“Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand.”—Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 74. This sentiment of our founding was clearly expressed in Article II of the Constitution, which establishes the President as the commander in chief, with inherent […]
Archives for 2006
Texas Takes On Education Standards Revision
Recently I attended a working meeting of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) to hear three well-known national experts discuss with board members the foundational elements of reading and the language arts, particularly as they pertain to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), which for the past ten years has been the foundation […]
A Great Question
In the May issue of Academic Questions, published by the National Association of Scholars, is this item: A large number of higher education employment ads have been including the following language—“We invite applications from qualified candidates who share our commitment to diversity”. An NAS member who drew attention to this development wonders if that wording […]
It’s Time to Stop the Nonsense
“The upshot of the changes ahead is that Americans are now, and increasingly will become, less secure than they believe themselves to be. The reason is that we may not recognize many of the threats to our future….They may consist, too, of an unraveling of the fabric of national identity itself…..Democracy may be hollowed out […]
Lessons from Enron Revisited
A couple of months ago, Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal had the following striking headline to his weekly essay—“Barry Bonds, Please Meet Andrew Fastow”—a clear reference to the common thread that runs through the fraud manifest in both cases. The point is that there is a condition that transcends enforcement and prosecutorial methods […]
Dishonorable Generals
The loud criticism of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by a handful of retired military generals is contrary to good order, conduct unbecoming of an American officer, damaging to our mission, and is alien to the spirit of our constitutional heritage of civilian command of the military. These men should be strongly reprimanded. Of course, […]
Energy Madness
We are clearly very near our third generation of economic illiteracy in this country, shamelessly exploited by over the top demagoguery on energy policy. I have never seen such duplicity combined with cowardice and pandering, topping even the late 1970’s in foolishness. The reasons this is so are legion and I won’t recap them here, […]
The Mexican Imperative
While hotly debating U. S. immigration policy, no one doubts that the public policies of Mexico are at least as important in resolving the immigration crisis in this country as any we adopt here. This is what makes the upcoming presidential election in Mexico critical for the future of this problem and at this point […]
Bloom Revisited
Thinking about various recent events and spectacles in higher education—the Ward Churchill fiasco, the shameful dismissal of President Larry Summers at Harvard, affirmative action marketing to the GLBT community at my own alma mater, Yale admitting as a student a former ambassador-at-large of the Afghan Taliban, and the deliberations of the Department of Education’s higher […]
Iran—Are We There Yet?
According to a few who attended a recent small gathering with Bernard Lewis, regarded as the “dean” of Islamic scholars in the U. S., he made the chilling statement that the West is today at a point with the Iranian regime almost exactly where we were with the Nazi regime in 1938. This is a […]