Second Amendment Battle in DC: [02/13/08 ] As a United States Congressman, I take my oath to uphold all of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights very seriously. Unfortunately, too many in Washington DC believe they can pick-and-choose which provisions of the constitution they can uphold. For example, many politicians, judges, and bureaucrats believe they have the power to disregard our right to own guns, even though the second amendment explicitly guarantees the people's right to "keep and bear arms." (Ron Paul)

America is Running Out of Electricity: [02/13/08 ] The provision of electrical power nationwide has become the chosen battleground for environmental groups laboring night and day to insure there will not be enough of it to meet our needs. (Alan Caruba)

Mulling Over Movies and Politics: [02/12/08 ] With so many Hollywood celebrities jumping on the various presidential bandwagons, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell where politics leaves off and show business begins. This being the movie awards season, one sort of expects the politicians to return the favor by announcing their support of, say, George Clooney or Johnny Depp for the Oscar. (Burt Prelutsky)

The Illusion of Competence: [02/12/08 ] Fraud is rife, I tell you. At a glance the citadels of power in Washington seem imposing. One thinks of imperial Rome, or the intergalactic empires of science fiction. Along Pennsylvania Avenue, on Capitol Hill, in Foggy Bottom, in monumental buildings in Federal Greek style, men and women of erudition seem to manage the world. Across the river in the Pentagon, spangled generals operate an inconceivably powerful military that can strike anywhere within hours of deciding to do so. At Langley in Virginia and Fort Meade in Maryland the intelligence agencies spy on the world, sucking in vast amounts of information from secret satellites and undersea taps and massive antenna farms. The whole enterprise reeks of inexorability and omniscience. (Fred Reed)

The Nausea Factor: [02/11/08 ] There always comes a time at some point in the process by which Americans select the next “leader of the free world” that one experiences the nausea incurred by too much political rhetoric. There is an impolite word for this that begins with the word “bull.” (Alan Caruba)

Single Young Males: A Defense: [02/08/08 ] I’ve been a fan of City Journal since my interest in Harry Stein led me to the website back in 2000. The quarterly’s masthead features the names of numerous esteemed and intelligent social commentators. Looking back over the last eight years I can honestly say that there has not been one essay they’ve published that was not worthwhile. Kay Hymowitz’s recent endeavor, “Child-Man in the Promised Land: Today’s single young men hang out in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood,” is no exception to this rule—if only due to the way that responding to it sharpens the mind. (Bernard Chapin)

Earthjustice's Clean Water Poll Comes Up Short: [02/07/08 ] Last month, the environmental activists at Earthjustice breathlessly released the results of a poll the group had commissioned that supposedly reveals rural voters' feelings on the Clean Water Act. The purpose of this classic push poll is to give the impression that rural voting districts support a vast expansion of the Clean Water Act, and therefore, would support the Clean Water Restoration Act (H.R. 2421 and S. 1870), a bill designed to bring federal regulatory authority to every field drainage ditch, pond and prairie pothole in the nation. (Peyton Knight)

Poisoning the economy: [02/07/08 ] Congress and the White House, Democrats and Republicans finally agree on something!

We need a stimulus package, they intone. The economy is stagnating, unemployment is climbing, families can’t pay their bills. We have to prime the pump, reduce interest rates, increase unemployment benefits, provide temporary tax relief. (Roy Innis)

Beware: "Free" medical care will kill you: [02/06/08 ] The great debate on medical care is taking place in this year's presidential campaign. Much is made of the fact that care costs too much and that government isn't doing enough to provide coverage for the poor and elderly. Be careful - you may regret ever-encouraging government - controlled medicine. (Tom DeWeese)

Does the New York Times Hate Meat?: [02/05/08 ] After a while, one grows accustomed to the environmental rants that appear in The New York Times. This newspaper, so often pointed to as an exemplar of the highest standards of journalism, has been repeatedly revealed to employ fantasists for whom truth and facts are mere impediments to the advancement of their obsessions and agendas. (Alan Caruba)

Come to the Aid of the Party: [02/04/08 ] If he had thrown his hat in the ring, my first choice for president would have been Newt Gingrich, probably the smartest guy in politics. I still hope that whoever gets elected this November will make Gingrich his secretary of state. (Burt Prelutsky)

Turning Tar Sands into Clean Natural Gas with Bacteria: [02/01/08 ] Scientists said recently in the journal Nature they can radically speed up the underground bacterial fermentation that turns Canada’s tar-like Athabasca sands into natural gas at far less cost and with far less environmental pollution. This is huge global news because the world has about six trillion barrels of such heavy oil, more than 20 times the proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. They’re focused in Canada’s Athabasca, in Venezuela’s Orinoco tar belt, and in the oil shale of the U.S. Rocky Mountains. All may be economically recoverable with bacterial refining. (Dennis T. Avery)

Eeeek!: Understanding US Foreign Policy [01/31/08 ] A malign and poorly understood influence on foreign policy is the paranoid truculent male (though a few females share the ailment). The PTM is a fairly well-defined type, who believes that They Are Out to Get Us. He doesn’t much care who They are. If one They fails him, he will find another. These They must be fought to the death. It’s us or They. (Fred Reed)

Tiger Woods and PC [01/30/08 ] When will the tsunami of PC so oppressing our nation dissipate? With the probable election of Hillary Clinton in November it is highly likely that the situation will get substantially worse before it gets any better. Our right to speak freely erodes more and more with each passing day. The amount of forbidden words is far greater in 2008 than it was in 2006. Depending on the context, saying any of them can result in one becoming an outcast, getting fired from work or even going to the slammer. (Bernard Chapin)

I’m Fat. You’re Fat. And Your Kids Are, Too. [01/29/08 ] If you want the government, federal, state and local, to tell you what you can and cannot eat, please raise your hand. Apparently no one does except for the various politicians who think they were elected to determine what you should eat and drink. (Alan Caruba)

A Few Words in Defense of Torture [01/28/08 ] Sometimes I get the idea that America’s MSM is nothing more than an off-shoot of Al Jazeera, a well-oiled propaganda machine for all things Islamic. For instance, we’ve been hearing for the longest time that torture is the worst possible way by which to extract information from the enemy. Who says so? When something that is so nonsensical is passed off as common knowledge, I, for one, get very suspicious. (Burt Prelutsky)

Green Desperation Time [01/25/08 ] News of a January 31 “teach-in” on more than 1,000 college campuses nationwide strikes me of just one more example of the growing desperation of the environmental movement that has bet its credibility and influence on global warming. (Alan Caruba)

Firehammer, Rand, and Objectivism [01/25/08 ] First let me say, I really do not care what anyone calls me, or thinks I am or supposes I believe or think, even if what they call me, think I am or suppose I believe or think is untrue. Those who know me personally know the truth—as for the rest, I don't really care at all. (Reginald Firehammer)