In the Ferguson disaster, the law was the greatest casualty. Civilization cannot long work if youths strong-arm shop owners and take what they want. Or walk down the middle of highways high on illicit drugs. Or attack police officers and seek to grab their weapons.
There is a humane, transparent, truthful -- and constitutional -- way to address illegal immigration. Unfortunately, President Obama's unilateral plan to exempt millions of residents from federal immigration law is none of those things.
It is a commonplace belief that contemporary life's dizzying pace of change and its rapid multiplication of choices have fragmented American culture. The conflict between religion and secularism is only the most longstanding and obvious division.
Earlier this week I analyzed Senator Paul’s proposed war declaration. Bruce Fein has a spirited defense of Senator Paul’s draft (which includes a swipe at me for asking an “obtuse[e]” question). But the defense contains two errors that reveal the limits of what the Senator proposes.
I posted this last week, but I was unaware at the time of the Paul Krugman's "Keynes is slowly winning" post; Tyler Cowen's 15-point response, documenting not only Keynesian failures but more importantly how the policy world is in fact moving decidedly away from Keynesian ideas, right or wrong (that was Krugman's point); and Krugman's retort, predictably snarky and disconnected from anything Cowen said, changing the subject from Keynesian ideas are winning to the standard what a bunch of morons they're not Keynesians though I keep telling them to be.
On November 21, Robin Hanson wrote a piece misleadingly titled "Imagine Libertopia." I say "misleadingly" because he's actually calling on libertarians to do less imagining and more empirical research. It's excellent.
TEL AVIV -- Last summer Hamas launched against Israel another round of warfare. The Jewish state responded with Operation Protective Edge. In the wake of that 50-day military conflict, international actors are launching against Israel another round of “lawfare.”
Many Defense Department observers are saying that the next Pentagon leader should be either an intense political infighter or someone who is able to be conciliatory with the president and his White House team.
Ever since Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke commenced quantitative easing in October 2008, many commentators have warned about the danger of inflation. There are good reasons to be concerned-including the unprecedented expansion of the monetary base and the Fed's bloated balance sheet-but many Fed watchers are fighting the last war.
Exit Polls are useful, but just like any poll, one needs to be careful using them. They are not exact, but instead provide a glimpse into trends of the electorate. And while the 2014 election results in California were interesting and provide useful lessons, the electorate (and what they think) might be even more so.
President Obama’s foreign policy of disengagement has been shattered by the events of the past year. His conviction that a retrenched United States would be better for Americans at home and for people around the globe has only invited aggression, from the Middle East to Europe to the Pacific.
I didn't think that a 20-minute video on the origins and use of the words "liberal" and "liberalism" could hold my attention and draw me in. I am notoriously impatient and I have a strong preference for videos that are less than 5 minutes.
In his most recent New York Times column, "Pollution and Politics," Paul Krugman fluctuates between claiming one doesn't need to do the analysis and actually doing the analysis. The issue: the Environmental Protection Agency's Thanksgiving-timed proposal for substantial regulations on ozone.
Ukraine’s fate may depend upon the battle within Germany’s ruling coalition over its policy towards Putin’s Russia. In the United States, the new Republican Senate will battle the Obama administration over weapons for Ukraine.
I'm up early this Thanksgiving day, before my wife and daughter. My daughter came home from San Francisco yesterday afternoon and for that alone I'm thankful. She, my wife, and a friend had a great visit last night.
Most mornings that I don't teach, I go out early to the local Safeway, where there's a Starbuck's, and get my wife a Grande non-fat latte. Tip to men who want a long-term successful marriage: If there are things you can do that have a low cost to you and a large benefit to your spouse, do them.
Publishers have their faults but they do not forget anniversaries. This year in books, accordingly, was always going to have an elegiac tone, so dominated by the centenary of the first world war that it often felt like we were commemorating its early stages in real time – as indeed we were.
Nick Bostrom of the University of Oxford talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Bostrom argues that when machines exist which dwarf human intelligence they will threaten human existence unless steps are taken now to reduce the risk. The conversation covers the likelihood of the worst scenarios, strategies that might be used to reduce the risk and the implications for labor markets, and human flourishing in a world of superintelligent machines.
The 6 years of Barack Obama’s foreign policy have seen American influence and power decline across the globe. Traditional rivals like China and Russia are emboldened and on the march in the South China Sea and Ukraine.
Critics of minimal deterrence, such as Keith Payne in a recent article in the Washington Times, accuse advocates of reducing the U.S. nuclear stockpile of viewing the world through rose-colored glasses, irresponsibly following ideological perceptions at the expense of American security.
Last week Mark Carney revealed an extraordinary statistic. According to the governor of the Bank of England, it now takes seven times as long for investors to liquidate bond portfolios as in 2008.
