Jul 28, 2009 – Many people hoped that the election of a black President of the United States would mark our entering a "post-racial" era, when we could finally put some ugly aspects of our history behind us. That is quite understandable. But it takes two to tango. Those of us who want to...

Jul 23, 2009 – Distracting the audience's attention is one of the ways magicians pull off some of their tricks. President Barack Obama's televised news conference on medical care shows that he is something of a magician when it comes to politics. The big trick for the president is to convince the public that...

Jul 21, 2009 – Is there a coherent argument for government-controlled medical care or are slogans and hysteria considered sufficient? We hear endlessly about how many Americans don't have health insurance. But, if we stop and think-- which politicians hope we never do-- that raises the question as to why that calls for government-controlled...

Jul 21, 2009 – Thomas Sowell -- that price controls would reduce quality care because they would reduce the incentive to provide quality.…

Aug 4, 2009 – As someone who was once rushed to a hospital in the middle of the night, because of taking a medication that millions of people take every day without the slightest problem, I have a special horror of life and death medical decisions being made by bureaucrats in Washington, about patients...

Aug 4, 2009 – "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." We have heard that many times. What is also the price of freedom is the toleration of imperfections. If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom is going to...

Aug 18, 2009 – There was a time when rushing a thousand-page bill through Congress so fast that no one has time to read it would have provoked public outrage. But now, this has been attempted twice in the first 6 months of a new administration. The fact that they got away with...

Aug 11, 2009 – Random thoughts on the passing scene: Different people have very different reactions to President Barack Obama. Those who listen to his rhetoric are often inspired, while those who follow what he actually does are often appalled. New York and Chicago have both recently had their coldest June in generations. If...

Aug 25, 2009 – Many of the issues of our times are hard to understand without understanding the vision of the world that they are part of. Whether the particular issue is education, economics or medical care, the preferred explanation tends to be an external explanation-- that is, something outside the control of the...

Aug 21, 2009 – The serious, and sometimes chilling, provisions of the medical care legislation that President Obama has been trying to rush through Congress are important enough for all of us to stop and think, even though his political strategy from the outset has been to prevent us from having time to stop...

Aug 20, 2009 – Amid all the controversies over medical care, no one seems to be asking a very basic question: Why does it take more than 1,000 pages of legislation to insure people who lack medical insurance? Despite incessant repetition of the fact that millions of Americans do not have medical insurance, hardy...

Aug 19, 2009 – But as economist Thomas Sowell points out, politicians can control costs -- by refusing to pay for the services.…

Aug 19, 2009 – When famed bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he said: "Because that's where the money is." For the same reason, it is as predictable as the sunrise that medical care for the elderly will be cut back under a government-controlled medical system. Because that's where the...

Sep 1, 2009 – Britain's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi-- the Libyan terrorist whose bomb blew up a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 270 people-- is galling enough in itself. But it is even more profoundly troubling as a sign of a larger mood that has been growing in the Western democracies...

Sep 15, 2009 – Many years ago, as a small child, I was told one of those old-fashioned fables for children. It was about a dog with a bone in his mouth, who was walking on a log across a stream. The dog looked down into the water and saw his reflection. He...

Sep 10, 2009 – "Hubris-laden charlatans" was the way a recent e-mail from a reader characterized the Obama administration. That phrase seems especially appropriate for the Charlatan-in-Chief, Barack Obama, whose speech to a joint session of Congress was both a masterpiece of rhetoric and a shameless fraud. To tell us, with a straight face,...

Sep 8, 2009 – The most important thing about what anyone says are not the words themselves but the credibility of the person who says them. The words of convicted swindler Bernie Madoff were apparently quite convincing to many people who were regarded as knowledgeable and sophisticated. If you go by words, you can...

Sep 23, 2009 – There is so much for high school seniors and their parents to know about colleges that they not only need to get a lot of information but also need to make sure it is the right kind of information. A number of college guides have useful information but, unfortunately, the...

Sep 23, 2009 – Wilson, Seymour Martin Lipset, Charles Murray, Thomas Sowell, Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom to name a few -- to ask that question,…

Sep 22, 2009 – It is a good reflection on Americans that they tend to be on the side of the underdog. But it is often hard to tell who is in fact the underdog, or why. Many years ago, there was a big, lumbering catcher named Ernie Lombardi whose slowness afoot was legendary....

Oct 7, 2009 – Random thoughts on the passing scene: Upon learning that the Constitution requires a president to be a natural born citizen, a college student said: "What makes a natural born citizen any more qualified than one born by C-section?" Airlines that keep passengers trapped for hours in planes sitting on the...

Oct 6, 2009 – Recent videos of American children in school singing songs of praise for Barack Obama were a little much, especially for those of us old enough to remember pictures of children singing the praises of dictators like Hitler, Stalin and Mao. But you don't need a dictator to make you feel...

Sep 29, 2009 – Wilson, Thomas Sowell, Abigail Thernstrom, Leon Kass, Diane Ravitch ... and so refreshingly on.…

Sep 29, 2009 – Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem. It was, after all, Franklin D. Roosevelt's brilliant "brains trust" advisers whose policies are now increasingly recognized as having prolonged the...

Oct 15, 2009 – Jay Thomas: Jillian, what is the biggest argument against the Baucus health care bill? … Thomas J.: At what point will we know if the stimulus bill has been effective? Do we know now? … Thomas Sowell shouldn't be missed for economics, and my favorite libertarian is John Stossel.…