Constitutional abuse begets constitutional abuse.
President Obama has engaged in a dubious maneuver to force a recess appointment through a Senate that denies it has recessed.
(Brad Plumer has a good run-down of the legal issues, here.)
The president’s action has ignited a fireworks show of Republican outrage. And yes, Obama has here pushed presidential power beyond past   more

In my column for The Week I discuss the problems with Rick Santorum economic plan:
Santorum’s concern for the American middle class has been one of the most attractive features of his candidacy for the Republican nomination. Alone among the Republican candidates, he took note of the freezing of upward mobility and the stagnation of middle-class   more

Odd experience on CNN this morning.
I was on a panel that had a chance to interview Ron Paul. I asked this question:
“I attended a precinct caucus last night where the person who spoke on your behalf praised you as a strong social conservative: pro-life, anti-gay marriage. He also described you as pro-defense, he said you   more

Based on the tiny unrepresentative sample at the precinct caucus I attended: his core group are true believers, who have absorbed his message on Austrian economics and foreign policy non-interventionism.
But when they communicate to the broader Iowa Republican rank-and-file, they repackage Paul as a much more conventional conservative: pro-life, pro-military, small government, and supportive of   more

Andrew Sullivan complained yesterday that I had engaged in a “McCarthyite” attack on Ron Paul by writing the following:
A politician isn’t answerable for the antics of every one of his supporters. But there’s surely a reason, isn’t there, that racists, anti-Semites, 9/11 Truthers, and Holocaust deniers are so strongly attracted to the Paul campaign. They hear   more

What is wrong (and right) with Joe Stiglitz’s analysis of the Great Depression? Click here for Part 1. Click here for Part 2. Click here for Part 3.
Back in the 1960s, Daniel Patrick Moynihan once offered this solution to the economic problems of black America: restore Sunday mail delivery.
The line was sort of a joke, but sort of   more

What is wrong (and right) with Joe Stiglitz’s analysis of the Great Depression? Click here for Part 1. Click here for Part 2.
Yet for all the problems with the Stiglitz theory of the Great Depression and the Long Recession, there is some useful wisdom as well.
Stiglitz is framing a critique–not only of the Friedman/Schwartz theory of   more

What is wrong with Joe Stiglitz’s analysis of the Great Depression? Click here for Part 1.
Problem 1: Repeat after me – The Great Depression was a global event. That’s a fact American economic historians always have great trouble keeping in mind, and Stiglitz here succumbs to the national myopia.
How did the troubles of the American farmer   more

Joe Stiglitz’s offers in the current Vanity Fair an arresting theory of both the Great Depression and the current economic malaise.
Contra the (now) orthodox view propounded by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, Stiglitz argues that the Depression was not fundamentally a monetary event. Instead, Stiglitz counters, we should think of the Depression as driven by   more

On the last day of 2011, President Obama “with reservations” signed the authorization for the 2012 defense budget.
The president said he objected to language in the bill that granted him powers to detain terror suspects indefinitely – but forbade him to transfer detainees to the mainland US. Unmentioned in the signing statement was another section   more

In my column for the National Post, I discuss the importance of the latest issue of the Dorchester Review:
I’ve written before about Canada’s important new historical journal, the Dorchester Review. Now they have published a second issue – and I am doing it again.
This opening paragraph from one of the current issue essays nicely conveys why the   more

Here’s another tragic misunderstanding of Ron Paul’s message of human freedom: Paul has just gained David Duke’s endorsement. This week, the former KKK Grand Wizard telephoned into the radio show hosted by Stormfront founder Don Black to announce his support, and the two men had the following conversation.
Ron Paul was a hot topic this week   more

As the gold market tumbles, time to recall: even if the price of gold had remained high forever, people who trusted in Glenn Beck would still have been cruelly cheated.
I’m trying to recall a worse case of media ethics malpractice than Glenn Beck and Goldline, but thus far I draw a blank.  more

(Source)
The price of gold dropped $31 an ounce yesterday. Gold has dropped $400 since the summer. Gold still shows gains over one year ago. And of course people who bought gold at the prices that prevailed before 2008 can claim profits of 50% or better on their investment. (NB: The best returns have flowed to   more

Kevin Williamson at National Review posts a powerful piece denouncing self-dealing in Congress and wrongdoing on Wall Street.
[H]edge-fund titans, i-bankers, congressional nabobs, committee chairmen, senators, swindlers, run-of-the-mill politicos, and a few outright thieves (these categories are not necessarily exclusive) all feeding at the same trough, and most of them betting that Mitt Romney won’t do   more

Andrew Sullivan predicts a future Rand Paul run. Fascinating that a movement of self-proclaimed individualists would manifest itself as a dynastic cult of personality.  more

Here’s a question to worry about in 2012: Does the inability of Speaker Boehner to lead his House caucus foreshadow the inability of a President Romney to lead a dual-chambered Republican Congress?
One of the dominant factors motivating the decisions of rank-and-file right-wing House Republicans—and not just freshmen—is their lack of trust in Speaker John Boehner. They   more

In my column for the National Post, I ask who is truly waging the War on Christmas:
We hear a lot about the war on Christmas. But the true seasonal struggle is the war within Christmas, a single holiday shared by two deeply antagonistic religions.
Religion 1 is the religion of Jesus Christ, the figure whose birth   more

Mike Huckabee has not endorsed Rick Perry for president. On the contrary, there’s a long, rich record of Huckabee jabs at Perry.
Yet take a look at the new Rick Perry ad, “President of Honor,” aimed at the Iowa caucus-voters. The ad montages endorsements and testimonials from winners of the congressional medal of honor, artfully edited   more

In my column for The Week, I discuss the real meaning of Hanukkah:
Eight days of festivities because ancient Jews discovered a cruse of unusually long-lasting oil? That’s supposed to rank as a miracle? Why not take a long weekend in August because the prophet Isaiah saved 15 percent on his car insurance?
Still, of all the Jewish   more