The steel tariff may become a major issue in this year’s presidential campaign, placing Howard Dean in the odd position (for a Democratic candidate, at least) of attacking President Bush for caving in to a decision of an international body—in this case, the World Trade Organization.  But then, over its 21-month life, this tariff has...

Russia’s parliamentary elections, held December 7, produced a wave of alarmed reactions in the Western press that betray the ignorance and hypocrisy of Western elite thinking regarding Russia and the West’s—particularly Washington’s—relations with Moscow. The Kremlin-backed United Russia party carried the day, winning nearly 38 percent of the vote, while other Kremlin-backed—or created—parties (the Liberal...

Christopher Danze is a hero of Texas proportions.  The Austin concrete supplier has shut down construction of a Planned Parenthood abortuary by rallying his colleagues and competitors in the construction industry to boycott the project.  Without concrete—to say nothing of plumbers, electricians, and carpenters (even the porta-john vendor has pulled out)—the project’s general contractor, Browning...

The U.S.S. Liberty was suddenly and deliberately attacked on June 8, 1967—a date that should live in infamy—by naval and air forces of the state of Israel.  Although the lone vessel, conducting surveillance in international waters, identified herself as an American craft—as if the 12-foot-tall and soon-to-be-shot-up Old Glory were not enough—she withstood a sustained...

Michael Schiavo has decided that his wife’s life is without merit.  Since her collapse in 1990, he has worked to free himself from the burden of caring for the one he vowed to love in sickness and in health.  After she awakened from a brief coma, Terri Schiavo’s condition improved slightly, and, though unable to...

Howard Dean almost blew it.  With a slight edge in the polls and a strong following among both blacks and young, college-trained white professionals, the ex-governor of Vermont was beginning to look like the next nominee of the Democratic Party.  Then he said something nice about white “guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks”...

The request for an additional $87 billion for our operation in Iraq proves once again that U.S. policy there is anything but conservative.  The request includes $5.7 billion for a new electric-power system; $3.7 billion to improve water and sanitation; and $856 million to upgrade and repair three airports, rail lines, and phone service.  Other...

Journalist Andrew Sullivan was discovered in 2001 anonymously soliciting partners on homosexual websites.  Thus, it might seem odd that Sullivan, who is HIV-positive, now champions marriage.  He has not mainstreamed orthodoxy into his lifestyle, however, but is crusading for “gay marriage,” an absurdity that is no laughing matter. Sullivan’s mission is not impossible.  While 37...

China’s first manned space mission should serve as a warning that Beijing is serious about becoming a “peer competitor” of the United States.  Some commentators mocked the Chinese effort as being far behind the achievements of the U.S. space program.  Yet no other country—not even the supposedly more advanced Japan nor any European state—has accomplished...

Kathy Boudin, by the time she walked out of the New York state penitentiary on parole last summer after serving 22 years for murder and bank robbery, should have been a forgotten name, but, thanks to the New York Times and similar organs, she was probably better known when she left prison than when she...

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals surprised most conservatives and even a few liberals when it ruled that California’s recall election could not go forward on October 7 as scheduled, overruling a district judge and effectively overruling the California courts, which had rebuffed all legal challenges to the recall, and California...

John R. Cash went to his reward on September 12.  His beloved wife, June, preceded the “Man in Black” in death on May 15.  His friends report that Johnny Cash was at peace and ready to meet his Maker.  Cash himself had calmly stated, “I don’t have long to live, now,” during his last TV...

The WTO talks in Cancun, Mexico, and their ultimate collapse were similar to what happened in Seattle in 1999, when President Bill Clinton, an avowed “free trader,” walked out when faced with demands even he could not stomach.  Four years later, the United States again faced an intransigent coalition presenting unacceptable demands. Liberal commentators have...

Mel Gibson’s movie “on the last 12 hours of Jesus’ life” has stirred up all sorts of passions among interested observers the world over.  The Passion, directed by Gibson and produced by Gibson’s film company, Icon Productions, is scheduled to be released sometime during the Lenten season of 2004.  The goal of this ambitious project,...

The recall election in California has dominated the headlines of late, thanks, in part, to Governor Hiram Johnson, the lion of the Western Progressives.  The irony is that today’s alleged “progressives”—in thrall to the special interests (i.e., the public-employee unions)—are horrified by what their ancestors have wrought. The Union Pacific Railroad was a great octopus...

Kobe Bryant, according to heavyweight sociologist Mike Tyson, is a victim of circumstance.  “It could happen to anybody,” Tyson explained.  The ex-champ referred not to filing for bankruptcy, going Muslim, or biting off a piece of an opponent’s ear, but to getting charged with rape—something apparently as random and undiscriminating as getting struck by lightning. ...

The Bush White House’s use of unreliable information in building its case for war with Iraq prompted continued congressional calls for a full investigation after CIA Director George Tenet’s July 16 closed-door testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.  The intelligence chief took responsibility for a highly questionable claim about Iraq’s alleged nuclear-weapons program in President...

An IRS publication printed this summer carries an article titled “Information for Employers Paying Wages to Illegal Aliens,” the purpose of which is to provide “a summary of an employer’s responsibility for withholding and reporting of employment taxes on wages paid to illegal aliens.”  “For purposes of this article,” the IRS sagely explains, “an illegal...

The New York Times is still perpetuating the myth of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, despite the weight of scholarly evidence.  (See, for example, Egon Tausch’s exhaustive Chronicles article, “Tom and Sally and Joe and Fawn,”?Views, March 1999.)  The myth, first touted by a postmaster manqué who turned to yellow journalism after Jefferson denied him...

Homosexual couples in the Bay State are awaiting the unexpectedly delayed decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court as to whether they have a constitutional right to be married.  This question may not have occurred to the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, but, as this issue goes to press, it is anybody’s guess how the court...

Monkeys—when you consider how many subspecies of them are native to Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois—were sure to cause an epidemic of some kind in the Upper Midwest.  In fact, monkeypox has been traced to prairie dogs sold as house pets after being infected by a single imported specimen of the giant Gambian rat, a three-pound...

J. Strom Thurmond died on June 27, answering that last great Roll Call in the Sky at the age of 100, shortly after finishing out a half-century in the U.S. Senate.  He won his first election before Bill Clinton and Junior Bush were born.  He spent the last period of his life in his native...

The Supreme Court’s ruling allowing affirmative action at the University of Michigan but striking down the school’s system of racial quotas led Linda Chavez, in a syndicated column entitled “Supreme Mischief and Racism” (June 26), to warn against desecrating a sacred vision.  Forty years ago this August, “the Rev. Martin Luther King gave a speech...

The E.U. Constitution, drafted by a committee chaired by former French “conservative” president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, debuted on June 10.  With a metaphysical sweep worthy of Hegel, d’Estaing described the 75-page document as “an edifice, a construction, an equilibrium, a balance . . . a synthesis.”  Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” the anthem of the European...

On May 15, at the age of 73, a living country-music legend died from complications following heart surgery at Nashville’s Baptist Hospital, with her husband of 35 years at her side.  Her life is a testament to the cultural heritage of the rural South, and the news of her death seems all the more bitter...

Beirut’s occupation in 1983 by U.S. Marines may provide a small-scale sample of what a prolonged U.S. occupation of Iraq could be like, should the Pollyannaish postwar scenarios of some members of the War Party fail to materialize.  Of course, the two situations are, in some ways, very different.  Beirut, for instance, is just a...

Sergey Yushenkov’s murder on April 17 may have been the result of machinations aimed at destroying Russian President Vladimir Putin politically and personally, as well as undermining U.S.-Russia relations, seemingly on track again after the rift over Iraq.  Gunned down outside his Moscow apartment, Yushenkov, the leader of the Liberal Russia political party, joins a...

Quebec’s sovreigntist movement could learn a thing or two from Liberal Party leader Jean Charest.  His return to the premiership of the pro-vince should be a lesson to the sovereigntists that it is always darkest before dawn. The sovereigntists’ night, however, will last a while longer, as the provincial Liberals have smashed them to pieces...

The war in Iraq’s outcome was never in doubt, but the magnitude and speed of the Iraqi regime’s collapse are nevertheless puzzling and deserve closer scrutiny. In terms of numbers and available equipment, the Iraqi military was theoretically a foe worthy of respect.  Its past performance was by no means abysmal.  It suffered serious reverses...

Vladimir Putin, prodded by a reporter’s question regarding the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, remarked that Russia, for “economic and political” reasons, “has no interest in the defeat of the United States.”   Putin’s comments were seen by Russian media observers as a sign that the Kremlin had come full circle on the Iraq question. ...

The Dixie Chicks have caused quite a stir in Lee Greenwood’s America.  To recap, for those who have taken E. Michael Jones’ advice and drop-kicked their television set out the front door: On March 10, during a concert in London, singer Natalie Maines said, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United...

On February 4, the Federal Assembly in Belgrade formally dissolved the state known as Yugoslavia and replaced it with a loose union of its remaining two republics, Serbia and Montenegro.  On February 25, the separate parliaments of Serbia and Montenegro voted to nominate deputies for the new joint legislature that was then slated to elect...

Russia may have avoided a full-scale political crisis, at least temporarily, thanks to the Bush administration’s decision in mid-March not to pursue a U.N. Security Council vote on its latest resolution on Iraq.  Russian President Vladimir Putin had appeared ready to accept Washington’s planned “regime change” in Baghdad in exchange for a piece of the...

Celebrities—America’s “creative community”—start getting agitated when-ever the country is on the verge of war.  They march in antiwar rallies; they publish antiwar ads and petitions; and, most significantly, they don antiwar clothing.   Well, it’s a free country, and I can abide the speeches, the petitions, and the ads, even when they are imbued with...

War with Iraq loomed large as I was flying home to my district on February 6, reading glowing reports in the Washington Times of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations the day before.  Then, I turned the page and read these words from Canadian Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew: “I’m hearing a...

Vladimir Putin, during his February trip to Germany and France, surprised Kremlin watchers east and west by threatening to veto any U.S.- or U.K.-sponsored resolution on military action against Iraq.  In Paris, Putin told reporters that, if a resolution on the “unreasonable use of force” against Baghdad were made “today,” Moscow “would act with France...

A draft is being proposed by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), who opposed the congressional resolution supporting war in Iraq.  He lost, so now he wants to conscript young people into the coming conflict to ensure that Americans “shoulder the burden of the war equally.” Reinstituting conscription is bizarre on its face.  America currently deploys the...

The Roman Catholic Church in the United States must regard 2002 as one of the most traumatic years in Her history.  Any Catholic who hoped that the media might eventually find a new subject for horror stories would have been further disheartened this past January, when television and print media suggested that a whole new...

Iraqi Christians are paying the price of the Bush administration’s desire to remove Saddam Hussein.  The Iranian Revolution and the rising influence of militant Islam have already forced the secular Iraqi dictatorship to make concessions to proponents of Iraq’s Islamicization, but the threat of a U.S. attack, together with a widespread feeling in the Arab...

United Airlines’ December 9 bankruptcy filing came as no surprise to those who understand the airline industry, in which even America’s most successful living investor, Warren E. Buffet, could not turn a profit.  Buffett once observed, “In a business selling a commodity-type product it’s impossible to be a lot smarter than your dumbest competitor.”  Mr....

Canadian officials have been badgering the United States for deporting Syrian Maher Arar from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in October 2002.  The Canadian government, however, is not entitled to display such moral outrage.  Mr. Arar was removed from the United States for alleged terrorist connections.   Because he held both Canadian and...

Saddam Hussein, a Kremlin source told the Russian Information Agency (RIA-Novosti), “isn’t so nice that you would want to defend him just for his own sake.”  Following the December 12, 2002, announcement by the Iraqi government that it had cancelled its contract with Russia’s Lukoil, which held the rights to develop Iraq’s vast West Kurna...

Republicans?are taking the reins of the 108th Congress this month, thanks, in part, to their tough talk about “homeland security” in the weeks leading up to last November’s elections.  What can Americans expect now that the GOP?enjoys majorities in both the House and the Senate and has their man in the White House to sign...

The Smithsonian has had on display, for the past decade and a half, an exhibit entitled A More Perfect Union.  The many millions who have viewed it have been erroneously taught that, during World War II, America grossly mistreated her Japanese minorities, in spite of the “fact” that the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team racked...

Tuesday, November 5, 2002, will be remembered as the day that the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party died.  On Election Day, the Republicans swept most of the state’s constitutional offices and elected Norm Coleman to the U.S. Senate, Tim Pawlenty to the governorship, and John Klein to the U.S. Congress.  The GOP also gained seats in the...

Jacques Chirac, in the last week of October, called off the Anglo-French summit scheduled for December after angrily accusing British Prime Minister Tony Blair of speaking to him with extraordinary insolence over the future of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Africa.  The French president told Mr. Blair, “You have been very rude,...

Terrorists are wreaking havoc all around the globe, and it is obvious that Al Qaeda is alive and deadly, if not well.  Thus, the Bush administration is faced with a stark choice: Focus on protecting Americans by continuing the fight against terrorism, or risk American lives by setting the world further aflame with an unnecessary...

Paleoconservatives often refer to “the limits of permissible dissent” in describing the struggle to hold on to their views in the realms of the media and academia against the censure of both the left and the “mainstream” right.  Now, this struggle has been extended into the realm of the internet, the supposed last frontier of...

Serbia’s?recent presidential election failed to muster enough votes to be valid.  Only 46 percent of voters cast ballots in the run-off between current Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica and his rival, Miroljub Labus.  Kostunica beat Labus by a two-to-one margin, but, without the minimum turnout of 50 percent, the outcome was void. What happens next is...

A U.N. resolution concerning weapons inspections in Iraq made October a month for hard bargaining among Washington, Paris, and Moscow.  Washington and London both desired a resolution that would allow the automatic application of force should Iraq obstruct any proposed arms inspections.  Paris and Moscow balked, but by mid-October it appeared that both the French...