Two photographs adorn the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Together they illuminate a portentous fact: No two leaders of democracies are less alike - in life experiences, temperaments and political philosophies - than Netanyahu, the former commando and fierce nationalist, and Barack Obama, the former professor and post-nationalist. One photograph is of Theodor Herzl,…
August 13, 2010
Sometimes provocative people become that way because they were provoked. Sharron Angle, 60, could be enjoying the 10 grandchildren she loves even more than her .44 magnum. Instead, she is the Republican nominee against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's quest for a fifth term. Her campaign began, in a sense, three decades ago, when a judge annoyed her. When her son was depressed…
July 6, 2010
Evidently Hamid Karzai did not get the memo on terminology. U.S. military commanders have stopped using the word "operation" to describe the drive, now delayed, against the Taliban in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city. This word connotes danger and stirs dread among the population, whose allegiance is the prize for which counterinsurgency is waged. But Afghanistan's president,…
June 17, 2010
When liberals advocate a value-added tax, conservatives should respond: Taxing consumption has merits, so we will consider it - after the 16th Amendment is repealed. A VAT will be rationalized as necessary to restore fiscal equilibrium. But without ending the income tax, a VAT would be just a gargantuan instrument for further subjugating Americans to government. Believing that a…
April 19, 2010
A simple reform would drain some scalding steam from immigration arguments that may soon again be at a roiling boil. It would bring the interpretation of the 14th Amendment into conformity with what the authors of its text intended, and with common sense, thereby removing an incentive for illegal immigration. To end the practice of "birthright citizenship," all that is required…
March 30, 2010
Although Democrats think their health care legislation faces smooth sailing to implementation, there is a rock dead ahead: a constitutional challenge to the legislation's core. Democrats who assume it is constitutional to make it mandatory for Americans to purchase health insurance should answer some questions: Would it be constitutional for the government to legislate compulsory…
January 14, 2010
On Aug. 27, 1776, British forces routed George Washington's novice army in the Battle of Brooklyn, which was fought in fields and woods where today the battle of Prospect Heights is being fought. Americans' liberty is again under assault, but this time by overbearing American governments. The fight involves an especially egregious example of today's eminent domain racket. The issue…
January 4, 2010
Another huge value-destroying hurricane is about to slam America, destroying billions of dollars of value. Another Katrina? No, another Christmas. This voluntary December calamity is explained in a darkly amusing little book that is about the size of an iPhone. Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays comes from a distinguished publisher, Princeton University…
November 26, 2009
Epiphanies are a dime a dozen among congressional Democrats as they discover urgent reasons to experience the almost erotic pleasure of commandeering other people's money. For example, freshman Rep. Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat whose district includes Disney World, was recently there and was inspired.
May 31, 2009
Early in what became the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes was asked if anything similar had ever happened. "Yes," he replied, "it was called the Dark Ages and it lasted 400 years." It did take 25 years, until November 1954, for the Dow to return to the peak it reached in September 1929. So caution is sensible concerning calls for a new New Deal.
December 1, 2008
As the presidential candidates enter the three-month sprint to November, Barack Obama must be wondering: If that did not do it, what will? The antecedent of the pronoun "that" is his Berlin speech. The antecedent of the pronoun "it" is assuage anxieties about his understanding of the need to supplement soft power (diplomacy) with hard power (military force).
August 4, 2008
Numbers come precisely from the agile mind and nimble tongue of Frank Buckles, who seems bemused to say that 4,734,991 Americans served in the military during America's involvement in the First World War and 4,734,990 are gone. He is feeling fine, thank you for asking.
May 26, 2008
Coconut Road near Fort Myers, Fla., looks like any other concrete ribbon near housing developments, golf courses and shopping malls in that state's booming southwest. But like another fragrant slab of recent pork, the $223 million "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska, Coconut Road leads to somewhere darkly fascinating.
It runs straight into Washington's earmark culture of waste, corruption…
February 10, 2008
Although Americans are alarmed by the credit crisis currently convulsing the economy, they are sensibly placid about one consequence of the crisis. It is the substantial investment by sovereign wealth funds - government owned and run investment funds - in financial institutions needing infusions of cash.
February 3, 2008
