Year: 2014

Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker was internationally renowned within the economics profession, but was not nearly as well known among the general public as he deserved to be. More important, his path-breaking ideas, including his analysis of the economics of racial discrimination, deserved to be much more a part of the many discussions of that […]

A year ago, I wrote a two-part series titled “My Mom’s Advice for America.” There’s no better time than now — between my mother’s 93rd birthday (May 4) and Mother’s Day (May 11) — to talk about her mother’s advice, which my mother recorded in her autobiography, “Acts of Kindness: My Story.”  Last week, I […]

Don’t trouble yourself trying to figure out whether President Obama is more political than ideological. He’s an expert at straddling both and getting his way without compromise.  Analysts have long debated whether partisan Obama would prevail over ideological Obama in his decision to approve or reject the Keystone XL pipeline, but in the end, it […]

Last week, Oklahoma authorities botched the execution of a murderer named Clayton Lockett. The execution by lethal injection took more than 40 minutes. According to witnesses, he twitched and gasped and said, “oh, man” after officials had thought he was unconscious.  Opponents of the death penalty outdid one another in expressing their outrage. It was […]

“Dude, this was, like, two years ago.” Thus spake former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor on Thursday after Fox News Channel anchorman Bret Baier asked him whether he had been involved in changing talking points to prepare then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice for Sunday talk shows in the wake of the […]

Most people, perhaps even the super-wealthy, who are usually accountable to auditors, want to know where their money goes. This is especially true when they detect money for which they can’t account. Not so with the federal government.  Some recent headlines reflect a disturbing pattern that has contributed to our $17 trillion debt and to […]

The headline looks like a hoax– saturated fat does not cause heart disease — but it’s real. This news is more than just another example of changing health guidelines; it’s a cautionary tale about trusting the scientific consensus. For more than 50 years, the best scientific minds in America assured us that saturated fat was […]