Carbon-Free Sugar, Science-Free Environmentalism

Feature Article by , September 10, 2012

I was at the grocery store the other day when I noticed that Domino is now advertising its five-pound bags of sugar as “certified carbon-free.” This is the sort of thing that requires photographic evidence, so here it is. It’s been a few years since I’ve been in a chemistry class, but at least I […]

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The “Alternate Universe” Convention

Feature Article by , September 8, 2012

Now that the Democratic convention has wrapped up, I think it’s signature moment came Wednesday afternoon, when Los Angeles Mayor and convention chair Antonio Villaraigosa rose to the podium to seek consent for a measure that would restore a reference to God to the official Democratic platform along with a reference to Jerusalem as the […]

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Notes on the Republican Convention

Commentary by , September 2, 2012

I provided quite a lot of coverage of the Republican convention last week in my RealClearPolitics newsletter, The Daily Debate. See my comments on Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3. I want to draw your attention to a few highlights from that coverage that are particularly important, add a few points that I didn’t […]

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Is This Good Enough?

Feature Article by , August 29, 2012

Editor’s Note: Later today I plan to send out an overview of last night’s speeches at the Republican Convention, but in the meantime, here is a speech I just gave about an hour ago at the Jefferson Area Tea Party’s “Oust Obama” rally in Charlottesville—our way of welcoming President Obama to our town. Incidentally, for […]

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White Guilt

Feature Article by , August 27, 2012

Why the Left Invokes the Politics of Race In recent weeks, the issue of race has been rearing its ugly head in the election, and it hasn’t been by accident. It has been deliberately invoked, more and more frequently and more and more explicitly, by the left. I expect this to get worse as the […]

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The Tea Party Era

Feature Article by , August 25, 2012

The Todd Akin case in Missouri—the Republican Senate candidate who declared that women can’t get pregnant from a “legitimate rape”—is a bit of a sideshow and a distraction, since almost no one in the party is backing him. In fact, for all the blustering outrage against Akin from the left, the most accurate and devastating […]

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Why There Is No Liberal “Atlas Shrugged”

Feature Article by , August 18, 2012

Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate has set off a fresh new set of articles on the influence of Ayn Rand, and it has sent her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, back to the top of the Amazon best-seller lists. Though Ryan has recently abjured Ayn Rand’s philosophy in favor of […]

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High Risk, High Reward

Feature Article by , August 15, 2012

The odd thing about Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate is that the news was received with elation by both sides, by both Republicans and Democrats, by both the right and the left. Both sides see the potential upside for themselves. The right sees a vice-presidential candidate who compensates for the […]

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The Third Rail Referendum

Feature Article by , August 12, 2012

I sat down Friday night to write my own recommendation for who Mitt Romney should choose as his vice-presidential running mate. But it was quite late and I was tired, so I put off the task for the weekend—and thus I was saved from writing the most instantaneously irrelevant column ever. Early Saturday morning, days […]

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The Butcher, the Brewer, the Baker, and the Bureaucrat

Feature Article by , August 7, 2012

Or How a Welfare-State Altruist “Cares” A long, brutal recession is prompting a certain degree of soul-searching and even philosophical debate in this election year. One example is a piece of honest introspection from a left-leaning commentator who stumbles upon an important truth while still showing us the cultural and philosophical blinders of the mainstream […]

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