Machiavelli and U.S. Politics Part 1: Pattern and Perception by Lawrence M. Ludlow August 15, 2005 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 During a much-quoted radio broadcast in October 1939, Winston Churchill commented on the surprise Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland — an invasion that closely followed the German attack from the west, which triggered World War II. In ...
Why Payola Doesn’t Matter by Bart Frazier August 5, 2005 New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has recently leveled a $10 million fine against Sony BMG for payola, a practice in which radio producers are paid for promoting certain songs. Why the fine? The argument against payola is that music lovers are ...
Zen and the Art of Iraqi Regime Change by Sheldon Richman August 3, 2005 What does it mean to overemphasize the presence of what is absent? That Zen-like question arises from an interview the Associated Press recently published with Douglas Feith, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s departing chief policy advisor. Feith told the AP the Bush administration “overemphasized” the matter of weapons ...
A Conflict of Paradigms by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2005 Understanding the true nature of a free society entails asking ourselves two basic questions: What does it actually mean to be free, and what is the legitimate role of government in a free society? Reflecting on those two fundamental questions might provide the way out of the ...
Coercion: It’s What’s for Dinner in Postconstitutional America by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2005 Most recent free-speech controversies have been about government efforts to restrict someone’s right to express himself. So it is noteworthy that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a case involving not stifled speech, but rather coerced speech. Alas, it decided the case wrongly. Everyone has seen the generic TV ...
A New Federal War on Dissent? by James Bovard August 1, 2005 On October 15, 2003, the FBI sent Intelligence Bulletin #89 to 17,000 local and state law-enforcement agencies around the country. The bulletin warned of pending marches in Washington and San Francisco against Bush’s Iraq policy and stated, While the FBI possesses no information indicating that violent or terrorist activities are ...
The Courts and the New Deal, Part 3 by William L. Anderson August 1, 2005 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 When Janice Rogers Brown was renominated to fill a vacancy on the D.C. Court of Appeals this year, the New York Times demanded that Democrats filibuster her nomination, one of the reasons being that, in a speech to a gathering of conservative lawyers, Brown had called ...
Public-School Outrages by Anthony Gregory August 1, 2005 Americans across the political spectrum see the failure of the government school system in teaching the basics, such as reading, writing, math, science, and history. No matter how many tax dollars have been spent or reform proposals implemented, the dismal performance of public-school students continues unabated. A recent case involving a student’s arrest helps to ...
Economics for the Citizen, Part 6 by Walter E. Williams August 1, 2005 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 My last article introduced the law of demand, which states that, holding everything else constant, the lower the price of something, the ...
Unchaining Africa by Doug Bandow August 1, 2005 Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Africa’s Future by George Ayittey, (Palgrave/Macmillan 2005); 483 pages; $35. So much promise, so little progress. Populated with creative people and filled with natural resources, Africa, one might think, should be a global powerhouse. Instead, the continent ...
Africa Needs Freedom, Not “Aid” by Sheldon Richman July 18, 2005 Politicians are never more dangerous than when they are thinking, “We’ve got to do something!” Take the just-adjourned G8 meeting in Scotland. The rulers of the most advanced economic powers (and Russia, go figure) met with the intention of looking as though they were doing something to end poverty in Africa. ...
The Pentagon: Islam’s Newest Department of Defense by Jacob G. Hornberger July 15, 2005 Iraq’s defense minister is assuring everyone that the military agreement that Iraq entered into with Iran last week does not provide that Iran would train Iraq’s troops. That job, he insisted, remains with the U.S. government. Let that sink in for a moment.