Governor Rick Perry has been advising citizens concerned about the prospect of government-sponsored universal health care to “read the book” — the book being Frederick Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom”. The problem? Hayek is surprisingly positive towards government social insurance directed towards things like accidents and sickness — in that very book no less. Maybe Governor...

Continuing our coverage of news surrounding the recent arrest of scumbag, pedophile, child-rapist Roman Polanski, (not that I want you to think your reporter is biased on the story or anything) Paterico is still all over the case. Yesterday we told you of Anne Applebaum’s jaw dropping defense of said child-rapist in which she failed to mention that her husband was working to get President Obama to grant...

One of the nice things about the recent success in uncovering the terror cell that was planning to carry out new attacks is that this is something we can all celebrate without getting partisan about it. To be sure there will be some hard liners on the right who will claim it is a fraud or some hard liners on the left who will claim this is proof that Obama is good but Bush was bad at finding terror cells (the...

When engaged in an argument, it’s always wise to understand the other party’s point of view. Not to agree with this view, of course, but as a means to possibly resolve the disagreement in a way that benefits everyone. With this in mind, here’s some reasons why Iran might think it is both justified and necessary to develop the nuclear weapons that pretty much all objective observers today believe...

Update: Reports now indicate that more than 500,000 people are homeless. Few people have insurance to pay for rebuilding. The death toll now is at 140 but is expected to climb. A story that has not been getting a lot of play in the US media is that of Typhoon, now Tropical Storm Ondoy. The storm has already devastated Manila in the Philippines and is heading for mainland China. The storm has dumped more rain...

As we steadily approach January, by which time President Obama has promised to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and as the Supreme Court, Congress and the nation continue to ponder appropriate outcomes, my latest interview in my series of interviews relevant to “the war on terror” (by my count, the 50th such interview) is with retired Army Reserve Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, who has perhaps...

As you may have heard by now, infamous film director Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland more than thirty years after the fact of his crimes and may be extradited to the United States. For those of us who have been outraged by this case for decades, it may come as cold comfort to see justice finally served when the criminal is in his twilight years and has lived a live of decadent luxury for all...

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Michael Moore are not enmeshed in a mutual admiration society. Two years ago Blitzer criticized some of the info in Moore’s hit movie “Sicko” and had what they called a “You Tube” moment. To recap go HERE. And now they’ve had yet another one on CNN during Moore’s latest CNN appearance to promote his new movie (which promises to be a smash...

It must be a bittersweet experience for my mother-in-law and hundreds of cannery workers being honored today for their contributions to a city’s industry that was snuffed a generation ago. The San Diego Unified Port District spent a half-million dollars to erect a bronze sculpture and commemorate the site honoring tuna and albacore fishing and cannery workers at the waterfront. The story in the San Diego...

By now, most of the stories behind the dazzling rise and ignominious demise of a proud, magnificent bird, the F-22 Raptor, have been told. Stories about the brilliant design and cutting edge manufacturing and assembly technology. A technology that has been described as “the only thing more complex than the human body.” (I was fortunate to visit the “mile-long” Lockheed Martin F-16 assembly line;...

I thought I knew the history of the Great Depression in this country. I thought it lasted the entire decade of the 1930s. Maybe you thought so, too. And maybe we were both wrong. Such a mistake seems obvious when listening to present pronouncements from our economic masters about our own Great Recession that started at the end of 2007. I’ve been thinking we were still in this Great Recession, but lately...

The building of a prisoner of war camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba was as big a screw-up by the Bush administration as is attempts by the Obama administration to close it. Neither administration understood the long-range problems inherent in the system that was created. That’s the analysis we observe in stories today reported in three major newspapers. Retiring Marine Major Gen. Michael Lehnert was the commander...

In 2011 America will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. If the last two 50-year markers are any indication, this will be a very big deal. States across the country are starting their preparations. Here in Tennessee, which saw more military action than any state outside Virginia, a coalition of preservation, tourism and education groups is preparing for the event. Scholars have...

On Letterman Monday night, President Obama joked about his daughters’ future dates who may be stressed out over having men with guns hanging around. If he really wants to know about that, I can tell him what happened when Lynda Bird Johnson was working for me at McCalls, and I went to dinner at Trader Vic’s in New York with our company’s chairman of the board. As we were being seated, the maitre...

Just a little pick me up for your afternoon

The Supreme Court is now cogitating over a case involving corporations and free speech that many people worry could lead to a dramatic change in our political system. Specifically, that so much corporate money might soon flow into elections that it will have a disastrous effect on who gets elected and whose interests elected officials will really represent. I think such worries may be exaggerated. In fact,...

I can’t really think of any way I could improve on the original story so I’ll just leave you with the link to read it. But this kind of classy behavior makes you feel a little better about your day. Link

So I just laid out in another post the classically liberal origins of modern liberalism and now a regular commenter at TMV has asked, perceptively, how is modern liberalism different from socialism. Surely socialism also has roots in classical liberalism too, so the common ancestry is of little meaning on its own. So what is the difference between socialism and modern liberalism? There are two very different...

Now that the Massachusetts legislature has passed the revisions in the law it is looking very likely that the new Senator will be former DNC official Paul Kirk. Governor Patrick still has to do some paperwork to allow him to make the appointment now but that is a mere formality. Update: Kirk has been appointed.

As I teach my students on a regular basis, modern liberalism and classical liberalism are two different ideologies. Classical liberalism, rooted in John Locke’s natural rights theory – all men are created with the right to life, liberty and property – is more akin to modern libertarianism than it is to modern liberalism. So, how did modern liberalism evolve? Does it have ANY connection to...

ACORN has sued the activists who caught various ACORN workers seemingly supporting the importation of underage sex slaves. While I long ago gave up on the idea that the people running this group were smart, this is mind  bogglingly stupid. If, as in this case, you sue based on reputation then you are basically opening up all of your records to review by the attorneys for the other side. Given all the problems...

As the G20 summit convenes in Pittsburgh this week the story nationally – and internationally – is the stunning reversal of fortune for a city that essentially imploded in the early 1980s. When the steel industry collapsed in Pittsburgh in 1982 the city’s population was cut in half and Pittsburghers scoured the nation for work. The horrendous air and water pollution made Pittsburgh a truly...

I hope Nicholas Negroponte at MIT doesn’t get mad if I quote two full paragraphs from his 1995 book, “Being Digital.” I only do it because 1) I desperately want newspapers to survive their transition from newsprint to digital. Even Barack Obama was talking about that survival over the weekend. There must be a business model, he said. Well, here it is. Here are Negroponte’s words from...

O.K. I’ll admit it. I thought the stock market couldn’t get any crazier. I was wrong. Forget massively skewed valuations. Forget companies like AIG whose stock has been soaring for no discernible reason. Forget all those terrible earnings reports greeted with joy by traders because they beat analyst expectations, and because of the rosy predictions about the future from the CEOs who brought in these...

After becoming an expert on U.S-Russia relations during her campaign for the vice-presidency by claiming that Russia could be seen from Alaska, Sarah Palin can now add a second major power to her foreign policy credentials: China. By reading a prepared, major foreign policy speech before a packed ballroom in Hong Kong’s Grand Hyatt hotel, Sarah Palin has now clearly and firmly cemented her foreign policy...