Month: August 2009
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Torture, Euthanasia, and Decision-Making Without A Bright Line
Bright-line rules provide the comfort of easy decision-making. But many times there is no bright line, leaving people of good will to agonize about the lesser evil, often under intense pressure. When does a ticking-time-bomb interrogation cross the line from harsh to torturous? When does giving morphine to a dying patient cross the line from providing comfort to homicide?
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Ted Kennedy Liked Chappaquiddick Jokes
Surely true remorse — or even just common decency — would preclude making jokes about an incident where he put his political career ahead of a young woman’s life. If justice had been served, his path to redemption would have included a stay in prison. When he joked about it, he mocked justice.
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The Perverse Incentives of Our Health-Care System
An article in the September Atlantic does the best job I have ever seen of describing why health care is so resistant to cost-control efforts. At 11,000 words, “How American Health Care Killed My Father” is not a quick read, but it’s not a dry policy treatise by any means. (Hat tip: TigerHawk.) When David […]
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Is Pro-Obama News Coverage Hurting ObamaCare?
"While the press often has acted as an early-warning sign for troubled presidential initiatives, the press corp did not perk up until the public was in open rebellion."
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Hitler Comparisons are Odious, Whether About Obama or Bush
You may have seen and applauded the YouTube video of Barney Frank’s verbal smackdown of a twit who accused him at a town hall of backing Obama’s “Nazi” healthcare plan. I agree that Frank’s righteous put-down was well-executed, but I have to protest the notion that anti-Obama rhetoric represents a recent coarsening of the public […]
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Senator Reid’s Odd Notion of Evil
“Evil” is a central concept for me. I named my blog about the need to fight evil. Two presidents in my lifetime have issued clarion calls about evil, and I think history may well ratify Bush’s usage as it already has ratified Reagan’s. If “evil” is to mean anything, it must be reserved for the […]
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A Center-Right Nation Balks at Obamacare
People intuitively understand that the "public option" is a first step toward a single-payer world in which the government directly controls one-sixth of the economy, and has no competitive incentive to reduce costs and improve service.
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Moderate Muslims Hold the Key to the War Against Islamic Fascism
For some time I’ve been meaning to highlight the work of M. Zuhdi Jasser and the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. As their website describes, “AIFD was formed as an unmistakable expression of American liberty and freedom in an attempt to take back the faith of Islam from the demagoguery of the Islamo-fascists.” Dr. Jasser […]
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Kudlow Supports A.T.I.N. on Clunkers
For days after conveying the coveted All That Is Necessary Seal of Approval on the Cash for Clunkers program, I’ve watched a parade of conservative commentators weigh in against it. Some of the critics were straining too hard to find a way to bash a Democratic initiative, but there were enough substantive concerns that I […]