Capitol Review
It’s natural to sympathize with the parents of Brandon Patch, the 18-year-old baseball pitcher who died after he was hit by a batted ball in 2003.
Sooner or later, sympathy must yield to logic and reason, so when Brandon’s parents sued the bat’s manufacturer, Louisville Slugger, and a jury awarded them $850,000, they contributed to the terribly misguided notion that behind every tragedy lies a lawsuit. (more…)
Kudos to David Harsanyi for his excellent column, “C’mon, admit it. Twitter is useless.”
To this point, I’ve found Twitter so aggressively worthless that I was forced to research exactly what I was missing. In the process, I stumbled across a useful New York Times tech column penned by David Pogue that clarified all. The headline read, “Twitter? It’s What You Make It.”
In summation, like your beloved pet rock, Twitter is useful only in your imagination.
He won’t be accused of this often, but in this case, David is much too kind. (more…)
Walk into a typical third grade classroom, and most students can explain what means to “freeze” something. They can explain that when water freezes it becomes ice and is solid.
“Little Billie” Ritter may have missed those lessons because, as governor, he regularly demonstrates a poor grasp of elementary science. (more…)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVh75ylAUXY&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
In an audacious power grab, the Colorado Supreme Court recently embraced, by a 4-3 decision, a judicial doctrine that would relegate the other two branches of government — and the voters — to a perfunctory role.
The high court’s activist majority used Lobato vs. State not only to intrude on the legislature’s constitutional authority to determine funding for public schools; it also self-servingly suggested that no policy decision is off-limits to judicial review. (more…)
Talk about personal responsibility is cheap. Legislating personal responsibility isn’t. Take the movement to require everyone to purchase government-approved health insurance.
If at first this seems like a reasonable requirement necessary to reduce cost shifting by those who do not pay their own fare, then step back and think again. The damage caused by such a mandate is far greater than the problem it purports to solve. (more…)
Kudos to Rossputin.com for turning up this gem!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXtS2RMBukQ[/youtube]
Say what you will about Bill Clinton’s foreign policy shortcomings, but for the most part he had the good sense not to squander Ronald Reagan’s legacy of peace through strength.
By contrast, Barack Obama’s foreign policy seems to be predicated on a boundless faith in his own persuasive powers and the naïve notion that our international antagonists are merely misunderstood. Not since Jimmy Carter has American foreign policy been so obsequious or short-sighted. (more…)
Our ongoing debate about government’s role in health care is proving worthwhile because it forces people to focus on the real tradeoffs in a system mandated — if not directly operated — by government, rather than one selected by individuals or their employers. Today, our system is a dysfunctional hybrid. (more…)
One of the best policies instituted by the Republican Congress that came to power in the 1994 election was dialing back the Internal Revenue Service’s auditing capacity and giving taxpayers a break for honest mistakes.
However, as James M. Peaslee explained in the Wall Street Journal, the Democrat Congress has inexplicably put a bullseye on taxpayers, even for good-faith mistakes, and taken away the IRS’ ability to waive penalties, making the tax collectors look like nice guys compared to hatchet-wielding Democrats: (more…)