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Domestic Partners and the US Military

Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense, sent out a memorandum the other day about ” Extending Benefits to Same-Sex Partners of Military Members “. You could look at it as the other shoe dropping with the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Now, you tell so you can be . . . . Continue Reading »

Charitable Considerations

It is no secret that the USA is the most charitable country in the world.  Why? Well, we can be, but Dan Palotta of the WSJ points to tradition through our Puritan heritage and says charity was their response to the tensions within their doctrine, “they could do penance for their . . . . Continue Reading »

Back In the Day…

My mom was a seamstress for much of the 1980s and some of the 1990s.  I remember that she would work for a company, and then that company would close shop, and then she would find a job somewhere else and then that place would close down and so on.  Evan Soltas has an explanation . . . . Continue Reading »

The Press, the News, and Public Preference

In a post below, I used  quote from Coolidge about “the chief business of the American people is business” and the context of the quote was the intimate relationship between the press and American business, since the press is American business.  This sparked a good comment . . . . Continue Reading »

Repealing Economic Law

While I was reading Peter Lawler’s post on The Fat Tax , I was reminded of a conversation with one of my sons about the amazing abundance and prosperity in America.  Even in an economy that we perceive as shrinking or receding or depressed, we live better than kings did, and even the . . . . Continue Reading »

A Sprawling Debate

In a recent post, Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute takes on Austin Bramwell’s argument that suburban sprawl is t he result of government planning . How can this be, O’Toole asks, when notorious sprawls like Houston don’t even have a zoning code? Bramwell responds by . . . . Continue Reading »

Obama’s Legal Vision

And now, my conclusion about where Obamacare falls into the law-versus-politics schema I mentioned, below, in the context of marriage and divorce. There was one real highlight and moment of clarity for me in Obama’s now-infamous Baier interview: the sequence where the President insisted that, . . . . Continue Reading »

The National Standards Fixation

Some policy controversies are wearying. Not because they have worn their importance down over decades spent in the argumentative rock tumbler, of course. High-stakes issues tend actually to get more portentous, over time, as we sink greater and greater emotional and intellectual investments into . . . . Continue Reading »

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