Essay
Don has already called for an end to the political namecalling. John McCandlish Phillips, a former religion writer for the New York Times, has confronted the particular and recentyl popular application of the term “jihad” in relation to religious people by the predominantly left-wing op-ed writers in the Times and Washington Post (which published this…
Professor Bainbridge has a posting about those pesky students at Roger Williams University here in Rhode Island who have done it again. As Bainbridge writes, “What is it about becoming an academic administrator that causes one to lose not only one’s sense of humor, but also the last shreds of one’s common sense?”
Wilfred McClay offers his thoughts on the nature of the George W. Bush administration: What I want to look at is, specifically, how the administration of George W. Bush seems to have marked a sea change in the evolution of Republican politics, in conservatism, in the present and future alignment of our political parties and…
I highly recommend reading Don’s latest post for some important context to the following (hopefully) succinct post. As Don argues, radical secularism can be viewed as its own sort of religion whereby the “state” replaces the religious function and, despite claims otherwise, also assumes the role of the “higher power” [God]. It can be safely…
Previous postings have addressed the Misguided Incentives that are structurally present in the public sector and how this leads naturally to Pigs at the Public Trough. These observations make Lawrence Reed’s Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy an insightful read. Why does this all matter? Here is another story that illustrates why: Robert Novak has…
This posting continues a periodic series on Rhode Island politics and taxation, building on fifteen previous postings (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV). It also builds on several previous postings on educational issues: There are well-known deep performance problems with public education in America. Yet, receiving…
Nota Bene: This post is an experiment. I thought I’d try providing a bunch of different links to different web posts, articles, stories etc. that I found interesting. The goal is to point to some articles that may be of general interest to conservative readers with enough of a summary to indicate whether or not…
One of the more interesting informational black holes has always been the forced payment of dues by union members and exactly what those funds were then spent on by the union. Thanks to some new reporting requirements that kick in this summer, we are about to get the first real glimpse into what is going…
The overall economic cost structure of the American airline industry is pathetically unsustainable. This is not news; the elephant has been sitting in the room for years now but most everyone has refused to acknowledge its presence.