I love NASA, and I’m not quite sure why. The liberal pragmatist in me says that the money that we spend putting men in space could better spent on poverty reduction or education. The laissez faire American in me (yes, it really does exist) thinks that perhaps space exploration could be carried out more efficiently [...]

Americans like to focus on personal responsibility. For liberals this takes the form of Civil Rights; for conservatives it tends to focus on personal responsibilities and incentive structures. But there is definitely an element in both traditional American liberalism and conservativism that the key building block of society is the individual; that people will do [...]

It is human nature to fear the unknown and the unfamiliar. In Hollywood, this was Hitchcock’s great realization. Within the respective frameworks of their movies, Norman Bates was not nearly as dangerous as many of the monsters who came before him. He killed a couple lost tourists; Dracula and Frankenstein terrorized whole regions of eastern [...]

It seems that the time has come to ask ourselves one simple question: what do we want in a Supreme Court Justice? What makes a good one?
Now, as far as I can tell, there are basically two standard answers that most interest groups will give to the question.
First, many interest groups will say that a [...]

As you have probably heard, President Bush nominated Judge John G. Roberts for the Supreme Court. Now, in case you want to read up on Judge Roberts, you may do so here, here, here, here, here, here, or here. Now, many political groups on both sides are already lining up to give their full-throated approval [...]

General William Westmoreland died last night, at the age of 91. General Westmoreland, by all accounts, was a brilliant tactician and a gifted organizer. He met with great success as a battlefield commander in both World War II and Korea. He reached the pinnacle of his career when he was named a four-star general (the [...]

The whole Karl Rove situation is shockingly unsurprising. We already knew that Karl Rove was a hatchet-man; the political equivalent of The Godfather’s Luca Brasi. What Rove did in this particular instance was unethical, vindictive, mean-spirited, distasteful, and immoral. It might have also been illegal, although my understanding is that the law in this particular [...]

If you pay attention to the world of Conservative Christian thoughts and ideas, two things will quickly jump out at you.
First of all, you’ll notice that for a group supposedly at the peak of their political power, a group that can justifiably brag to be responsible for Republican control of the government, they sure do [...]

Check out this article by the New York Times on public education and testing in this country. It’s nice that not only are we forcing teachers to spend time teaching to exams rather than teaching real material, but also that the material we are forcing them to teach is horribly detrimental. Just so that you [...]

This whole situation with Robert Novak, Karl Rove, Valerie Plume, and the rest of the cast of characters involved in the leak of a CIA agent’s name is just confusing me. Here is the best of what I can piece together, although please let me know if any of this is in error:
- In January [...]