How they cursed Arlen Specter! By switching parties, they claimed, he had put his own political fortunes ahead of loyalty and principle. He was “Benedict Arlen,” “Specter the Defector.” It all sounds quite familiar, but the year was 1965 and the Specter-cursers were Democrats enraged that he had abandoned them to run on the Republican ticket in the   more

A recent front page report in the Toronto Star wondered why 20% of soldiers who serve in Afghanistan come down with various forms of stress disorder.
Theories range from repeated long term missions causing psychological problems, to the possibility that quick diagnoses give the impression of increased PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).
In varying degrees, all of the   more

The achievement gap between white and minority students persists, and glaringly so, as this article in the New York Times details.
The lede of this article is unfair and shows the bias against President Bush’s signature education act – No Child Left Behind (NCLB):
The achievement gap between white and minority students has not narrowed in recent   more

After posting my blog about Mary Ann Glendon yesterday, I was going to wade into the comment section, knife in teeth, to defend myself against the universal criticism that quickly went up.  But then I began to receive emails from my Catholic friends who, more gently and privately, took me to task for my views.  So   more

The World Health Organization has raised their swine flu alert to Level 5.  The WHO’s formal definition of a Level 5 designation is sustained human-to-human transmission “in two countries in one WHO region” (there are six regions worldwide; the US is in the Americas region).  So the “two countries” must be the United States and Mexico.
One can argue that the designation was   more

When you move, you find things. Having just completed a move, I came across a poster from a conference I attended at the US Military Academy a number of years ago. It featured the graduation portraits of illustrious West Point alumni. U.S. Grant, was there, of course, along with George S. Patton and Dwight Eisenhower. But there was   more

Anthony Cordesman in the National Interest on what increasingly looks like a Pakistani civil war:
 
The Pakistani army and government have shown they cannot be trusted to provide honest reporting on any aspect of military operations. They have also never provided a meaningful assessment of threat. Whatever Pakistan’s military may have been, its steady politicization since   more

My column in the current issue of The Week argues that you cannot rebuild a center-right coalition without the center. Conclusion:
I’ve never heard anyone derided as a “Republican In Name Only” for opposing the closing of redundant military bases, or for supporting Medicaid reimbursement formulas that favor the South and West at the expense of   more

At his press conference last night, President Obama expressed confidence that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal would not fall “into the wrong hands.” Some will wonder whether those weapons are not already in the wrong hands now.   more

Let’s turn the clock back to the 2008 campaign and ask the question: If Barack Obama had run for office promising to deliver one-third of the Big Three automakers to the unions and drop another one-third on the backs of taxpayers, would people have approved? Yet, remarkably, that is what is in the offing as a   more

It was revealed today that Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón has opened an investigation into allegations of torture at Guantánamo Bay. What inspired Garzón to open his investigation less than two weeks after Spanish Attorney General Candido Conde-Pumpido announced his opposition to such a move? Well, it appears precisely to have been the additional memos   more

The liberal British philosopher John Stuart Mill once famously dismissed conservatives as the stupid party. Intellectual arrogance is something we have come to expect from liberals, but great conservative minds like Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, and William F. Buckley dispelled the notion that conservatives are somehow cerebrally inferior.
Those gentlemen put conservatism on the road to   more

If there is one thing about nuclear weapons, you don’t want to guess where they are, how many the bad guys have and where the guy with the black bag with the codes is. Pakistan is one of the undeclared nuclear powers in the world with an estimated 20-60 nuclear weapons. And with the Taliban   more

RNC chairman Michael Steele offered this comment by email on the Arlen Specter defection:
Arlen Specter committed a purely political and self-serving act today. He simply believes he has a better chance of saving his political hide and his job as a Democrat.

Well, obviously. What other calculation would Arlen Specter make? He likely does not feel   more

My take, on American Public Media’s Marketplace, can be heard or read here.
The United States is wracked by the worst financial crisis in decades. Experts estimate the bad debt in the economy at anywhere from $1.5 to $3.5 trillion. 
President Obama’s economic plans are all based on the assumption that the correct figure is at the   more

Senator Jim DeMint told Arlen Specter last week he would be supporting Pat Toomey, Specter’s challenger in the Pennsylvania Republican primary. DeMint (R-SC) also said: “I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set   more

Now that Specter’s gone, we can turn to the real enemy – Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe!  Then the only thing between us and victory will be Graham, Lugar, McCain, Murkowski, Grassley, Hatch, and some of the RINOs in the House.  And the Governors, like Crist and Douglas and Lingle and anyone not named Palin or   more

With the swearing in of Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services yesterday came swearing from the social conservatives.  It’s time for them to grow up.
Before the 2006 election cycle, the two most prominent social conservatives in politics, without a doubt, were Senator Rick Santorum, and Senator Sam Brownback.  They were publicly Catholic, vocally and articulately   more

I am a longtime admirer of Mary Ann Glendon, a former Ambassador to the Holy See as well as a scholar and innovative thinker on women’s issues.  However, I was gobsmacked by her recent decision to refuse a prestigious award from Notre Dame because, as she discovered, she would have to share a podium with   more

Marquee policy initiatives – health care reform, cap-and-trade policy – dominate the headlines. But a less-prominent battle may end up being among the fiercest and most important – the desire of Barack Obama to extract $210 billion from American business to pay for his spendthrift ways. 
Now, to date we do not know exactly what the Obama   more