I took my wife out for dinner for her birthday and my fortune cookie said the following: Alter ideas and you alter the world How true. This isn’t a revelation – lots of people know this. Mostly the wrong ones, it seems. W looked into Vlad Putin’s soul and found a good person there but…
Category: Politics
Rudy – Could He Be “The Man”?
The truth is that I don’t know much about Rudy Guilani. He’s known for being mayor of New York City and my world could hardly be more different than his. After all, there’s no comparison between the Big Apple and rural Texas. But today ‘s interview with Larry King showed me something – a man…
Corruption of Elections
In the past I’ve written that the excessive influence of money in the political process is one of the biggest problems we face in America today. Recently Hillary Clinton, no stranger to the raising of money nor to the elections process, announced that she was seeking an “inner circle” of donaters who met the 1…
State of the Union
Reading through the transcript of President Bush’s speech, I was immediately struck by the urgency of the situation in Iraq and how important it is that we give the Iraqi people one more opportunity to secure their country. Although we do not belong there, should never have gone there, and have bungled the situation there,…
New Iraq Strategy
Marc Schulman recently posted a compelling analysis of the “new approach” in which he tenatively supports the change in strategy given that the Iraqi government does its part. For the most part I agree with his position. One statement I don’t agree with completely is this one in reference to the psychological stress of war:…
Minimum Wage Increase? Bad Idea…
…unless you’re a Democrat fulfilling a campaign promise. Look, there’s this little think called the bottom line that most college grads have heard of. It’s the one that says, “Mr. Biz Owner, you can spend $X on labor and still make the type of profit that’s going to keep you in business.” An increase in…
Texas Legislature’s Hands Tied?
Peggy Fikac of the The Houston Chronicle writes that Texas lawmakers are in a quandry during this session because: Before a free hand with spending is a possibility, lawmakers must grapple with a constitutional spending cap. Unless the cap is bypassed (lawmakers can vote to waive it), it limits their ability to spend billions of…
A Speech for the New Year
Senator Gordon Smith (who?) recently gave an excellent speech on the Iraq situation. MuckRaker.com has a transcript here. Many of the posts on this topic focus on the fact that Smith is Republican, that he’s broken ranks with Bush, that Ted Kennedy congratulated him on his speech, and other armchair gamesmanship. The preening, masturbatory nature…
Local Immigration Laws
The ACLU and Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund say: Farmers Branch’s ordinance prohibiting apartment landlords from leasing to illegal immigrants discriminates against Latinos… Yes, it does. So what? Latinos represent the overwhelming majority of illegals; it’s correct that the law should target them. Note that this isn’t because Americans are inherently anti-Mexican or that…
Illegal Immigration = Identity Theft?
Dave Navarrette wonders why La Migra is spinning their daring raid on several chicken plants as “a crackdown on identity theft“. I don’t think this is any mystery: it’s because the other branches of the government and a certain political party that benefits from illegal immigration don’t care about the root crime itself. Immigration is…