Articles

Opinion: Free money comes with its own set of pitfalls

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The lobby of the Federal Reserve Bank building here contains a money museum where a sign offers visitors “Free Money.” It is an amusing anomaly, considering the views of the man in charge of the building.

Opinion: Some things just aren’t government’s business

WASHINGTON — Several weeks ago, when President Obama reportedly assured congressional leaders that America’s intervention in Libya would involve “days, not weeks,” skeptics mistakenly worried about mission creep. They should have feared mission gallop.

Opinion: College admittance is the real March Madness

WASHINGTON — For many families, this is March madness — the moment of high anxiety concerning higher education as many colleges announce their admittance decisions. It is the culmination of a protracted mating dance between selective institutions and anxious students. Part agony, part situation comedy, it has provoked Andrew Ferguson to write a laugh-until-your-ribs-squeak book — “Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting His Kid into College.”

Opinion: Republicans in Congress facing defense dilemma

WASHINGTON — Tall, affable Buck McKeon sits, gavel in hand, at the intersection of two conflicting Republican tendencies. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee embodies the party’s support for a “strong” defense, which is sometimes measured simply by the size of the Pentagon’s budget. But the 35 Republicans on his 62-member committee include 13 first-term legislators, some of whom embody the tea party’s zeal for cutting government spending.

Opinion: For improved education, U.S. should take hints from other nations

WASHINGTON — What America needs, says one American parent, is more parents who resemble South Korean parents. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recalls the answer Barack Obama got when he asked South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, “What is the biggest education challenge you have?” Lee answered: “Parents are too demanding.” They want children to start learning English in first rather than second grade. Only 25 percent of U.S. elementary schools offer any foreign-language instruction.

Opinion: Airport strategies mostly theatrics, anyway

WASHINGTON — Fifty years ago William F. Buckley wrote a memorable complaint about the fact that Americans do not complain enough. His point, like most of the points he made during his well-lived life, is, unfortunately, more pertinent than ever. Were he still with us he would favor awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he received in 1991, to John Tyner, who, when attempting to board a plane in San Diego, was provoked by some Transportation Security Administration personnel.

Opinion: Like Titanic, iceberg looms ahead for Obama

WASHINGTON — When Alexander Pope was on his deathbed, his doctor assured him that his breathing, pulse and other vital signs were improving. “Here I am,” Pope said to a friend, “dying of a hundred good symptoms.”
Some Democrats read the election returns as symptoms of health because things could have been worse: “Happily, we have leprosy, not cholera.” But embracing the fallacy of false alternatives is not a step toward recuperation. Neither is continuing the attitude Democrats adopted when passing Obamacare and that foretold their unhappy election: “No compromise with the voters!”

Opinion: Democrat in W.Va. battles Obama’s shadow

WHEELING, W. Va. — In 1863, West Virginia became the 35th state by seceding from some secessionists: 50 counties, with few slaves, left Virginia, almost all of which have seams of coal. Barack Obama has a remarkable hostility to coal. For example, in 2008 he said: “If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

Opinion: Democrat-manufactured hysteria finds a soapbox

WASHINGTON — It is a lawyers’ adage: If you have the law on your side, argue the law; if you have the facts, argue the facts; if you have neither, pound the table. Forgive the Democrats for their current table-pounding.
They cannot run on their record, which has two pillars. One is the stimulus that did not stimulate as they said it would (or else unemployment would not be above 8 percent). The report that the recession ended in June 2009 means the feeble recovery began before stimulus spending really started.

Opinion: Political evolution may occur in Pennsylvania

LANGHORNE, Pa. — From the 1930s through the 1950s, Bucks County northeast of Philadelphia acquired a glamorous reputation as a retreat for Manhattan celebrities, including Oscar Hammerstein, who, according to local legend, was inspired by the view from his Doylestown front porch to write “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” the opening song of “Oklahoma!” Today the county, which is 93 percent of Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District, figures in Republicans’ plans to sing that song on the morning of Nov. 3.

Columns

WILL: Oh, those pesky laws

WASHINGTON — Two policies of the Obama administration illustrate an axiom: As government expands, its lawfulness contracts.

• George Will

WILL: Republicans win by losing

Buckley understood the possibility of constructive defeat. He also understood the need to economize conservatism’s energies.

• George Will

WILL: Santorum a miscast candidate for the GOP

Rather than wait for Super Tuesday’s (March 6) congenial calendar featuring five culturally conservative states (Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, Oklahoma, Idaho), Rick Santorum is contesting Michigan, which votes Tuesday, and Ohio.

• George Will

WILL: It’s Romney’s time to step up

WASHINGTON — An Illinois lawyer who had a way with words once characterized a particular argument as weaker than soup made from the shadow of a pigeon that died of starvation. The argument for Mitt Romney benefiting from South Carolina’s voting is almost as weak as Lincoln’s soup, but here it is.

• George Will

WILL: Progress waits for bureaucracy

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Thanks to globalization, and to containerized shipping that began in 1956 and makes globalization work, commodities swiftly move vast distances around the planet. Walmart alone imports 400,000 containers a year. Trade flows can, however, be deflected or even defeated by a distance of just 5 feet.

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OPINION: All Stars note 'kids do not mess up the world, adults do'

CHARLESTON, S.C. — They are nearing 70 now, the 11 men who were 12-year-old boys in 1955 and who are remembered for the baseball games they could not play.

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OPINION: Suddenly, a fun candidate

WASHINGTON — The complaint that Iowa is not a typical American state is true but trivial because there is no such state. Can you name one whose political culture, closely considered, is more like than unlike any other state’s? Anyway, someplace has to go first, and it should be somewhere the natives are receptive and media are not decisive, so marginal candidates have a sporting chance.

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OPINION: Third-party run by Paul would have big impact

Paul is nationally known, has a large base of small donors, and his intense supporters probably could get his name on most states’ ballots.

• George Will

OPINION: Supreme Court faces a troubling situation

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court faces a discomfiting decision. If it chooses, as it should, to hear a case concerning racial preferences in admissions at the University of Texas, the court will confront evidence of its complicity in harming the supposed beneficiaries of preferences the court has enabled and encouraged.

• George Will

OPINION: First Amendment, laws about lying sometimes at odds

WASHINGTON — The Stolen Valor Act of 2005, a compound of political pandering and moral exhibitionism, was whooped through the Senate, aka the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” by unanimous consent; the House, joining the stampede, passed it by a voice vote. So Xavier Alvarez now hopes the Supreme Court will save him from punishment for lying. And his is not the only case arising from government supervising speech that is demonstrably, or arguably, inaccurate.

• George Will