TCS Daily : February 2004 Archives
On Gay Marriage, A Way Forward
The President announced this week that he will support a constitutional amendment to deal with the mushrooming marriage crisis triggered by recent decisions of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. While indicating that the amendment he will support will "defin[e] and.
Read More
|
Capitalism With a Human Face
The Oscar-nominated French Canadian movie The Barbarian Invasions pits a puritan ambitious capitalist against a sensual socialist. Terminally ill, leftwing history professor Rémy seems fated to live out his days in an overcrowded and chaotic Montreal hospital ward
Read More
|
Welcome to the Working Week
This month's vote by Members of the European Parliament to abolish any remaining opt outs to the so-called Working Time Directive presents the EU with another clear-cut decision: should it exist to promote its idea of a social model...
Read More
|
When Cheap Is Costly
In combating the global AIDS epidemic, the high price of drugs has often been blamed for the staggering number of victims in developing nations. Activists urge the US to buy "cheap, generic" drugs for its overseas assistance programs. In...
Read More
|
"A Good Deal of Sense"
Editor's note: What follows is testimony presented by TCS host James K. Glassman this week to the Senate Banking Committee. Mister Chairman, Members of the Committee: My name is James K. Glassman. I am a resident fellow at the...
Read More
|
The Problem with Dead White Males
"It's a pretty good zoo," Said young Gerald McGrew "And the fellow who runs it Seems proud of it, too." -- Dr. Seuss, If I Ran the Zoo University presidents seem pretty proud of their undergraduate colleges. However, their...
Read More
|
An Open Response to Adam Thierer
Recently, you may have received "An Open Letter to Pro-Regulation Conservatives" from the CATO Institute's director of telecommunications studies Adam Thierer challenging the principled policy positions of conservative stalwarts Grover Norquist, Bruce Fein and Jim
Read More
|
The Real Threat from the East
Many Western Europeans are increasingly nervous about the imminent expansion of the European Union. While politeness usually prevents it from being phrased in these terms, it sometimes seems as if the 10 accession countries are viewed as ne'er-do-well bums...
Read More
|
Aiding and Abetting Poverty
UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown and World Bank President, Jim Wolfensohn recently called for increased development aid transfers to poor countries so that they could achieve the millennium development goals. Writing in the UK's Guardian newspaper, Bro
Read More
|
Souring on The Sweet Science
Time was when a heavyweight champion's every utterance was scrutinized. But when Lennox Lewis, the heavyweight champion of the world, announced his retirement from boxing recently at the age of 38, the story barely made the headlines. For most...
Read More
|
Nader Numbers
"Thanks Ralph!" That's what the GOP is saying, of course. Let's stipulate that Nader will do less damage to the 2004 Democratic nominee than he did to Al Gore. The New York Times has editorialized convincingly that the stakes...
Read More
|
The Knead for New Jobs
Will we all become massage therapists? That was the question asked by some in response to a column I wrote a while back, entitled Kent Brockman on Unemployment, that looked at automation, offshore outsourcing, and other trends in the...
Read More
|
Conning the Cambodians
The Cambodian people have had it tougher than most. Ruled by the murderous dictator, Pol Pot, for five years in the 1970s, one in seven of seven million Cambodians were systematically slaughtered. He conned them into believing that he...
Read More
|
It's a Disgrace This Book Had to Be Written
It's a disgrace that this book had to be written. A disgrace because so many Americans -- and so many others around the world -- still cling to the notion that Stalin doesn't deserve the opprobrium that has been...
Read More
|
Dobbs Rogue Fund Returns 72%!!!
In his continuing crusade on behalf of xenophobia and protectionism, the baffling Lou Dobbs posts on his website a list of "companies we've confirmed are 'Exporting America.' These are U.S. companies either sending jobs overseas or choosing to employ...
Read More
|
Don't Bank On It
Good banks can be a major force for economic growth. They can transfer the public's savings to those businesses that need capital for productive investments. Unfortunately, many banks in poor countries have turned out to be pyramid schemes in...
Read More
|
In Farm's Way
With the EU Constitution on ice the Irish Presidency will have to pay some attention to the latest attempt to reform that cornerstone of the European Union: the Common Agricultural Policy. The need for a reform has been obvious...
Read More
|
Compassionate Conservatism for the Ex-Prisoner's Dilemma
In his 2004 State of the Union Address President Bush vowed to help reintegrate the 600,000 inmates released from U.S. prisons each year. Our President should use market mechanisms rather than government programs and grants to achieve his reformist...
Read More
|
Why Is There No Free Trade in the Americas?
"High level of protectionism" is how The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal's "2004 Index of Economic Freedom" describe the trade policies of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. In the U.S., John Edwards closed a huge...
Read More
|
Apocalypse Always
Last month a group of 19 scientists made an apocalyptic claim: If current warming trends continue, more than a million species will be extinct in less than half a century. This follows a possibly even more alarming statement made...
Read More
|
Moyers No More
The reign of terror is nearly over. Bill Moyers is leaving the Public Broadcasting System. Admittedly, Moyers is no Robespierre. Just an insufferable elitist, an inveterate busybody, a mocker of Christians and a belligerent defender of the paternalistic state....
Read More
|
Clinton's Midnight Madness vs. the Bush Administration
Remember all those "midnight regulations" finalized by outgoing Clinton administration officials during their final two months in power? The Bush administration would prefer you forget, as its efforts to deal with them have proven to be failures. To its...
Read More
|
Islam in Conflict in Cleveland
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- An historic series of events is taking place in the largely-hidden world of Islam in America, and in a place many people would consider unlikely: Cleveland, Ohio. The incidents in question involve Imam Fawaz Damra, 41,...
Read More
|
Invasion of the Kennewick Men
After almost eight years of labyrinthine litigation the case of Kennewick Man has ended with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and archaeological science is the winner -- for now. In a February 4 decision, the Ninth upheld the...
Read More
|
Winter Weather Wonder, Part II.
January 2004 was unusually cold for most of the Northern Hemisphere (see previous TCS CharTiFact). The cold prompted the UK's Independent to link the weather in a recent op/ed to increased carbon dioxide in the air saying, "Global warming...
Read More
|
Trading Places?
Pascal Lamy, the EU trade commissioner, clearly did not enjoy the collapse of the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun in September 2004. Has he finally decided to pay out the institution as a result? His latest idea of...
Read More
|
More Tax Please, We're British
It's 11:30 p.m. and I'm scrabbling about on the floor: crawling round on the carpet sifting through daunting piles of cryptic receipts, crumpled invoices and assorted scraps of paper. I comb through a chunk of credit card bills and...
Read More
|
The Last European Dictator
As the 2004 Belarussian parliamentary elections are approaching, it is time for the democratic opposition to act. The West should support its struggle against Alexander Lukashenka, the last European dictator. At a recent conference in Riga, Latvia, on Democracy...
Read More
|
Epidemiology Beyond Its Limits
In 1995, science writer Gary Taubes warned that the science of epidemiology (tracing the source and causes of disease) was reaching a crisis point. In "Epidemiology Faces Its Limits" (Science, Jul. 14, 1995), Taubes argued that modern epidemiology was...
Read More
|
VoIP's Giant Hurdles
The Federal Communications Commission on Feb. 12 let Voice over Internet Protocol take one small step forward. But the giant leap for Internet telephony awaits more additional information gathering and rulemaking by the agency. And two big hurdles stand...
Read More
|
The Post on Drugs
Stop the presses. Water is flowing uphill, clocks are running backward, men are biting dogs -- and The Washington Post has just written a fierce editorial against heavy-handed government. Last week, the Paper of Powertown published an editorial entitled...
Read More
|
The Perils of Abundance?
The infant mortality rate has long been considered a measure of the state of a state's well-being. It is, it has been assumed, directly related to poverty, poor nutrition, and lack of healthcare. And at first glance this appears...
Read More
|
Free Riding Isn't Free
Editor's note: What follows are remarks to a forum on "Price Controls and the Economics of Medical Innovation," at the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences, Claremont, Calif., Feb. 19, 2004. The forum was sponsored by the California...
Read More
|
Against Illiberal Internationalism
In his recent Irving Kristol Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, Charles Krauthammer laid out four foreign policy choices for the United States. Three of the four choices bear familiar names. There is the always present but presently rejected...
Read More
|
Gay Marriage and Ambivalent Conservatives
A curious thing happens when talking to younger conservatives about gay marriage. While many of them think same-sex marriage is in some ways an incoherent notion, I haven't come across any who think that gay marriage will not at...
Read More
|
The Worst Pandemic Looks to Get Worse
Fake AIDS drugs, unlicensed copies, real bioequivalent generics and even stolen brand name drugs are being sold on street corners in many African cities. The immediate result is that wretched Africans are spending their life-savings in the hope of...
Read More
|
Universities and the Left: A Reply to the Critics
The debate over the Left's domination of the modern university has always been an emotional one, and my recent two-part TCS article on the subject has certainly generated some passionate responses. Most of these were from conservative professors, students,...
Read More
|
Germany's Economic Suicide
Suddenly, he is the most unpopular German chancellor in modern history. Gerhard Schröder's six-year honeymoon is over. Since winning re-election by only 6,500 votes in September 2002 he has seen his poll ratings plummet to 25 percent. In addition,...
Read More
|
SOX Pox
After the Enron scandal erupted, when Congress was desperate to be seen as doing something -- anything -- about corporate governance, nobody bothered with very much in the way of serious cost-benefit analysis. That particular chicken is now coming...
Read More
|
Whither Libertarianism?
A recent Reason magazine debate on "how to think about liberty" produced this piece, which includes arguments from professors Richard Epstein, Randy Barnett and David Friedman, and from TCS's own James Pinkerton. While the participants in the debate provide...
Read More
|
Ballistic Missile Defense: All or Nothing?
Earlier this month, the Council for a Livable World , an organization dedicated to the promotion of arms control, posted on its website an article written by two MIT professors. Entitled Missile Defense: the Dangers and Lack of Realism,...
Read More
|
Green Eyeshade Killers
Candidates are obsessed with "outsourcing," the alleged loss of tech jobs overseas. In fact, outsourcing is a sideshow. Since 1999, U.S. tech jobs have been rising, and the Labor Department projects they'll double by 2010. Yes, IBM is hiring...
Read More
|
Have a Heart
Rob Raffety recently discussed the need to encourage greater human organ donation in an article on TCS and noted that the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA), PL 98-507, makes illegal the "transfer of any human organ for valuable...
Read More
|
California's Fruits and Nuts Oppose Agriculture
This is a cautionary tale about abuses of the local referendum process and about the risks of getting involved in local political causes. Earlier this month, I authored a letter opposing an anti-biotechnology county ballot referendum item, and the...
Read More
|
The Soldiering Ethos
America has fought a war for two years with its peacetime military. Moreover this is what both the nation and the military have wanted. But the situation is changing. Effective insurgency in Iraq is just the first step moving...
Read More
|
Kill Saddam
The Guardian newspaper reports there could be a two-year wait before Saddam Hussein sees the inside of a courtroom. Salem Chalabi, nephew of the well-known Iraqi exile Achmed Chalabi and an architect of the Iraqi war crimes tribunal, is...
Read More
|
Blogging: The Next Wave
People are always asking me how to be a blogging bigshot, and/or what will be the Next Big Thing in blogging. I don't claim to have any very special expertise in that area, but I do have some thoughts....
Read More
|
Convergence, Consolidation and Competition
A lot of talk has gone into the idea of convergence in communications technologies, and how it would bring about inter-platform competition to serve consumers. Well, there's a convergence going on all right. Cingular wireless' $41 billion bid at...
Read More
|
Aiding the Absurd
Peter Bauer, the British economist, once described foreign aid as "taxing poor people in rich countries and passing it on to rich people in poor countries." The unambiguous failure of foreign aid over the past 50 years proves that...
Read More
|
Outsource These People, Please
Editor's note: We at TCS have taken a particular interest in the ongoing debate over the outsourcing of jobs. TCS host James K. Glassman wrote a much-discussed piece critical of CNN anchor Lou Dobbs and his sensationalist program "Exporting...
Read More
|
Sleeping with the Enemy
"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." -- Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, 1989 The late and legendary community activist must have been giddy in his grave the other day, when the world's largest lending institution,...
Read More
|
The Case Against the Case Against Efficiency
Editor's note: The essay "The Case Against Efficiency" appeared on the front page of the Outlook section in the February 15 edition of the Washington Post. TCS contributor Radley Balko provides a point-by-point rebuttal -- a "Fisking" -- in...
Read More
|
Veiled Threat
Earlier this month, for the first time this century, the French government did something right. By a vote of 494 to 36, French Members of Parliament decided to ban Muslim headscarves from the schoolroom. The bill now goes to...
Read More
|
The Pope and Capitalism
Examine the works of Pope John Paul II and you'll find some of the strongest examples of support for a free-market economy by the Catholic Church since Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum in 1891. The pontiff may or may not...
Read More
|
The Dobbs Rogue Fund
Researching an article on outsourcing a week ago, I came across a remarkable list on the website of CNN's Lou Dobbs. It was a sort of rogues' gallery, touted nightly on the show. "These are companies," says the Dobbs...
Read More
|
Invoking a Real Precautionary Principle
We live in a world increasingly dominated by an article of faith that human beings have undue, even nefarious, influence over the dynamic systems of the Earth like climate. Climate science, however, is finally catching up with climate theology...
Read More
|
China's Economic Rollercoaster
China has created the third wave of Asian growth. When it collapses, as it must, will it bring down the world economy? This will depend on how successful foreign enterprises are at managing risk. The problem is that no one...
Read More
|
When Are Terrorists Not Terrorists?
Following the mysterious February 6 Moscow subway explosion, which Russian president Vladimir Putin quickly blamed on Chechen separatists, came the news on February 13 of the assassination in Qatar of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. Yandarbiyev was an authentic supporter o
Read More
|
Freedom Without Responsibility
"The serious and interesting issue is how do we explain the surplus of liberals in academia...it seems to me that the only viable hypothesis left is something like the following: There is a statistical association between the qualities that...
Read More
|
Swedish Meatballs?
Today 50 percent of Swedish men and 33 percent of Swedish women are overweight. Some 10 percent are obese, almost double the amount compared to the 1980s. The situation of Swedish children is regarded as particularly serious; 18 percent...
Read More
|
Ignore Greenpeace on Homeland Security
The Department of Homeland Security's recent "Code-Orange" alert was a grim reminder of the ever-present threat posed by terrorism. Fortunately, the alert passed with no harm done. Indeed, the heightened awareness shown by security officials, law-enforcement perso
Read More
|
The Opium of the Professors
Editor's note: to read part one of this series, click here. It is said of Woodrow Wilson that when asked what the purpose of a liberal education is, he replied "To make a person as unlike his father as...
Read More
|
Investigations R Us
Investigations R Us. That could be the motto of Washington DC these days, as much politicking -- and precious little truth-discovering -- is conducted by the myriad commissions and inquiries swirling around the Bush administration. Many reports and findings...
Read More
|
The UN's Oil for Fools Program
Oil is not just fuel for your car. It is a mighty political weapon. The latest revelations that the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used oil sales under the U.N. oil-for-food program to buy friends and influence policy around...
Read More
|
Glassman v. Dobbs
Editor's note: Thursday night James K. Glassman appeared on CNN to debate Lou Dobbs. They discussed the outsourcing of jobs in dynamic, global economies. Dobbs asked Glassman on his show after reading Glassman's article "Exporting Lou Dobbs and John...
Read More
|
GaNGOs of New Europe
Seeing non-governmental organizations as a tool for curbing corruption in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The mind-set idealizes NGOs and is based on the assumption that people working for them are more ethical and...
Read More
|
The Guitar's Technological Crossroads
How do you continue to advance the technology of a product, when the vast percentage of its consumers wants it to remain fixed at a standard developed 35 years ago? That's the dilemma facing manufacturers of the electric guitar....
Read More
|
Why Are Universities Dominated by the Left?
The hegemony of the Left over the universities is so overwhelming that not even Leftists deny it. Whether the institution is public or private, a community college or an Ivy League campus, you can with absolute confidence predict that...
Read More
|
Taking the Man Out of Manufacturing
We can learn much from observing the Democratic primary debates. Politicians are rarely rewarded for taking principled positions. Their incentives encourage constituent pandering. Once elected, they use their office to transfer opportunities and benefits that incr
Read More
|
WHO's Inconsistent and Anti-Patent?
In a recent letter to the Wall Street Journal, representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Fund for AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Fund) claimed that "The Global Fund, based on WHO guidance, is financing one...
Read More
|
Valentines Day Hearts... and Other Organs
We can learn much from observing the Democratic primary debates. Politicians are rarely rewarded for taking principled positions. Their incentives encourage constituent pandering. Once elected, they use their office to transfer opportunities and benefits that incr
Read More
|
First Human Clone
Korean scientists are announcing today in Science that they have taken the first step toward creating genetically matched cells and tissues for transplant by growing stem cells from a cloned human blastocyst. The embryonic stem (ES) cells were created...
Read More
|
Why Didn't He Know?
"What did the president know and when did he know it?" That was the question that Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn., asked the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973 regarding President Richard M. Nixon's knowledge of the infamous break in. Today,...
Read More
|
Osama Bin Greenhouse
Last month, Sir David King, the UK's chief scientific advisor, had an article in Science magazine in which he said "...climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today - more serious than the threat of...
Read More
|
Stopping the Real Pests
It's great news that most Americans now identify themselves as environmentalists. Unfortunately, a small number have embraced environmentalism with religious fervor, basing their beliefs more on faith and dogma than on science and data. Not unlike fundamentalists
Read More
|
The 99-cent Technology Store
It looks like the 99-cent online technology store is ready to sweep across America. In the brick-and-mortar world, the concept is already wildly successful -- the National Association of Small Business Retailers estimates that there are over 10,000 "single...
Read More
|
That Vision Thing: Toward a Real Immigration Reform
Three weeks ago in this space, I wrote about the confused message that President Bush sent with his proposal for a new guest-worker program, and the ineffectual result it would have on this country's incoherent immigration scheme. My piece...
Read More
|
Exporting Lou Dobbs and John Kerry
What's gotten into Lou Dobbs? Once a sensible, if self-important and sycophantic, CNN anchor, he has suddenly become a table-thumping protectionist. Dobbs has been running a series -- praised by the AFL-CIO's Rich Trumka as a "nightly crusade" --...
Read More
|
The Bush Administration Needs to Become Pro Choice
Two recent stories illustrate the failure of public education. The first comes from writer and blogger Joanne Jacobs, and references the reaction of one of the public high schools in Atlanta to the application of Marquis Harris for a...
Read More
|
On AIDS, Brazil's New Way Forward
São Paulo, Brazil -- One is struck by Dr. Artur Kalichman's energy and enthusiasm as soon as one meets him. When Kalichman was showing a U.S. delegation around São Paulo's Centro de Referência e Treinamento (Reference and Treatment Center)...
Read More
|
Botoxic Shock in Tinseltown
America was once a land of unlimited enterprise. Then we became a nation of irrepressible self-indulgence. And now we are a country whose people "do their own thing" -- often to absurd lengths -- and then find, with the...
Read More
|
Keeping Up "The Weird Fight"
I'm worried about the future of nanotechnology. Worried enough, in fact, that where just a few weeks ago I was wondering if I should invest in the field, now I'm relieved that I don't own any nanotechnology stocks. This...
Read More
|
Pumping Up Steroid Hysteria
Perhaps because I lagged well behind my peer group, physically at least, until I was well into my twenties, most of my childhood associations with sports are unpleasant. The shortest and most physically maladroit kid in class after class...
Read More
|
The "American" Civil Liberties Union?
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a complaint against the government of the United States with the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions. In their January 27 petition, the ACLU claims that thirteen people detained as...
Read More
|
Free Martha!
As Martha Stewart's trial moves into a third week, an important question remains unasked: Why are the feds prosecuting someone for receiving inside information, anyway? Isn't the criminal the corporate official who acts on knowledge that the public doesn't...
Read More
|
Are There "Two Americas"?
John Edwards may or may not win the Democratic presidential nomination, but either way I want to record nonetheless how appalling his standard "two Americas" stump speech really is. Sen. Edwards, in his usual campaign speech, engages in a...
Read More
|
Decisions Under Uncertainty
"Tim Russert: But can you launch a preemptive war without iron clad, absolute intelligence that he had weapons of mass destruction? President Bush: Let me take a step back for a second and there is no such thing necessarily...
Read More
|
Small Investors Beware
In a January 13 USA Today interview Eliot Spitzer was asked about his fee negotiations with Alliance Capital. Despite the fact that he has no jurisdiction over fund pricing, the ambitious attorney general has succeeded in bringing down the...
Read More
|
A Supersized Distortion
Morgan Spurlock wanted to be in a movie. And he was in a movie -- one he made himself -- which he then presented to the world at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. The subject of the movie was...
Read More
|
Moore Wisdom Needed
"Ah, global warming. Well, we're going through one of the cooler periods for the planet...It would be wonderful if Canada was a little warmer," said Patrick Moore, with a wry smile. This was one of the more playful quips...
Read More
|
The States and Outsourcing
The emergence of John Kerry as frontrunner for the Democratic nomination suggests that free trade might be off the table in 2004, at least as a national issue. It's certain to come up, however, in a number of congressional,...
Read More
|
Wasting Away Again in Free-Riderville
We're moving from the glories of the information age to the pitfalls of free-riderville. Free riders take advantage of other's efforts without contributing anything themselves, and they threaten the music, movie, book and pharmaceutical industries. When you listen
Read More
|
Why Bush Held His Own with Russert
With apologies to the Democratic candidates, The New York Times editorial page, Don Imus, and -- of all people -- Peggy Noonan, I beg to differ. I think President Bush acquitted himself smartly this weekend in his head-to-head battle...
Read More
|
Putin to Europe's Rescue
I try to picture myself as Vladimir Putin, listening intently in my Kremlin office while a slightly pudgy, decidedly bookish economics expert briefs me on carbon-dioxide emissions. Clearly and methodically, he lays out the case for why the Russian Federation...
Read More
|
Is the Dogma Unravelling?
This smallish volume, "Man-Made Global Warming: Unravelling a Dogma" by Hans Labohm, Simon Rozendahl and Dick Thoenes is dedicated to "debunking the man-made global warming scare" (p.vii). It is published in the UK but written by three Dutch authors...
Read More
|
Sec. Thompson: "What's the Incentive...?"
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson gave a spirited defense on Thursday to the Bush administration's approach to funding international AIDS programs and its protections of intellectual property. Thompson's remarks came at the conclusion of a forum o
Read More
|
Spitzer Goes Over the Line
Elliot Spitzer, the attorney general of New York, whom the Economist calls "publicity hungry," recently ramped up his crusade of suing financial institutions by going after the mutual fund industry. Most notably, Spitzer got Alliance Capital to cut its...
Read More
|
The Enemy Within
According to ABC News, "A shortage of Arabic translators in Iraq has made it harder for U.S. soldiers to protect themselves, jeopardized interrogations of suspected al Qaeda terrorists in U.S. custody in Cuba and left almost no one to...
Read More
|
SUVs and the Clash of Cultures
I just returned from Moab, UT, the mountain bike capital of the West. I discovered that Moab is also the epicenter of 4x4 off-roading and the home of the annual "Easter Jeep Safari." This event draws over 1,000 of...
Read More
|
The Great Struggle: Media vs. Voters
Can John Kerry actually beat George W. Bush? The Bay State Senator, fresh from his victories in seven of the last nine primaries and caucuses, is certainly on a roll; he's got the Big Mo. And he'll be getting...
Read More
|
Mars Mirage
Perhaps our next Mars probe should be called the Tinkerbell. The fairy from "Peter Pan" was brought to life by children shouting, "I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!" The same chorus of belief in Martians resounds...
Read More
|
Let Them Confess Their Faith
It wasn't long after I became a research scientist that I learned that scientists aren't the unbiased, impartial seekers of truth I always thought they were. Scientists have their own agendas, philosophies, pre-conceived notions, and pet theories. These views...
Read More
|
A New Politics
A realignment is taking place in the politics of this country and indeed of the world at large. It is increasingly difficult to define the meanings of left and right, liberal and conservative. Democratic candidates are running on once-Republican...
Read More
|
My "Bush-ite Cheerleading"
Imagine how you would feel if you had just become the proud parent of a bouncing baby boy, and you suddenly discovered that people you did not know from Adam were publishing critical reviews about your child's most intimate...
Read More
|
Scientific Inquiry and Freedom
Editor's note: What follows is a statement made recently before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources. "Everything was in question; everything seemed inexplicable; everything was doubtful. Only the large number of deaths was an unquestionable real
Read More
|
Who'll Save the Hubble?
The Bush administration has made it clear that the United States takes the measure of its friendships in the face of mortal risks like its war in Iraq. But even this bold administration has identified a danger it is...
Read More
|
The Nano-Ostrich Approach Doesn't Work
Ostriches don't really bury their heads in the sand when confronted with danger. People, however, sometimes do. Certainly that seems to be what's happening with the nanotechnology industry. Last week, I wrote about prospects for nanotechnology, and in particular..
Read More
|
Our Edwardian Healthcare System
John Edwards wants us to know he is a man of heart. He has stood against "armies of lawyers," to help families through the "darkest moments of their lives." He is a "champion of quality healthcare," a trial lawyer...
Read More
|
A Defense of Planning
One of the three great mysteries of the Iraq war has been cleared up. What happened to Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? They were never there in the first place. But, despite the crowing by Democrats over the conclusions...
Read More
|
Regulating the Boob Tube
Let's consider for a moment what our federal government is doing to protect us from grave threats. Ricin, a deadly toxin, has been found in the US Senate, forcing the closure of three entire office buildings, and reminding us...
Read More
|
When Will the Era of Big Government Really Be Over?
Editor's note: What follows is the text of a Speech recently delivered by U.S. Rep. Christopher Cox Chairman, House Policy Committee, and Chairman, House Homeland Security Committee at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The title of my speech is an...
Read More
|
Are There Good Foods and Bad Foods?
The belief that some foods are better than others -- indeed that some foods are inherently good while others are inherently bad -- has become a well-accepted underpinning of current nutrition lore. What does it mean to speak of...
Read More
|
The FlexDollar Welfare State
"Freddie Mac provides its employees FlexDollars to help pay for the benefits our employees select. These funds offset the cost of employee's medical, dental, vision, life insurance and vacation purchased." -- Freddie Mac web site As pundits geared up...
Read More
|
The Health and Wealth Puzzle
Early last December, I traveled to Kenya and Uganda with a delegation of health experts to look at efforts to fight AIDS in Africa. What I saw was both depressing and inspirational: overwhelming numbers of the dying and orphaned,...
Read More
|
Good Unintended Consequences
According to the European economic growth agenda agreed to a few years ago in Lisbon, by 2010 the European Union should become "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world." Unfortunately, business regulation in Europe is increasing,...
Read More
|
The Risky Business of Understanding Risk
Americans are more and more risk-conscious. We buy muscular SUV's, spend billions on dietary supplements annually, and try to cut down on saturated fats. Often, we learn about risks by relying on the media to interpret medical research and...
Read More
|
'No Bucks, No Buck Rogers'
It was wonderful to see President Bush identify himself with NASA and announce a new charter and grand vision for the space agency. For any grand plan of exploration to succeed it must be championed at the highest levels....
Read More
|
Why Has There Been No Mad Cow Solution?
There's a popular perception that scientific discoveries come from the "Eureka!" moment -- or a time when, like in a Hollywood production, the muse intercedes and brings the lightning flash of a research breakthrough. But there's also this truth...
Read More
|
Spill Spin
They did it again: U.S. District Judge H. Russell Holland in the U.S. District Court in Anchorage, Alaska, has just levied a fine totaling nearly $7 billion against Exxon Mobil Corp. for its part in the 1989 oil spill near...
Read More
|
Over-Humanizing the Enemy
Violence breeds violence -- but so can nonviolence. This is often forgotten in the debate over terrorism, as illustrated in some reviews of the new book by David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to Win...
Read More
|
Ukraine Confronts Kyoto
KIEV -- Since the collapse of the Soviet Union emissions of greenhouse gases in the former USSR have dropped significantly below 1990 levels. Back then Russia was responsible for 17 percent of greenhouse emissions. For Ukraine, which in 1990...
Read More
|
Paradigm Shift or Ancien Regime?
"It's probably the most significant paradigm shift in the entire history of modern communications, since the invention of the telephone," Federal Communications Chairman Michael Powell said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Powell was talking about
Read More
|
When America Became Finland
Listen, my children, and you shall hear, of the time when cars had fins on their rear. The first tailfins I ever saw on a car were on a yellow 1948 Cadillac convertible parked at the polo field in...
Read More
|
Beware Iraqoslavia
Will Iraq survive as a single country, or is it destined to be partitioned between its three constituent communities, the Kurds, Sunni Muslim Arabs, and Shia Arabs? This controversy, which has yet to rise to the status of formal...
Read More
|
Independents' Say
I had actually been thinking about writing an article about independent voters when a piece by Jonah Goldberg caught my eye; and let me say in advance that I agree with all the negative images by which he tars...
Read More
|
The Downfall of the Anointed
"'For MoveOn.org, the goal is to mobilize like-minded people to action against the Republican agenda, not to persuade them that it's wrong,' said Eli Pariser, the group's campaign director. "'Changing people's minds is overrated,' Mr. Pariser said. 'Most of...
Read More
|
Milton Friedman and The Reimportation Debate
Editor's Note: TCS sponsored a debate on the issue of prescription drug reimportation in San Francisco on January 27 moderated by TCS host James K. Glassman. What follows below is the transcript of the event. James K. Glassman: Thank...
Read More
|
