In the last few weeks, I have found myself debating on radio and TV programs whether various financial instruments have any social utility -- any "real world" purpose other than "speculation or gambling." (Disclosure: I give professional advice to a number of financial organizations.)
Republican senators are playing with fire. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is perfectly content to pile on the logs.
President Obama is right that Arizona's tough immigration law is "misguided." And Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is right that her state has been "more than patient waiting for Washington to act." The two are not unrelated.
The Obama Democrats' stealth strategy for increasing the size and scope of the federal government is well underway, despite huge voter backlash. Federal spending has been increased from a 30-year average of 21 percent of gross domestic product to 25 percent, and a bipartisan commission tasked with reducing the deficit may recommend tax increases.
Political observers have had their attention directed to state attorneys general of late, due to the court suits against the federal health care reform bill initially filed by fifteen AGs (14 of them Republican, and a lone Democrat from Louisiana).
More service is not necessarily good service. And bad service dressed as good service is even worse. Here are examples:
Let me be clear at the outset: I love dogs. Not like them, love them. Of course, I love mine the best: Judy J. Estrich, Molly Emily Estrich and Irving A. Estrich. Judy is named after one of my dearest friends, Judy Jarvis, who died of cancer 10 years ago. Molly is named after her dog, who took care of her when she was sick and taught me not to be afraid of big dogs.
When he first began his career as a crusading consumer journalist in the 1970s, John Stossel believed fervently that higher taxes and greater government involvement in the marketplace were integral checks against corporate greed and malfeasance.
As approval ratings for Barack Obama decline at home, world opinion of the United States is rising steadily under his stewardship.
Almost a year ago, in a Washington Examiner column on the Chrysler bailout, I reflected on the Obama administration's decision to force bondholders to accept 33 cents on the dollar on secured debts while giving United Auto Worker retirees 50 cents on the dollar on unsecured debts.
Over the weekend, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony joined in on the attack against the new law passed by the Arizona legislature to expand police powers to arrest and deport illegal immigrants. The law basically makes it a crime to be an undocumented alien. If that doesn't sound like an inherently controversial proposition, believe me, it will by the time it gets to court.
Former President Bill Clinton last week inadvertently demonstrated Karl Marx's shrewd observation, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." The historical event in question is the attempt to deter by smearing a broad-based, popular, American anti-high-tax, anti-big-central government movement as likely to induce seditious violence against the government.
Monday was the anniversary of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that left 149 men and women -- most of them federal workers -- and 19 children dead. As is his habit, former President Bill Clinton used the occasion to bash his critics.
In the land of "too much ain't enough," the idea that less medicine could be better medicine is a hard sell. This was impossible to discuss during the fracas over health care reform, when any talk of fewer tests and less surgery was portrayed as rationing or the government coming between you and the doctor.
"Do you realize," CNN's Susan Roesgen asked a man at the April 15, 2009, tea party in Chicago, "that you're eligible for a $400 credit?" When the man refused to drop his "drop socialism" sign, she went on, "Did you know that the state of Lincoln gets 50 billion out of the stimulus?"
When he ran for president, then-Sen. Barack Obama argued that earmarks account for a mere "0.5 percent of the total federal budget," so eliminating earmarks would not solve the problem.
The Republican National Committee has an African-American chairman, Michael Steele, and still the GOP manages to come across as racially insensitive, as well as just plain insensitive. That's no easy feat.
So much is being written in the mainstream media about who the tea partiers are, but very little is being recorded about what these folks are actually saying.
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is a bad guy. He may not be a rapist, in the sense that it can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he had nonconsensual sex, but not being guilty of a crime doesn't mean you're innocent. In my book, this guy should pay.
Choosing a Supreme Court justice has become a deplorably dishonest process that hides ideological disputes behind petty and often personal matters. Nominees pretend to have no opinion about controversial issues such as abortion, when everyone listening knows they certainly do. Politicians pretend to worry about nothing except judicial qualifications, temperament and balance.
