Hoover Digest 2008 No 1

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President George W. Bush awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to economist and Nobel Laureate Gary S. Becker Monday, Nov. 5, 2007, in the East Room. “His pioneering analysis of the interaction between economics and such diverse topics as education, demography, and family organization has earned him worldwide respect and a Nobel Prize,” said the President. (Photo: White House Photo Office)

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The soldiers jacket shows that intelligent soldiers/people are serving in Iraq

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Jack Goldsmith, the author of "The Terror Presidency," is shown speaking at a Hoover retreat.

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When is a warrant necessary for a wiretap? Some members of Congress have refused to pass a law to permit foreign intercepts unless the law included near-perfect privacy guarantees for every innocent American. (Illustration by Taylor Jones)

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How do we fix our schools?

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What is to be blamed for global warming?

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Che was a hard-driven, messianic character in a culture that has long urged people to line up behind paternalistic leaders who promise to redeem the downtrodden. In real life, Che failed in almost everything he did. (Illustration by Taylor Jones)

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Vladimir Putin’s self-righteousness has gone down well with most Russians. They feel that Gorbachev and Yeltsin yielded too much and too often to foreign powers and, moreover, that Yeltsin embarrassed them. The point for most Russians is that Putin is not merely a patriot but a brutally effective patriot. Future generations, however, may well judge him more harshly. (Illustration by Taylor Jones)

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Bueno de Mesquita has made a slew of uncannily accurate predictions—more than 2,000, on subjects ranging from the terrorist threat to America to the peace process in Northern Ireland. (Illustration by Taylor Jones)

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Boskin: “The virtual economy is a very real phenomenon. It happens to be in the virtual world, but it’s a real phenomenon. Millions of people are spending their valuable time and using their skill to inhabit these places. That is economically fascinating on many dimensions. ” (Illustration by Taylor Jones)

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Buildings are crumbling in war torn Iraq.

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The famine of 1931–34 was a major humanitarian catastrophe, claiming almost 6 million victims, as many lives as were lost in the Holocaust. (Illustration by Taylor Jones)

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Boris Pasternak, photographed by Aleksandr Less in Moscow in 1946, was already a celebrated poet when his magnum opus, Doctor Zhivago, was completed in 1955. Smuggled abroad, it was first published in 1957 in an Italian translation. It would be 30 more years before its publication was allowed in the Soviet Union.