He's urging lawmakers to hurry and pass a giant health care "reform" bill, but apparently he hasn't read it. During a conference call with activist bloggers, one referred to Section 102 of the House health legislation and asked, "Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?"

Obama replied, "You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are...]]> Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 As a rock-ribbed conservative, I seldom agree with the socialist president of Venezuela. But it happened last week.

"Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama!" Hugo Chavez declared during one of his customary rants on state TV. He added that if he and Cuba's Fidel Castro weren't "careful," they might "end up to [Obama's] right."

Chavez has nationalized most of his country's economy. That's helped turn the country into a "Repressed" economy in Heritage's annual Index of Economic Freedom. Crime, corruption, inflation and food scarcities prevail in Venezuela, even though the country has taken in hundreds of billions in...]]> Tue, 12 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 While mourning a close friend, it's interesting to hear what others have to say about him. As expected, the recent passing of Jack Kemp generated glowing tributes from commentators both right and left.

Yet some seem set on rewriting history.

Liberal Bob Herbert, for example, began his column in The New York Times by conceding that Kemp's idea to grow the Republican Party was a good one. But, he wrote, "The bad idea, advanced by Kemp with fanatical energy and devotion, was supply-side economics -- 'voodoo economics,' as George H.W. Bush so famously and rightly derided it." Herbert added of those inspired by Kemp, "Cut taxes, they argued, and watch the economy take off like a...]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 And that's exactly what people are thinking, largely because of the government's ham-handed, imprudent and (quite possibly) unconstitutional attempt to retroactively tax perfectly legal bonuses. These bonuses, paid to executives at AIG, were specifically authorized by language in the massive "stimulus" bill passed in February. The bonuses are infuriating, to be sure -- but so are the actions of many lawmakers.

Let's look back at how the whole mess started.

Last fall, members of both parties in Congress and the Bush administration decided to prop up AIG. So far, taxpayers have poured $173 billion into the insurance giant. The federal government owns 80 percent of the...]]> Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 At a March 3 hearing, Sanders asked Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, "Will you tell the American people to whom you lent 2.2 trillion of their dollars?" Seems like a reasonable request. Yet Bernanke's answer was "no."

The Fed chair tried to add that identifying the banks in question could stigmatize them and discourage them from borrowing from the central bank. Sanders cut him off, though, later adding that, "given the size of these commitments, it is incomprehensible that the American people have not received specific details about them."

Amen to the sentiment, if not the impolite way it was offered. Americans deserve to know where their tax dollars are going. This is...]]> Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 As a candidate, Obama vowed that "when there's a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you, the public, will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government's doing."

Well, there were three days between this "emergency" legislation passing Congress and Obama signing it at a political-style rally in Denver. But that doesn't tell the tale of how swiftly the measure was passed.

Lawmakers had only a few hours between when the final bill was presented and when it was voted on -- late on a Friday night, of course. The bill came in at more than 1,000 pages, and lawmakers should have taken Obama's suggested five...]]> Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 That Lincoln is widely embraced today in American culture and society -- on both the left and the right -- reminds us that our 16th president has permanent resonance and meaning in our country, indeed, in the world. But what is that meaning?

In his Lyceum Address of 1838, the young state senator from Illinois wondered what posed the greatest threat to the perpetuation of our liberty. We were in possession of a great land, rich in resources, and living under political institutions conducing "to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us."

At what point is the approach of danger to be expected? "If it ever reach us," Lincoln...]]> Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 True to form, Congress has loaded the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 with hundreds of billions in wasteful spending. The bill includes $650 million for digital TV coupons, $140 million to study the atmosphere and $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts.

None of these proposals would create jobs or boost our economy. They're just old-fashioned waste. And that's a problem. Crying "stimulus," Congress intends to spend money it doesn't have to accomplish things that don't need to be done on a scale never before seen. If signed into law, this leviathan would be the largest single spending bill ever passed, adding at least $819 billion (before interest) to the...]]> Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Every number in India seems staggering. More than 100,000 new engineers, for example, graduate from its educational system every year, and there are 120,000 Indian students studying in the United States.

By 2020, India's total population is expected to exceed China's, making it the world's most populous nation. In the early 1990s it launched critical economic reforms, and subsequent governments have endorsed those reforms, speeding their country into the modern era.

As The Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom" shows each year, more economic freedom (an open economy operating under the rule of law) generates more economic growth. That, in turn, means a higher...]]> Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500 But as lawmakers debate buying up hundreds of billions in assets, they should realize that the government's aggressive meddling in financial decision-making is what got our economy into this mess in the first place. The long-term answer isn't more federal control, it's a return to free-market principles.

One way to do so is to make sure that any bailouts are as limited as possible. If a private firm is so integral to the financial operations of the economy that it requires assistance, so be it. But in that case, the taxpayers' should be investing as little as possible, and company employees and stockholders should suffer the consequences of their bad investments.

Also,...]]> Mon, 26 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500