s eloquence, millions paid with their lives and their children’s lives for empowering this demagogue to lead them to r...
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February 26, 2009
An increasing number of recent letters and e-mails from readers strike a note, not only of unhappiness with the way things are going in our society, but a note of despair. Those of us who are pessimists are only a step away from despair ourselves, so we...
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February 19, 2009
The big story last week was the incredible congressional rush to pass a bill that was more than a thousand pages long in just two days -- after which it sat on the president's desk for three days while the Obamas were away on a holiday. There is the same...
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February 12, 2009
Letters from parents often complain of a sense of futility in trying to argue with their own children, who have been fed a steady diet of the politically correct vision of the world, from elementary school to the university. Some ask for suggestions of pa...
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February 5, 2009
After all the hoopla over Barack Obama's becoming the first person of his complexion to become President, it was perhaps inevitable that there would be a small echo of that when Michael Steele became the first black head of the Republican National Committ...
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January 29, 2009
Everyone is talking about how much money the government is spending, but very little attention is being paid to where they are spending it or what they are buying with it. The government is putting money into banks, even when the banks don't want it, in h...
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January 24, 2009
If making speeches is one of the tests of a president of the United States, then Barack Obama has passed his first test with flying colors. He has understood the varied constituencies and the various hopes and fears he had to address. He said the kinds of...
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January 22, 2009
Behind the housing boom and bust was one of those alluring but undefined phrases that are so popular in politics -- "affordable housing." It is hard for me to know specifically what politicians are talking about when they use this phrase. But then politic...
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January 15, 2009
No phrase represents more of a triumph of hope over experience than the phrase "Middle East peace process." A close second might be the once-fashionable notion that Israel should "trade land for peace." Since everybody seems to be criticizing Israel for i...
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January 10, 2009
This is an emergency book review. Before you do anything else, make a note to read "The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care" by Sally C. Pipes. It might literally save your life by slowing the political stampede toward a government-controlled medical pr...
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January 8, 2009
Two centuries ago, when there were plans to create a huge fund of money to pay off Britain's national debt, the great classical economist David Ricardo objected on grounds that -- no matter what the money was said to be for -- politicians could spend it f...
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January 1, 2009
"Outliers" are not politicians who lie even more than other politicians. It is a term used by statisticians to describe some data that are far away from the average -- data on 7-foot women or freezing temperatures in Los Angeles, for example. "Outliers" i...
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December 25, 2008
With both Barack Obama's supporters and the media looking forward to the new administration's policies being similar to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's policies during the 1930s depression, it may be useful to look at just what those policies were and......
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December 18, 2008
Good books are especially good to give as gifts to the proverbial "man who has everything" because he (or she) may not have heard of a new book that fits their interests. Good books are one of the few good things about this past year. Here are some books...
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December 11, 2008
O.J. Simpson has attracted less attention by being declared “guilty” in Nevada than he did by being declared “not guilty” in California. Yet his story is more than the tragedy of one man.O.J. is not the first star athlete — or movie star, politi...
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December 4, 2008
Most people on the left are not opposed to freedom. They are just in favor of all sorts of things that are incompatible with freedom. Freedom ultimately means the right of other people to do things that you do not approve of. Nazis were free to be Nazis u...
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November 27, 2008
Barack Obama says that we have to "jolt" the economy. That certainly makes sense, if you take the media's account of the economy seriously -- but should the media be taken seriously? Amid all the hysteria, national output declined by one-half of 1 percent...
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