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Experience America at the Time of the Great War

April 10, 2017 - 7:00am

One hundred years ago, two events three days apart set the 20th century's trajectory. On April 9, 1917, in Zurich, Vladimir Lenin boarded a train. Germany expedited its passage en route to Saint Petersburg -- known as Leningrad from 1924 to 1991 -- expecting him to exacerbate Russia's convulsions, causing Russia's withdrawal from World War I, allowing Germany to shift forces to the Western Front.

The NEA Is a Government Frill That Should Be Shorn

March 16, 2017 - 7:00am

Although the National Endowment for the Arts' 2016 cost of $148 million was less than one-hundredth of 1 percent of the federal budget, attempting to abolish the NEA is a fight worth having, never mind the certain futility of the fight.

Down the Conspiracy Rabbit Hole

March 10, 2017 - 7:00am

When he was Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, George Shultz was once asked about the CIA's disavowal of involvement in a mysterious recent bombing in Lebanon. Replied Shultz: "If the CIA denies something, it's denied."

'Big Government' Is Ever Growing, on the Sly

February 28, 2017 - 7:00am

In 1960, when John Kennedy was elected president, America's population was 180 million and it had approximately 1.8 million federal bureaucrats (not counting uniformed military personnel and postal workers). Fifty-seven years later, with seven new Cabinet agencies, and myriad new sub-Cabinet agencies (e.g., the Environmental Protection Agency), and a slew of matters on the federal policy agenda that were virtually absent in 1960 (health care insurance, primary and secondary school quality, crime, drug abuse, campaign finance, gun control, occupational safety, etc.), and with a population of 324 million, there are only about 2 million federal bureaucrats.     

The North Korean Red Line

February 9, 2017 - 7:00am

The Cold War was waged and won in many places, including this beach city, home to the RAND Corp. Created in 1948 to think about research and development as it effects military planning and procurement, RAND pioneered strategic thinking about nuclear weapons in the context of the U.S.-Soviet competition. Seven decades later it is thinking about the nuclear threat from a nation created in 1948.

An Excess of Intellectual Emptiness

January 30, 2017 - 7:00am

In 2013, a college student assigned to research a deadly substance sought help via Twitter: "I can't find the chemical and physical properties of sarin gas someone please help me." An expert at a security consulting firm tried to be helpful, telling her that sarin is not gas. She replied, "yes the [expletive] it is a gas you ignorant [expletive]. sarin is a liquid & can evaporate ... shut the [expletive] up."

The Waterbeetle of American Politics

January 19, 2017 - 7:00am

He flabbergasts the Human Race

          By gliding on the water's face

          With ease, celerity and grace;

          But if he ever stopped to think

          Of how he did it, he would sink.

          -- Hilaire Belloc, on the waterbeetle

The Patent and Trademark Office's Assault on Free Speech

January 16, 2017 - 7:00am

In 1929, Chief Justice William Howard Taft convinced Congress to finance construction of "a building of dignity and importance" for the Supreme Court. He could not have imagined what the court will ponder during oral arguments this Wednesday. The case concerns the name of an Asian-American rock band: The Slants. And surely Taft never read a friend-of-the-court brief as amusing as one filed in this case. It is titled "Brief of the Cato Institute and a Basket of Deplorable People and Organizations."

Good Riddance, 2016

January 2, 2017 - 7:00am

Viewing 2016 in retrospect -- doing so is unpleasant, but less so than was living through it -- the year resembles a china shop after a visit from an especially maladroit bull. Because a law says "the state of California may not sell or display the Battle Flag of the Confederacy ... or any similar image," a painting of the 1864 Siege of Atlanta was banned from display at the Fresno County fair.

Making America 1953 Again

December 29, 2016 - 7:00am

It is axiomatic that if someone is sufficiently eager to disbelieve something, there is no Everest of evidence too large to be ignored. This explains today's revival of protectionism, which is a plan to make America great again by making it 1953 again.     

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