National Politics
The very first thing Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy talks about in the biographical section of his official Congressional website is his work on the House Appropriations Committee…Patrick J. Kennedy is serving his sixth term in Congress as the representative from the First District of Rhode Island. Kennedy was appointed to the House Appropriations Committee…
President Ronald Reagan died two years ago today. As a reminder of his leadership, here is an excerpt from his January 1989 Farewell Address as he left the Presidency: …And in all of that time I won a nickname, “The Great Communicator.” But I never thought it was my style or the words I used…
This posting is Part VII in a series of postings about economic thoughts. This posting contains excerpts from Chapter 2 of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman’s 1962 classic book, Capitalism & Freedom in which he discusses the role of government in a free society: …To the [nineteenth-century] liberal, the appropriate means are free discussion and voluntary…
On the heels of George McGovern’s defense of big business, we have Barney Frank extolling the virtues of a free market in the face of GOP reluctance to cut agricultural subsidies. (Via Instapundit -> Club for Growth). Mr. Chairman, I am here to confess my reading incomprehension. I have listened to many of my conservative…
Back in 2000, Thomas Sowell wrote an editorial, Useful Idiots (H/T Power Line), in which he stated: Lenin is supposed to have referred to blind defenders and apologists for the Soviet Union in the Western democracies as “useful idiots.” Yet even Lenin might have been surprised at how far these useful idiots would carry their…
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) prides himself on his “straight talk.” However, recent times have shown that his appreciation for his own free speech does not frequently apply to others’ right to free speech. First, he led the effort to curtail free speech via the euphemism called campaign finance reform. Second, George Will recently captured some…
I have never understood the logic of the “living wage” argument, where certain organizations – like ACORN – seek to have government agencies mandate new and higher wage rates. Such people believe that higher wages must be realized and that they can only be achieved by government fiat, not by the ability of the market…
Washington Post political scene reporter Howie Kurtz observes that the national media has been uncharacteristically silent concerning Patrick Kennedy’s previous “adventures,” especially since he is, well, a Kennedy: It’s hard to imagine that Patrick Kennedy would have gotten elected to Congress a dozen years ago without his last name. It’s equally hard to imagine that…
To lessen the lack of clarity in the immigration debate about what it means to be an American citizen, let’s go back to the first principles of the American Founding. The Claremont Institute has developed a web-based overview of the Declaration of Independence which includes these sub-sections: A Guide to the Declaration of Independence Issues…
The clarity of many public policy debates gets derailed when the sloppy and imprecise use of words reduces such debates to cliches instead of a substantive discussion of issues. Recent developments in the immigration debate are merely the latest example. The result has been a focus on the wrong issues. More importantly, by having no…