While we’re grappling with exporting our constitutional principles to those less fortunate in the world, it is important to note that some of them are under siege here at home. In an important book, The Case Against Lawyers, former Texas judge and current host of Court TV Catherine Crier makes a bold statement about the […]
Archives for 2003
Roe Vs. Wade Redux
I have often noted my view that the ill-decided Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade in 1973 will have been our generation’s version of the 1857 decision in the Dred Scot slavery case in terms of its divisiveness for our social fabric. Now pending is another invitation to further ideological warfare—the case of Lawrence […]
Random Thoughts On The War
“However long it takes. It isn’t a matter of timetable, it’s a matter of victory.”—George W. Bush It is very difficult to focus on much of anything lately except the war in Iraq, so here are some thoughts on it I have been kicking around: * There once was a responsible anti-war left in this […]
Of Old Europe, New Europe, And U. S. Foreign Policy
With all the attention given to the confrontation on war policy between France and Germany on one hand and the U. S. and Great Britain on the other, it is useful to look at some underlying issues that do not usually make the evening news. For example, Charles Krauthammer has recently noted that the phenomenon […]
A Double Standard In Responsibility
It has always been puzzling, but instructive, to me that the victims groups and their allies in the plaintiff bar are quick to find justification to go after McDonalds for childhood and teenage obesity and the tobacco companies for causing cancer while completely (and conveniently) ignoring the entertainment industry, particularly the music business and Hollywood’s […]
Texas Budget Crunch
No one envies the job currently facing policy-makers at every level of government and education in the difficult task of solving the current budget imbalances. As in all such crises, the essential trade-of is about whether revenue is too low or expenses too high. Pretty basic stuff with some obvious answers for businesses and families, […]
Of Biases, Right And Left
One of my favorite liberal columnists, E. J. Dionne, Jr., wrote several months ago, “It took conservatives a lot of hard and steady work to push the media rightward. It dishonors that work to presume that—except for a few liberal columnists—there is any such thing as the big liberal media.” Aside from the fact that […]
Recent Books Of Note
Speaking of Woodrow Wilson, it is often remarked that it is impossible to understand the past century, not to mention our current world problem spots, without a grasp of the world shaped by World War I and the subsequent Paris Peace Conference, in which Wilson was so heavily influential. For a comprehensive account of the […]
What Are We Waiting For?
If I hear the words “no smoking gun” one more time, I think I’ll throw up. Did we really believe that the UN arms inspectors were going to discover new evidence sufficient to indict Saddam Hussein for weapons possession before a grand jury? And who is the jury, anyway? The UN, which has just appointed […]
On Affirmative Action And Misplaced Priorities
It has been instructive to me that one of the leading stories on the domestic front recently has been the University of Michigan affirmative action cases pending before the U. S. Supreme Court, the briefs filed on them by the Bush administration, and the related question of racial and ethnic diversity in college admissions as […]