Romanticism and Realism

Feature Article by , December 28, 2012

Top Stories of 2012: #5 This is the time I traditionally offer my overview of the top five stories of the year as covered in my newsletter. I can’t say “as covered in TIA Daily” or “as covered in The Tracinski Letter,” because the first half of the year was covered in one, the second […]

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Higher Education in the Bubble

Note by , December 23, 2012

There is continuing controversy over whether there is a higher-education bubble, but higher ed has definitely been “in the bubble” for a long time, deliberately sealed off from any connection to its underlying economic value. Consider a report on recent attempt by several state governments to gather data on the earnings prospects of graduates from […]

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Welfare Un-Reformed

Note by , December 23, 2012

Here is a measure of the enduring damage that comes from allowing the left to take a dominant role in American politics. An economics blogger for the New York Times describes how welfare programs are moving in opposite directions in the United States and Britain. As recently as 2010, Britain had a complex system of […]

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Liberty and Security

Note by , December 23, 2012

I promised no more posts on the massacre in Connecticut, but the hysteria over it keeps reverberating, and the left—which has foolishly been allowed to wield political power again—is using it in an attempt to revive gun control. So let me offer a brief note about the hysteria. Whenever there is a shocking tragedy like […]

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The Ink Blot

Note by , December 23, 2012

This past week, Judge Robert Bork passed away. He was best known for being rejected by the Senate after being nominated to the Supreme Court by President Reagan in 1987. I remember this well, because I was in college at the time and found myself in an odd position. In the debates around the table […]

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The Spirit of Resistance

Feature Article by , December 21, 2012

In a stunning development, Speaker of the House John Boehner was forced Thursday night to drop his “Plan B,” a bill that would have raised the top marginal rate on people with incomes over $1 million. The theory was that Boehner could undermine President Obama’s position in the fiscal cliff bargaining by caving in to […]

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Terror-ism

Note by , December 18, 2012

After posting the previous note, I came across a quote (by way of Megan McArdle) that makes a similar point to the one I was making. It’s a line of verse from Samuel Johnson: How small, of all that human hearts endure That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! That’s not exactly […]

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There Oughta Be a Law

Note by , December 18, 2012

This and the next note will (hopefully) be my last comments on the Newtown massacre. It’s not a subject any of us is eager to dwell upon, and it is elevated into a weeks-long national obsession only because of the political advantage some people are trying to extract from it. I argued recently for putting […]

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Finding Out What’s In It

Note by , December 17, 2012

In my RealClearPolitics newsletter, I pointed out that one of the big stories of the next year is the actual implementation of Obamacare. This was conveniently delayed until after the election, which served President Obama’s interest in getting re-elected. But now it is going to make his second term a nightmare—for all of us. The […]

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The Intellectual Collapse of Environmentalism

Commentary by , December 16, 2012

The online magazine Slate reports on a “growing reassessment under way in the environmental community.” Reassessment is one way of referring to it. “Intellectual collapse” is more like it. In 2005, two renegade greens tried to kill off environmentalism in broad daylight. The environmental movement, they said in a provocative essay, had grown stale and […]

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