TCS Daily : October 2005 Archives
Fill 'er Up with Oil Sands!
It was a tenet of the late great economist Julian Simon that we'll never run out of any commodity. That's because before we do the increasing scarcity of that resource will drive up the price and force us to adopt...
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Should Saddam Be Executed?
On October 18, the Free Muslims Coalition (FMC), an organization headquartered in Washington, DC, issued a commentary accessible here. The statement asked that Saddam Hussein not be executed if, as nobody doubts, he is found guilty at trial. As a...
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The Politicization of Public Companies
Are institutional investors taking over the world? Maybe not, but their importance in the public policy arena is growing, enough for the Federalist Society -- you know, the conservative legal cabal of which liberals speak in hushed tones --...
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We Have Enough Troops: A Soldier Explains
Troop strength is a recurring topic of discussion regarding our difficulties in Iraq. Unfortunately, what began as cries of "not enough troops" from left-leaning political partisans eventually grew into a choir that included more credible individuals. Among them we
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A Realist No Longer
The punditry world is abuzz with talk of a recent New Yorker article (no link available) by writer Jeffrey Goldberg, who has interviewed Brent Scowcroft, the former national security advisor for the Ford Administration and the Administration of George...
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Bureaucracy and Baksheesh
There is much talk these days in France of the French Economic Model. Is it an exquisite example of the "French exception," to be preserved at all costs, or a last ditch effort to stave off globalization? If it...
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Civilization IV Whom?
I cut taxes, rammed my religion down the throats of my unwilling subjects, and nuked France. It was a great year. It was worth six hours in my computer chair to get there. Like every other nerd on the planet,...
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New Zealand Has a Government, But the Rest is Uncertain
New Zealand now has a new Government. Prime Minister Helen Clark remains Prime Minister, but what a strange Ministry she is now leading. Probably her best performing Minister, someone who consistently delivered the goods for New Zealand, Trade Minister...
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The Gaza Withdrawal Syndrome
JERUSALEM - As body parts from Wednesday's homicide bombing, which killed five and wounded over 30, splattered over the streets of the coastal town of Hadera, it became painfully clear for many Israelis that the recent retreat from Gaza...
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Will the Internet become the UNTERNET?
The United Nations wants control of the internet. At its November 2005 meeting in Tunis, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) will deliberate its "second phase" of creating a bureaucracy to manage internet governance. The WSIS is run...
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The Bourgeois Party And Its Base
Is your house worth too much? Many top politicians seem to feel that way. Why else are they laboring so hard to reduce housing values? Of course, the Bush administration and a broad bipartisan coalition in Congress wouldn't put it...
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Brazil (Gun) Nuts?
A very unusual referendum took place in Brazil last weekend. 120 million voters were summoned to the polls to decide whether to ban the sale of firearms. Unlike the U.S., where this issue is part of the national debate, most...
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Nomination Reparation
The Harriet Miers nomination is dead. Long live the Harriet Miers nomination. The political fallout from the Miers withdrawal will likely be minor. The Democrats will get a day of Snoopy-dancing, and conservatives will get a day of tearful...
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Dan Yergin on Energy Prices and Policies
James Glassman: Energy prices have been rising sharply, partly because of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. We decided to talk to probably America's number one expert on energy to try to separate some of the hysteria and the myths from...
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'Let's Say Yes'
The Iraqi constitution -- now ratified by the Iraqi people -- is another signal that the democratic revolts of 2004 and 2005 won't be defeated by murderous tyrants and autocrats. The democratic revolts began with Afghanistan's October 2004 presidential...
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Who Pays for Health Insurance?
Robert "Steve" Miller, Delphi's chief executive...bluntly says that the social contract written after 1945 is being -- must be -- repealed because, given globalization, unskilled manual labor cannot be paid $65 an hour, with the cost passed on to consumers....
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One Flu from the Cuckoo's Nest
This August, the White House told the press that the President's reading list for his stay at his Texas ranch included the book, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John Barry. The book...
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The Challenges to America's Resilience
Hurricane Katrina's devastation of the Gulf Coast will raise the price of commodities from cosmetics to crude oil, gasoline to grain. How could one storm score a hit on every wallet in the country? And what connection is there between...
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A Different Perspective on Security: America's Infrastructural Failures
An ancient dam about to collapse in Massachusetts; levees breached in Louisiana; a blackout blanketing millions of people across the countrys most populous Northeastern region; repeated media references to the shrinking number of crude oil refineries; detours force
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Decade Development Goals
The recent UN summit and associated meetings in New York gave rise to much discussion of the Millennium Development Goals. The MDGs are extremely ambitious and worthy objectives. Being "against" them has the flavor of being "against" motherhood and children....
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The Video Future Approacheth
Congress, as usual, is behind the times. The molasses-like transition to high-definition TV continues in its glacial pace, but Congress is nonetheless voting to subsidize consumers as the switch takes place: Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said Congress n
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Poland's Party Time
This Sunday's election result in the race for the Polish presidency will have a strong impact in Europe -- especially if it can help boost momentum for bureaucratic reform and free-market economics. After winning the first round of the presidential...
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The Fini Option
Italians are in the midst of one of the most exciting election campaigns in 60 years of democratic life. The ruling coalition, the House of Freedom, is trying to convince voters it deserves re-election to another five-year term. Winning will...
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Crisis? What Crisis?
The World Trade Organization had another crisis this week. John Tsang, Hong Kong's Secretary of Commerce, declared the WTO was at risk of destruction. He cares because he will chair a conference of WTO Ministers in December. WTO groupies may...
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Korea's Dangerous Monetary Games
In what it called a preemptive move, the Bank of Korea recently raised its inter-bank overnight lending rate by 25 basis-point rise from the record low call rate of 3.25 percent, the first increase in over three years. But this...
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The Liberation of Art
The ultimate limitation on artistic achievement in any society is the imagination and technical ability of the artists. However, an additional limit is the ability of the economy to support it. The marketplace, after all, is an aesthetically and...
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The Oracle That Is Delphi
A half century ago, Al Capp mocked General Motors Chairman Charles E. Wilson's quote, "What's good for America is good for General Motors, and what's good for General Motors is good for America," by having his ruthless capitalist, General Bullmoose,...
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2006: A Race Odyssey
Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) doth protest too much. In a memo sent out to Republican congressmen earlier this month, Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, tried to quell fears that the 2006 midterm elections will turn into a...
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Spelunking in the Solar System
One sign of technological progress in the 21st century will be if a rising number of humans live in caves. The caves in question are on the moon and Mars, and they are assets of considerable scientific, technological, economic and...
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Economists Mugged by Reality
"During President Bush's first five years in office total real discretionary spending went up by 36.5 percent... Rather than attack this cancerous growth, Republicans have fed it, doling out prescription drugs to seniors, hurricane relief and bridges-to-nowhere wit
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Settle for Less
Microsoft announced this month that it had settled its antitrust dispute with RealNetworks by paying $761 million. It's the latest in a string of settlements Microsoft has made with competitors, including AOL Time Warner and IBM. Reaction to the news...
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Growth After Greenspan
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will soon leave his post, with deserved applause. But he remains a man of mystery in many ways, particularly regarding his pronouncements on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Earlier this year, I was mystified...
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Inertia and New Zealand
Voting systems often work well at delivering the outcomes that they are tailored to achieve. New Zealand is discovering this right now. It took four weeks, after its September 17 national election, for a new government to be formed. And...
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The Education of Gesture
Cognitive scientists are generally agreed that one of the most important faculties of the human brain and its associated sensory apparatus is the ability to detect patterns. It is patterns that make the world intelligible, that carry meaning, that make...
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Surveillance Supremacy
Editor's note: This is the final article in a series. To read Part 1 click here. To read Part 2 click here. "It was during these operations that Al Qaeda developed experience in its primary skill: evading the CIA...
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The Singapore Model and Latin America
With the exception of Chile and Colombia, most of Latin America finds itself stalled in deep economic and institutional backwardness, and there is little hope of future improvement. Indeed, politicians there appear more concerned with opinion polls than with the...
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The Expectation Defiers
It is understandable for observers of the current reconstruction in Iraq to believe that the next political test faced by the country will result in catastrophic failure. The insurgent attacks that continue to occur dominate news dispatches. Would-be foreign policy
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'The Source of the Chaos'
BEIRUT -- The Lebanese army fully deployed into the streets of Beirut while awaiting the release of U.N. special prosecutor Detlev Mehlis's report on his investigation into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Armored vehicles and heavy...
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The Other Important Culture War
Harriet Miers's nomination, the Iraqi referendum, rumors of resignations among top White House staff -- news junkies have had a busy week. Comes now another intriguing story meriting attention. A United Nations agency is helping spearhead an effort to...
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Raise a Glass to Adult Stem Cells
I have frequently written on the gulf between the promise of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and the reality of therapy from adult stem cells (ASCs) -- those already in our bodies and umbilical cord blood. ESCs get publicity; ASCs get...
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The Most Influential Person You Never Heard Of
Arthur Seldon died on October 11 at the age of 89. Few outside policy wonk circles will have heard of him. He may thus merit the title of the most influential person most people have never heard of. For he...
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Web of Confusion
Just weeks before the UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, the European Union is gaining international support for its proposal to internationalize control of the World Wide Web. Adopted by EU telecommunication ministers in July, the plan.
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Doom's Day
Few Americans over 30 are going to see the new movie "Doom," which opens today. So I will be happy to tell them some interesting things about the film. As for Americans under 30, many of whom grew up...
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In Defence of the White Wires
Commentators are lining up to blame the iPod for ruining UK city life. In the Spectator recently, Henrietta Bredin lamented the fact that we were 'hooking ourselves up to those little white earphones to fill our heads with a...
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An Item for the Next Iraqi Ballot: Oil Trust
In practice, if not in theory, wealth and democracy reinforce one another. Iraqis have conducted two successful national elections in the midst of terrorist violence. Despite an estimated unemployment rate of 40 percent, some Iraqi "big picture" economic trends...
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Between Jam and Jelly: Regulation as the Default State of Affairs
In her Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy amuses us with the following tidbit: "They used to make pickles, squashes, jams, curry powders, and canned &n;
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The Sports Fan's Guide to Foreign Policy
I'm a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers -- and, like most fans, I have no good reason for my allegiance whatsoever. Oh, the actual reason for my Steeler support is pretty easy: I was living near Pittsburgh when I first...
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Are Americans Becoming Europeans?
MILAN - I have just finished a two-week trip to Europe -- my honeymoon, if you must know -- and, as usual with a European trip, I have come away with two completely different impressions. Europe, or at least the...
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Exchange Rates Must Be on Mr. Bush's China Agenda
At the start of the year, Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Board Chairman who is not known for being an alarmist, issued an ominous warning. He warned that, in the absence of early remedial policy action, there was a...
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How to Lose Friends and Influence Nobody
Recently there has been high level chatter about curtailing the existing United States Visa Waiver Program (VWP); it extends to nationals of some 27 countries, which include the UK, Spain, Germany, and Japan, and has existed since 1986. Under the...
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The Boys and the Brand
Apple. Nike. Starbucks. Al Jazeera. Brands with global recognition. A firm will invest millions of dollars to maintain not only visibility, but also to construct an image that serves corporate interests. Strict management within a firm, and expensive legal action..
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Skyping the Hype
"Supermodels not wanted. We want your brain." This ad, in English, appeared in Estonian newspapers in 1999. At the time, the advertisement seemed ironic in a country where the biggest international breakthroughs had been achieved by skin-and-bones supermodels, such
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The Age of Radical Enhancement
Editors note: This article is the second in a series. To see the Part 1 click here. "In 1979, a friend offered [mathematician Paul] Erds $500 if he could kick his Benzedrine habit for just a month. Erds met...
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The Andromeda Strategy
How much of a threat is the avian flu? We don't really know. The future is like that: it's unpredictable in its specifics. But the future is completely predictable at a more general level. Bad things happen. The good times...
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Inflation: The Fed vs. Energy Prices
NEW DELHI -- Fingers are being pointed at increased demand for energy from the fast-growing economies like China and India, or OPEC for its venal pricing, for pushing up oil prices. In turn, the recent upward spike in prices has...
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Securing the Porkland
For three consecutive years now, the surge in spending to strengthen "homeland security" has provided ample opportunities for Republican and Democrat lawmakers to indulge in common passions: bragging about protecting the country from terrorists and directing feder
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My Story: An Anecdotal Argument for Immigration Reform
I began writing for TCS in January 2004, with two articles commenting on President Bush's proposed immigration reform. The first argued that the plan, which would create a sort of "guest worker" program for unskilled laborers, went both too...
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eBay Nation and the Golden Goose
Okay, not long ago I wrote a column noting that eBay was catching up to WalMart as America's largest employer. I guess that was the kiss of death. At least, now I learn that North Dakota may require people...
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The Branding of the World's Top Intellectual: Noam Chomsky
Editor's note: In light of news that a British poll identified Noam Chomsky as the world's leading intellectual, we thought it would be a valuable exercise to run this excerpt from Peter Schweizer's new book Do As I Say...
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Brussels Calling
The European Commission is planning to review the EU's electronic communications regulatory framework next year, including defining an efficient spectrum management strategy. This sounds serious. Considering its vaunted effort to create "growth and jobs" one would
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Blowing in the Wind
Green Mountain Energy Co. has a deal for you. For just $9.95 a month -- or a discount of $99.95 for a full year, the renewable, clean power company out of Austin, Texas, promises to deliver 500 kilowatt hours of...
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The Significance of Memeorandum
One of the glories of the 'net is the ability to get all the news you want instantly. Add blogs, stir in NRO, Slate, TCS, Slashdot, ALDaily and a few others and shake. Instant information. Just one problem: even with...
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Kurzweilomics
"I close with an anecdote from Simon Kuznets. He used to give a one-year course in growth economics, both at Johns Hopkins and Harvard. One of the points he made was that if you wanted to find accurate forecasts of...
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Germany: Not Dead Yet
Conventional wisdom has it that Germany's muddled election and left-right "grand coalition" government show the nation is fundamentally resistant to economic reform. Free-market conservatives saw Angela Merkel's center-right coalition convert a massive poll lead in
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Old School Terrorism in Lebanon
BEIRUT -- Every couple of weeks, a car bomb explodes somewhere in Lebanon. Except for the 650 pound truck bomb that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, all have exploded in Christian areas. A handful of bombs were placed under...
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Inviting Trouble
Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss Islamist denied entry to the US last summer and to France in 1995, has been offered the red carpet treatment by our British cousins. Indeed, not only did he get a fellowship at Oxford University...
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'The Great Game' Returns
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice completed her visit to Central Asia and Afghanistan last week. This is a tough neighborhood, which plays a key role in the forthcoming global game between the West and the rest. The visit demonstrated Sec....
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Vegas, Baby... Vegas!
In 1972, architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown wrote a book called Learning From Las Vegas, which celebrated the gambling capital's architecture. Designers and builders, the authors insisted, should respond to the tastes and desires of "common" folks, as
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Will the Real Global Economic Threat Please Stand Up?
China is the global economic debate du jour. On one side we hear that China is manipulating its currency and hammering away at the US manufacturing base; that it is growing "too fast" and heading for a hard landing...
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Preparing for the Pandemic
I have a long and intimate relationship with influenza virus. More than 30 years ago, I was the co-discoverer of one of the viral enzymes that are essential for the virus to duplicate and proliferate. Later, my medical training...
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No Fizzy Drinks, Please...
It isn't often that the Labour Party finds its policy template in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's California, but British Education Secretary Ruth Kelly's recent announcement that foods high in fat, salt or sugar are to be banned from school vending...
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We Won... Again!
We won again! For a second time, the Iraqi people proved the Western mainstream media, Islamist radicals, self-righteous and nihilistic war protestors, disaffected Democrats, and neo-isolationists wrong: the referendum on the new constitution was successful. The Su
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Does Growth Lead to Liberalization?
In a September 21 speech to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick advanced the well rehearsed theory that as China's economy grows, its newly enriched citizens will begin to demand political freedom commensurate w
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Don't Call it a Comeback (Yet)...
Just a few months ago, conventional wisdom had all but written Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's eulogy, complete with all the shopworn Terminator clichés fit to print. The "Governator's" approval ratings were in the high 30's. The Democrats in the Assembly...
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Where Might Harriet Miers Make Her Mark?
It's no secret that President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers sharply divided his base, especially that part of which hangs out in the right-of-center blogosphere. On my blog, I've been critical of the choice. Let's assume that Miers is eventually...
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Fissures Among the Fanatics
Perhaps senior Bush administration officials thought establishing a democratic Iraq would be quick work. In an essay I wrote for the Dec. 9, 2002, issue of The Weekly Standard, I described what I thought a very difficult path to...
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Will 2005 Set a Record For Warmth? Does It Matter?
According to David Rind from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), 2005 is going to set the all-time record for global warmth. He told Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post (October 13, 2005) only a major volcanic eruption could...
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Media Lied, People Died
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina two sports were all the rage in New Orleans. One was the blame game, attributing all local and state incompetence to the feds. The other was inventing and spreading stories of murder and mayhem...
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Fearing, the Worst
The improbably named Jennifer Fearing recently penned a tirade against animal cloning. The rant was stimulated by the announcement from South Korean scientists of the first cloned dog, an adorable puppy called Snuppy who is genetically identical to a sweet...
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The Pension Generation
A European pensions expert was once asked whether he thought Europeans would ever be willing to transform their expensive tax-funded systems into more sustainable fully funded systems. His answer: "Not until the young take up arms against the old." In...
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Europe's Free Market Nexus
The first European Resource Bank Meeting (ERBM), held in Bulgaria last year, gathered about a hundred free-market thinkers and advocates from across the EU, neighboring countries, and around the world. This year's conference will be organized by the Lithuanian Free
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What the President Should Have Said About Bird Flu
Stung by criticism over the unpreparedness of government at all levels to address hurricane Katrina, President Bush has been taking steps to make sure another disaster doesn't embarrass his administration. When Hurricane Rita formed in the Gulf, the White House...
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The Myth of the "Constitution-in-Exile" Movement
Last week, I wrote about the conspiracy-mongering regarding the existence and function of the Federalist Society that has become part of the judicial confirmation wars and has emerged as a major talking point against right-of-center judicial nominees. There is anot
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China in Space
When China sent a man into space two years ago, it showed it had arrived. When China repeated the feat this week, it showed it has every intention of staying. In the big guy's club, that is. There's no...
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'LordD have MerCIe Vpon Vs'
In some places in London, you can find scratched on old walls the imprecation, LorD haVe MerCIe Vpon Vs. The curious arrangement of the capital letters is what epigraphists call a "chronogram." Rearranged, they come to MDCLXVI, which in...
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New Japan Is Rising
Japan's sun is rising again, in the form of "Lion King" Junichiro Koizumi, whose crushing electoral victory last month unleashed a wave of optimism that has surged through the key markets. This is especially good news for the rest of...
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The EU's Regulatory Hydra; Hercules Needed
Hydra: In Greek mythology, a monster with nine heads; when struck off each head was replaced by two new ones. Hydra was slain by Hercules. The European Commission, that fount of regulatory abundance, recently announced it would embark on a...
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Farm "Aid"
Nicholas Kristof's column in the New York Times Tuesday (not, as we know, online) comes from Niger and touches on a number of points I made here a couple of weeks ago. Yes, Niger's problems come from endemic poverty...
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The Singularity Approacheth?
I, for one, welcome our new robot drivers. And they're well on their way, as the multiple finishers in the DARPA Challenge race demonstrate. Not long ago, robot driving seemed impossible. Now four vehicles "achieved a technological milestone by conquering...
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Two Hurricanes and the Conservative Crisis
Two hurricanes, one literal and one figurative, came along and ripped the roof off of the conservative coalition's happy home. It was bound to happen sooner or later -- that cracks would start forming, that dissent would start seeping...
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Slippery Teflon Charges Won't Stick
The uncanny ability of President Ronald Reagan to deflect public criticism won him the nickname, "The Teflon President." Ironically, now it is Teflon itself that is facing the heat, as anti-chemical groups and trial attorneys have joined forces to...
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The War Over the Robber Barons
WICKFORD, RI -- During the bleak days of the Depression, Matthew Josephson -- at that time a self-proclaimed Marxist published a biased and mistake-packed economic history of the Gilded Age. Josephson's The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861...
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The Right to Know-nothingism Law
Proposition 65 deserves to be renamed "the law of mythological food fears." It's the California act of 1986 which "requires businesses to provide clear and reasonable warning if their products expose any individual to a chemical known to the...
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Spain's Government-Sponsored Terrorism
MADRID -- Ermua is a small town in the Basque Country. Miguel Ángel Blanco was a young town councilor representing the Partido Popular. In July 1997 he was kidnapped and, three days later, murdered by the terrorist group ETA. The...
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The Invention of Design
Douglas Kern has written a peculiar essay on what he asserts is the inevitable success of Intelligent Design in the schools and in society generally. It is difficult to determine just what his personal attitude toward this development is; he...
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Razor Wars and the Cutting Edge of Technology
Of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished. -- Samuel Johnson Spider webs soaked in oil and vinegar. Yep. That's what ancient Roman men used to slap on their faces to...
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Vive la Relocation!
September in France is la rentrée, the restart of activity after the summer doldrums. But la rentrée 2005 took a tragic turn last month when Hewlett Packard announced plans to phase out 1,240 employees in its French operation...over a...
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Poverty, Aid and Terror
Does poverty cause terrorism? The United Nations seems to think so. Or, at least that's what a recently released report -- The Inequality Predicament: Report on the World Social Situation 2005 -- says. According to the report, the growing...
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Merkel Cure for Germany?
This week's announcement that Germany would be ruled by a "Grand Coalition" of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, with the CDU's Angela Merkel as chancellor, was met with relief more than celebration. After all, neither party can claim...
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Creationism Is Evolving... It Has No Choice
I must respectfully disagree with my TCS colleague Douglas Kern as he argues for " Why Intelligent Design is Going to Win." Kern lays out a five-point thesis in which he predicts ID's imminent victory. But his points fail to...
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Why Intelligent Design Is Going to Win
It doesn't matter if you like it or not. It doesn't matter if you think it's true or not. Intelligent Design theory is destined to supplant Darwinism as the primary scientific explanation for the origin of human life. ID will...
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Descent of Man in Dover
Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania has been billed as a test of whether teaching intelligent design in a science class amounts to a state establishment of...
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So Much For American Sovereignty
The greater the power to redistribute wealth wielded by government, the stronger the private-sector incentive to circumvent it, and so ever-expanding is the power that government must grasp. Nowhere is that eternal truth clearer than in the ongoing debate...
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Pork Gumbo
Louisiana lawmakers have come up with a request for $250 billion in federal reconstruction funds for Louisiana alone. That's more than $50,000 per person in the state. This money would come on top of the $62.3 billion that Congress has...
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President Bush Gets the Flu
Avian flu is beginning to gain profile. It hit the Presidents April 4 press conference where he said, I am concerned about avian flu. I am concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and...
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The O'Reilly X-Factor
Higher energy prices lately have prompted lots of colorful but deeply flawed commentary. Consider Bill O'Reilly of Fox News' "O'Reilly Factor" who recently targeted the five major oil companies for alleged price gouging: &n;
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Toppling the Arts-Intellectual Complex
The New York Times is hopping mad. And so are the radical chic artiste types. Working together, the elites of the media and the culture have mostly controlled "Big Art" -- the complex of museums, monuments, and galleries that help...
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What of "All The President's Women"
STANFORD, Calif. -- I just witnessed a fascinating juxtaposition. On Tuesday, I attended a lecture, "All the President's Women," by veteran MSNBC reporter Norah O'Donnnell at Stanford University. The next day, a piece by columnist Maureen Dowd with the...
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The X Factor of Harriet Miers
My teammate X was sprawled on the hotel bed, muttering "Why? Why?" as he contemplated the failure of his legal genius. X was the smartest member of my law school's moot court team. He wasn't the finest of public...
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A Federalist Offense
President Bush has nominated White House Counsel Harriet Miers to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. The nomination has provoked a lot of concern on the right side of the ideological divide. And despite the fact that...
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The Warning Label We Need
Editor's note: This is the final article in a series on the alleged link between acrylamide in food and cancer in humans. See part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4. FDA believes that warning language for acrylamide in...
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"Mere Water," Potential Life, or Both?
Editor's note: This is the second in a series of articles exploring and reflecting on several aspects of the Embryonic Stem-Cell Debate from a traditional Jewish perspective. The first installment can be found here. These days, religiously observant Jews and...
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Al Qaeda Waning?
On Oct. 12, 2002, terror bombers murdered 202 people on the Indonesian island of Bali. The terrorists belonged to Jemaah Islamiya (JI), Al-Qaida's nom de guerre in Southeast Asia. Eighty-eight Australians died in that attack. Two months later, in...
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Habitat and Humanity
If there is a Don Quixote of federal laws, it is the Endangered Species Act (ESA): For over three decades this law's regulations have endangered the species in distress that they are endeavoring to protect. The House last Thursday took...
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Sic Transit Maria Landrieu
When Sen. Mary Landrieu (D.-La.) appeared on Fox News Sunday on September 11, she blamed the fact that so many people were left behind in New Orleans on the administration's transportation policies: "In other words, this administration did not believe...
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Derivative Thinking
It seems that the more financial derivatives appear in the news, the more likely it is that regulators will attempt to regulate them. According to the conventional wisdom, investing in these derivatives is akin to throwing gasoline on a roaring...
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Some 21st Century Ideas on Energy and Employment
With gas prices skyrocketing, people are looking once again at ways to save energy. Unfortunately, while high gas prices bring back memories of the 1970s, the policy solutions that some people are bringing forth seem about as dated as shag...
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From German Dawn to Decadence
Germany's economic performance in the past decade or so has been marked by slow GDP and productivity growth, weak job creation, high unemployment and low rates of return on investment. Japan and many of the rest of Europe's mature...
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'Economic Man' vs. 'Status Man'
"Among whites, higher grades yield higher popularity. For Blacks, higher achievement is associated with modestly higher popularity until a grade point average of 3.5, when the slope turns negative. A black student with a 4.0 has, on average, 1.5 fewer...
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Housing Bubble? Give Thanks for the Balloon
Back in 1833, in the little settlement of Fort Dearborn, Ill., not far from a muddy nest of log cabins called Chicago, a man named Augustine Deodat Taylor did a remarkable thing. He built a church. It was St....
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Bill Lockyer's 'Extremes of Moral Grandstanding'
Editor's note: This article is the fourth in a series on the alleged acrylamide-cancer scare. To read the others, see part 1, part 2, and part 3. For political zoologists, state attorneys general have long been one of the...
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The Blair Doctrine
"We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow." -- Lord Palmerston, 19th century British politician. It's hard to imagine that the British...
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Yes, I'm Definitely Saying Something About Your Mother
Nick Schulz published a short and rather courageous piece here the other day defending William Bennett. Bennett had ventured to comment on the very limited usefulness of applying crude statistics to the creation of public policy. If my synopsis of...
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The Katrina House Tax
Will homeowners in 2112 still be paying fees on their mortgages to cover the clean up costs of Hurricane Katrina as telephone users are still paying the "temporary tax" to pay for the Spanish-American War? You remember the Spanish-American War?...
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REACH Retreat
Few seem to grasp the consequences of the EU's proposed chemicals policy, also known as REACH, due to its sheer complexity and overwhelming ambition. But there are signs that EU officials and politicians have finally woken up to the fact...
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I Smell a Rat
Editor's note: This article is the third in a series on the alleged link between acrylamide intake and cancer in humans. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (or as some toxicologists refer to it, the Center...
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Feelers vs. Thinkers
Bill Bennett's recent abortion comments exposed the divide in America between thinkers and feelers. Bennett said "If you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose -- you could abort every black baby in this...
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Why Is Government Getting So Big?
Why is the government getting so big? Too-clever-by-half libertarians who voted Democrat deserve some of the blame. To understand why, consider the imaginary Democratic Republic of Ruritania, in which there is only one political issue -- the size of...
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Why Did So Many Believe the False Rumors of Rape and Murder in New Orleans?
Before Katrina struck, a "progressive" colleague remarked that anyone who stayed in the Gulf Coast deserved whatever outcome s/he got, and that, anyway, we subsidized their living on the coast in Louisiana (and other flood-prone areas). No one in the...
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