Let’s pause to absorb the radicalism of what President Obama and congressional Democrats have just done. Their stimulus plans will raise the baseline of federal spending by $1.2 trillion (counting interest) and raise the federal share of GDP to 28% (from a recent low if 18% and a current level of about 20%). They have ballooned the   more

This is a gigantic disaster:
Emblematic of what I am worried about.  What can we do about this? Well, for starters, how about we send a démarche to Islamabad that says, “Congratulations, chappies, you just elevated yourselves to the top of our targeting list in the event of a terrorist nuclear attack on the US.  Was   more

Sometimes media bias unwittingly reveals an important truth.
 
Take the following case.
 
Time magazine’s Mark Thompson writes an interesting piece about a possible coming clash between President Obama and the Defense Secretary he retained from the prior (incompetent, childish, warmongering, heedless) Administration.
 
The nub of the issue is, should the warheads that power America’s nuclear arsenal be replaced?    more

California has long been considered a bellwether for the nation – politically, economically, demographically, culturally, you name it.  In the post-WW2 boom, this was arguably a Good Thing.
Is it any more?
Consider the state’s finances.  Larry Greenfield went into detail below.  Let me just add some macro-perspective.
California indeed gouges its residents with high tax rates –   more

Much has been written about the “poppy eradication” efforts mounted by the US government, urged on the Karzai government, and opposed by just about everyone else – from our NATO allies in the theater, to most of the Afghan people.
Indeed, poppy cultivation is a problem.  While Afghanistan has been growing the stuff for centuries, cultivation   more

Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball report on President Obama’s first-week executive orders pertaining to the treatment of detainees.
Writers notoriously don’t get to write their own headlines, and it sometimes can be a problem.  In this case, Isikoff and Hosenball have a real beef against the headline writer, or they should.
The article is called “The   more

The news of President Obama’s Executive Order to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within a year – with all the headaches and risks that entails – recalled to mind an episode from more than five years ago, when I served on the National Security Council staff of President George W. Bush.
Michael Gerson, then the   more