I’ve been fortunate to know Walter Williams ever since I began my Ph.D. studies at George Mason University in the mid-1980s. He is a very good economist, but his real value is as a public intellectual. He also has a remarkable personal story, which he tells in his new…
I’m not a foreign policy expert, so perhaps I’m missing something, but a quick glance at the Constitution reveals that Congress has the power to declare war, as specified in Article I, Section VIII. Nobody else has that power, not even the President. Notwithstanding…
It’s a long time until Christmas, but this clever t-shirt I saw linked on Instapundit is going to be near the top of my list. And unlike the Ben Bernanke toilet paper, this gift will be visible to everyone you see, not just people who visit your bathroom. On the other…
Some of these numbers are a bit dodgy, and some of the assumptions are pathetically flawed (more spending by government leads to less poverty being a clear example of faulty thinking), but this comparison of big numbers is very interesting. I now know, for instance,…
A buddy from Monaco was at a different conference in the same hotel in Switzerland, and he sent me this great humor from David Letterman. Here are the top 10 ways to tell if you are a bureaucrat. 10.) You take a week off to protest in Wisconsin and your office runs…
I’m a lucky guy to work at the Cato Institute, and I’m especially happy to be at Cato’s Benefactor Summit in San Diego this weekend. One of our supporters, John Aglialoro, is the person most responsible for the movie version of Atlas Shrugged (he independently…
I haven’t commented on what’s been happening in Libya, Egypt, and the rest of the Arab world. This isn’t because I don’t care, but rather because I don’t have much knowledge about the area and I’m not sure what, if anything, the United States should do. Or could do. I…
Al Gore really knows how to get a good turnout.
The internal revenue code is nightmarishly complex, as illustrated by this video. Americans spend more than 7 billion hours each year in a hopeless effort to figure out how to deal with more than 7 million words of tax law and regulation. Why does this mess exist? The…
Walter Williams has a column about the House GOP’s commitment to make sure legislation is consistent with the Constitution. As with most things he writes, it is very much worth reading. Walter starts by explaining what Boehner and the rest of the Republicans have…