Year: 2012

There’s a natural human impulse to help people who need a hand. In the political world, that often translates to an impulse to have government help people who need a hand. Who wants to argue with that? But experience tells us that it’s not always easy to help. Individuals’ good intentions go awry. Government programs […]

It’s that time again — time to make resolutions we won’t keep, spend two weeks writing the wrong date on checks and to look back on the year we’re leaving. As for 2012, it can’t end quickly enough. It was an awful year for many reasons. Let me count just a few of the ways: […]

Senator Dianne Feinstein is queuing up come January 2013 to retable–yet again–an Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) in order to “severely mitigate the possibilities of another Sandy Hook atrocity.” Great idea, Dianne, as the first AWB that Clinton signed into law worked wonders in schools from 1994-2004. It was awesome. It panned out wonderfully aside from […]

With humble apologies to Ernest Lawrence Thayer, who wrote “Casey at the Bat,” which was published in The San Francisco Examiner in 1888. The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the GOP this year: The economy had tanked; hope and change had morphed to fear. The strong and swift refused to join the presidential race. So the […]

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to work harder to persuade ideological friends and foes alike that the way to reduce partisanship and maximize happiness in America is to embrace federalism — the view that we should push as many decisions as possible to the lowest local level feasible. Federalism reduces partisanship by shrinking […]

The reason President Obama and Republicans can’t come to an agreement on the fiscal cliff negotiations is that they don’t share the same goals. This is also the key to understanding why President Obama appears far less worried about going over the cliff. Republicans are focused on restoring the nation’s financial health by promoting economic […]