The ouster had been ordered by the Supreme Court and approved by the Congress, as Zelaya was attempting an illegal referendum to change the Honduran constitution so he could run for another term.

Will someone please explain why this bloodless transfer of power to the civilian legislator first in line for the presidency, in a sovereign nation, is any business of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, Hugo Chavez, the Castro brothers or Barack Obama? For all have denounced the "coup" and demanded Zelaya's immediate...]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 "You have no notion of the intrigue that goes on in this blessed world of science," wrote Thomas Huxley. "Science is, I fear, no purer than any other region of human activity; though it should be."

As "Darwin's bulldog," Huxley would himself engage in intrigue, deceit and intellectual property theft to make his master's theory gospel truth in Great Britain.

He is quoted above for two reasons.

First is House passage of a "cap-and-trade" climate-change bill. Depending on which scientists you believe, the dire consequences of global warming are inconvenient truths -- or a fearmongering scheme to siphon off the wealth of individuals and empower bureaucrats.

The...]]> Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 PALM SPRINGS, Calif. -- In just a few weeks time, California hits the wall.

And Americans should take a good, long look at the fiscal and social wreck of the Golden Land, because California is at a place to which all of America is heading.

In May, when five fund-raising proposals were put on the ballot, Gov. Schwarzenegger pleaded with the overtaxed Californians not to make their state "the poster child for dysfunction."

As The Economist writes, "On May 18th, they did exactly that."

Arnold went to the White House for U.S. loan guarantees for new state bonds. But with the president's approval rating wilting because of a belief he is spending too much, the...]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Given its monopoly of guns, bet on the Iranian regime. But, in the long run, the ayatollahs have to see the handwriting on the wall.

Let us assume what they insist upon -- that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the June 12 election; that, even if fraud occurred, it did not decide the outcome. As Ayatollah Khamenei said to loud laughter in his Friday sermon declaring the election valid, "Perhaps 100,000, or 500,000, but how can anyone tamper with 11 million votes?"

Still, the ayatollah and Ahmadinejad must hear the roar of the rapids ahead. Millions of Iranians, perhaps a majority of the professional class and educated young, who shouted, "Death to the Dictatorship," oppose or detest...]]> Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 On Dec. 14, 1825, following the death of Alexander I -- who had seen off Napoleon -- his brother, the grand duke, who had just taken the oath as Czar Nicholas I, was confronted by mutinous troops and rebels in Senate Square before the Winter Palace.

For hours, the czar stood at the end of the square as the crowd shouted for a constitution or for Nicholas' brother Constantine to take the throne. Shots were exchanged.

As darkness fell, a czarist general rode up to Nicholas and said, "Sire, clean the square with gunfire -- or abdicate."

The cannons belched -- and Nicholas reigned for 30 years.

Most autocratic regimes face such moments.

After Joseph...]]> Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The Obama policy of extending an open hand to Iran is working and ought not be abandoned because of the grim events in Tehran.

For the Iranian theocracy has just administered a body blow to its legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian people and the world.

Before Saturday, the regime could credibly posture as defender of the nation, defiant in the face of the threats from Israel, faithful to the cause of the Palestinians, standing firm for Iran's right to enrich uranium for peaceful nuclear power.

Today, the regime, including the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is under a cloud of suspicion that they are but another gang of corrupt politicians who brazenly stole...]]> Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Having lost the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008, Republicans are looking to redefine themselves for a nation that still leans conservative but is less Republican that it has been in decades.

The nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court presents just such an opportunity. For, even if the party loses the battle and Sotomayor sits on the court, it can win the war, as Ronald Reagan won the Panama Canal debate, even as Senate Republicans committed collective suicide by voting to give away the canal.

What are the grounds for rejecting Sonia Sotomayor?

No one has brought forth the slightest evidence she has the intellectual candlepower to...]]> Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Despite his boldness, Barack Obama seems as fated to fail as were Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter. And for the same reason: a belief in his own righteousness and moral superiority, and a belief that his ideals and his persona count mightily in the modern world.

Wilson declaimed about America's fight to "make the world safe for democracy" when in harness with the British, French, Russian, Japanese and Italian empires, all slavering to feast on the carcasses of the Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Ottoman empires.

By 1920, Wilson was a tragic failure, mocked by ex-allies and reviled by former enemies for having dishonored his own 14 Points.

Jimmy Carter declared in 1977 that...]]> Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 "I have to admire the residents of Iroquois territory for assuming that they have a right to determine where Jews lives in Jerusalem."

Thus did Israeli government press director Daniel Seamen caustically dismiss President Obama's opposition to Israel's right to "natural growth" of its settlements in Arab East Jerusalem and on the West Bank.

Though Obama's address in Cairo broke no new ground, it confirmed to the world that a new day has arrived and a sea change has taken place. The Israel-centric Middle East policy of George W. Bush is dead. And with the policy change has come rhetorical change.

With Bush, it was "axis of evil," "you are with us or you are with the...]]> Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 If the U.S. Senate rejects race-based justice, Sonia Sotomayor will never sit on the Supreme Court.

Because that is what Sonia is all about. As The New York Times reported Saturday, the salient cause of her career has been advancing persons of color, over whites, based on race and national origin.

"Judge Sotomayor, whose parents moved to New York from Puerto Rico," writes reporter David Kirkpatrick, "has championed the importance of considering race and ethnicity in admissions, hiring and even judicial selection at almost every stage of her career."

At Princeton, she headed up Accion Puertorriquena, which filed a complaint with the Department of Health, Education and...]]> Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 When you think about it, Sonia Sotomayor is the perfect pick for the Supreme Court -- in Barack Obama's America.

Like Obama, himself a beneficiary of affirmative action, she thinks "Latina women," because of their life experience, make better judicial decisions than white men, that discrimination against white men to advance people of color is what America is all about, that appellate courts are "where policy is made" in the United States.

To those who believe the depiction of our first Hispanic justice as an anti-white liberal judicial activist, hearken to her own words.

Speaking at Berkeley in 2001, Sonia told her audience, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman...]]> Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Dick Cheney is giving the Republican Party a demonstration of how to fight a popular president. Stake out defensible high ground, do not surrender an inch, then go onto the attack.

The ground on which Cheney has chosen to stand is the most defensible the Republicans have: homeland security. In seven-and-a-half years after 9-11, not one terrorist attack struck our country.

And, unlike Obama's position, Cheney's is 100 percent reality based. He was there. He lived through this. He made the decisions to use the harsher techniques on the worst of the enemy who could yield the greatest
intelligence to save American lives.

"The interrogations were used on hardened...]]> Fri, 22 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 On Sept. 20, 2002, as the War Party was beating the drum for preventive war on Iraq, lest we wake up to "a mushroom cloud over an American city," The Wall Street Journal introduced an eminent voice to confirm that, yes, Saddam was driving straight for an atomic bomb.

"This is a dictator who is ... feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons," wrote Bibi Netanyahu, former prime minister of Israel.

"Saddam's nuclear program has changed. He no longer needs one large reactor to produce the deadly material necessary for atomic bombs. He can produce it in centrifuges the size of washing machines that can be hidden throughout the country -- and Iraq is a very big country. Even...]]> Tue, 19 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 If there are no peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians for an independent Palestinian state, war next year is inevitable.

So King Abdullah II of Jordan has told the London Times: "If we delay our peace negotiations, then there is going to be another conflict between Arabs or Muslims and Israel in the next 12 to 18 months."

Whether the king's timetable is correct, endless cold war, erupting into hot wars, seems the fate of Israel if "Bibi" Netanyahu holds to his pledge never to allow a Palestinian state on the West Bank.

For, as John Mearsheimer, author of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," writes in the May 18 American Conservative, if there is no...]]> Sun, 17 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 By reversing himself and refusing to release graphic photos of abused prisoners of war, Barack Obama has stunned liberals.

They feel betrayed and abandoned by a president they put into office. On war and torture, at least, they thought Barack was one of them. He is not. Barack is not into ideology. He is into Barack.

As he showed in 2008, when he threw his white grandmother under the bus and spared his beloved black pastor, the Rev. Wright, then threw Wright under the bus when his toxicity level rose too high, Barack has all the sentimentality of Michael Corleone when it comes to the family business.

And what Obama is saying with his refusal to release the photos is...]]> Tue, 12 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 As was evident at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, it is deja vu, 1961, all over again. We have a young, cool, witty, personable president -- and an adoring press corps.

"I am Barack Obama," the president introduced himself. "Most of you covered me. All of you voted for me. (Laughter and applause.) Apologies to the Fox table. (Laughter.)"

What is also evident is that, without its new superstar in the lineup, the Democratic Party is a second-division ball club. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are not terribly formidable. Last fall, the Congress they ran had an approval rating below Vice President Cheney.

Why then is the Republican Party agonizing publicly over what...]]> Fri, 08 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Having lost both houses of Congress and the White House in two straight elections, Republicans are going through an identity crisis, its leaders holding town hall meetings to "listen" to the people.

"What should we focus on? Should we drop the social issues? How do we get the young people back?"

Such angst and soul-searching is not the mark of the leader, but the mark of a man suffering from doubt and despair.

Why is the party in trouble? Simple. Dubya got a hold of the keys, got high on neocon hooch, and crashed and rolled the family SUV.

He launched an unnecessary war against a country that had not attacked us. With his utopian No Child Left Behind scheme...]]> Tue, 05 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 For conservatives fretful over the future of the party to which they have given allegiance, "How Barack Obama Won: A State by State Guide to the Historic 2008 Election" reads like something out of Edgar Allan Poe.

Co-authored by NBC's Chuck Todd, it is a grim tale of what happened to the GOP in 2008, and what the future may hold.

Yet, on second and third reads, one discerns, as did Gen. Wolfe's scouts 250 years ago, a narrow path leading up the cliff to the Plains of Abraham -- and perhaps victory in 2012. First, the bad news:

Obama raised the national share of the black vote to 13 percent, then swept it 95 percent to 4 percent. The GOP share of the Hispanic vote,...]]> Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Because of the peril of swine flu, Joe Biden said yesterday, he would urge his family to stay out of "confined places" like airplanes and subways here in the United States.

Yet, the Obama administration will not consider closing the United States to airplanes and buses coming in from the epicenter of the epidemic, Mexico City.

Does this contradiction make sense?

America, at this writing, has recorded fewer than 100 cases of the swine flu. One victim has died, a 2-year-old Mexican boy. He was flown out of Mexico City to Matamoros, crossed over with his parents into Texas, was taken to a hospital in Brownsville, terribly sick, then transferred to a Houston hospital....]]> Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 After opening the door to a truth commission to investigate torture by the CIA of al-Qaida subjects, and leaving the door open to prosecution of higher-ups, President Obama walked the cat back.

He is now opposed to a truth commission. That means it is dead. He is no longer interested in prosecutions. That means no independent counsel -- for now.

Sen. Harry Reid does not want any new "commissions, boards, tribunals, until we find out what the facts are." Thus, there will be none. The place to find out the facts, says the majority leader, is the intelligence committee of Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Though belated, White House recognition that high-profile public hearings on...]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Does Barack Obama understand the people he leads? Do his aides?

These may seem cheeky questions to ask of a team that just won the presidency. But there is something in their cool, insouciant, blase demeanor, in the face of insults to their country, that suggests there yet exists a chasm -- between them and us.

Now, the change since the 1960s in the character of the nation has been great. The moral and social sappers spawned by that decade have done their work well. But Middle America yet remains a blood-and-soil, family-and-faith, God-and-country kind of nation.

We are not Europe -- yet.

Most Americans remain visceral patriots. It's in the DNA.

What...]]> Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 For 50 minutes, Obama sat mute, as a Marxist thug from Nicaragua delivered his diatribe, charging America with a century of terrorist aggression in Central America.

After Daniel Ortega finished spitting in our face, accusing us of inhumanity toward Fidel Castro's Cuba, Obama was asked his thoughts.

"I thought it was 50 minutes long. That's what I thought."

Hillary Clinton was asked to comment: "I thought the cultural performance was fascinating," she cooed.

Pressed again on Ortega's vitriol, Hillary replied: "To have those first-class Caribbean entertainers all on one stage and to see how much was done in such a small amount of space. I was...]]> Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 At the request of the White House, Georgetown University covered up all the symbols in Gaston Hall, before the Great Man spoke, including IHS, the millennia-old monogram for the name of Jesus Christ.

Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, had adopted the monogram in his seal and it became an emblem of the Jesuit order.

When it comes to rendering unto Caesar, Georgetown is not going to be outshone by Notre Dame, which stole a march by offering the nation's avatar of abortion a doctorate of laws degree, honoris causa.

Actually, it is regrettable the IHS in Gaston Hall was not covered up in shame the first week of Lent. For that week Georgetown's feminist...]]> Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 On Good Friday, John Demjanjuk, 89 and gravely ill, was ordered deported to Germany to stand trial as an accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jews -- at Sobibor camp in Poland.

             Sound familiar? It should. It is a re-enactment of the 1986 extradition of John Demjanjuk to Israel to be tried for the murder of 870,000 Jews...]]> Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 During what the Times called a "fractious meeting," NATO agreed to send 3,000 troops to provide security during the elections and 2,000 to train Afghan police. Thin gruel beside Obama's commitment to double U.S. troop levels to 68,000.

Why won't Europe fight?

Because Europe sees no threat from Afghanistan and no vital interest in a faraway country where NATO Europeans have not fought since the British Empire folded its tent long ago.

Al-Qaida did not attack Europe out of Afghanistan. America was attacked. Because, said Osama bin Laden in his "declaration of war," America was occupying the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia,...]]> Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Let us go back to Munich.

On Sept. 30, 1938, at Munich, Chamberlain signed away the Sudetenland rather than fight to keep 3.5 million Germans under a Czech rule imposed upon them at the Paris peace conference in violation of Wilson's principle of self-determination.

Why did Britain not fight?

Because Britain had no alliance with Prague and Chamberlain did not "give two hoots" who ruled the Sudetenland. Also, Britain had no draft, no divisions to send to France, no Spitfires, no support from America or her dominions, no ally save France, who had been told that, if war came, the United States would not deliver the planes France had...]]> Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The Federal Reserve.

"(T)he very people who devised the policies that produced the mess are now posing as the wise public servants who will show us the way out," writes Thomas Woods in "Meltdown."

Already in its sixth week on the New York Times best-seller list, this eminently readable book traces the Fed's role in every financial crisis since this creature was spawned on Jekyl Island in 1913.

The "forgotten depression" of 1920-21 was caused by a huge increase in the money supply for President Wilson's war. When the Fed started to tighten at war's end, production fell 20 percent from mid-1920 to mid-1921, far more than...]]> Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 To Catholics, abortion is the killing of an unborn child, a premeditated breach of God's Commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill." The case is closed for all time. Any who participate in an abortion are excommunicated. Catholic politicians from Nancy Pelosi to Joe Biden who support a "woman's right to choose" have been denounced from pulpits and denied Communion.

Obama, however, is the most pro-abortion president ever. On his third day in office, by executive order, he repealed the Bush prohibition against using tax dollars to fund agencies abroad that perform abortions.

He supports partial-birth abortion, where a baby's soft skull is sliced...]]> Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 "Relics of another era" -- thus did Stephen Meyer, in Parameters in 2003, begin his essay "Carcass of Dead Policies: The Irrelevance of NATO."

NATO has been irrelevant for two decades, since its raison d'etre -- to keep the Red Army from driving to the Rhine -- disappeared. Yet Obama is headed to Brussels to celebrate France's return and the 60th birthday of the alliance. But why is NATO still soldiering on?

In 1989, the Wall fell. Germany was reunited. The Captive Nations cast off communism. The Red Army went home. The USSR broke apart into 15 nations. But, having triumphed in the Cold War, it seems the United States could not bear...]]> Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 "For every $100 in paper money, in deposits, in cash, in currency, in existence in 1929, by the time you got to 1933 there was only about $65, $66 left. And that extraordinary collapse in the banking system, with about a third of the banks failing ... with millions of people having their savings essentially washed out, that decline was utterly unnecessary.

"(T)he Federal Reserve had the power and the knowledge to have stopped that. And there were people at the time who were ... urging them to do that. So it was ... clearly a mistake of policy that led to the Great Depression."

Is Bernanke fighting the war of 1929 in 2009? Surely, today,...]]> Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 It all began with the corruption called sub-prime mortgages.

The motivation was not wicked. Democrats wanted to raise home ownership among African-Americans from 50 percent to the 75 percent of white folks. Rove Republicans wanted to do the same for Hispanics.

Banks were morally pressured by politicians into making home loans to folks who could not remotely qualify under standards set by decades of experience with mortgage defaults.

Made by the millions, these loans were sold in vast quantities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. There they were packaged, converted into mortgage-backed securities and sold to the big banks....]]> Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Educated at Yale and Harvard Law, Freeman has served his country in Delhi, Taipei, Bangkok and Beijing. He was Ronald Reagan's deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa and Bill Clinton's assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. George Bush I named him ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Freeman was our man in Riyadh when Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf and 500,000 U.S. troops arrived to evict the army of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

In 1997, Freeman succeeded George McGovern as president of the Middle East Policy Council -- and he began to speak out.

He opposed the bombing of Serbia and said aloud what few privately deny:...]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Is this a slur on the patriotism of some of our congressmen? You betcha.

What other conclusion can one reach after Congress refused to require that employers on construction projects, paid for by U.S. tax dollars in the stimulus bill, verify that their workers are Americans?

For that is precisely what Congress did.

The first paragraph of the front-page story in USA Today says it all. "Los Angeles -- Tens of thousands of jobs created by the economic stimulus law could end up filled by illegal immigrants, particularly in big states like California where undocumented workers are heavily represented in construction, experts on both...]]> Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Democratic registration was twice that of the GOP. The liberal press was gleefully writing the obituary of "The Party That Lost Its Head."

Decades might pass, it was said, before the GOP recovered from its fatal embrace of right-wing radicalism and foolish rejection of the leadership of Govs. Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton.

Wrote Robert Donovan in the opening lines of his book, "The Future of the Republican Party":

"The devastating defeat of Barry Goldwater at the hands of voters in all sections of the country but the Deep South has damaged, weakened and tarnished the party. For years to come ... the two-party...]]> Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Prediction: After all U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Korea have come home, there will be a U.S. army on the Mexican border. For this is where the fate of our republic will be decided, as the fate of Europe will be decided by the millions streaming north from the Maghreb and Middle East, sub-Sahara and South Asia.

Last year, 6,000 Mexicans died in drug-related killings in a war where the tactics are massacre, murder, kidnapping and beheading.

President Felipe Calderon has ordered another 5,000 troops and 1,000 police to the border. Primary target: Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso.

Some 2,500 federal troops are...]]> Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Barack has no mandate for this. He was even behind McCain when the decisive event that gave him the presidency occurred -- the September collapse of Lehman Brothers and the market crash.

Republicans are under no obligation to render bipartisan support to this statist coup d'etat. For what is going down is a leftist power grab that is anathema to their principles and philosophy.

Where the U.S. government usually consumes 21 percent of gross domestic product, this Obama budget spends 28 percent in 2009 and runs a deficit of $1.75 trillion, or 12.7 percent of GDP. That is four times the largest deficit of George W. Bush and twice as large a...]]> Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 On being chosen by Israel's President Shimon Peres to form the new regime, Likud's "Bibi" Netanyahu declared, "Iran is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon and constitutes the gravest threat to our existence since the war of independence."

Echoing Netanyahu, headlines last week screamed of a startling new nuclear breakthrough by the mullahs. "Iran ready to build nuclear weapon, analysts say," said CNN. "Iran has enough uranium to make a bomb," said the Los Angeles Times. Armageddon appeared imminent.

Asked about Iran's nukes in his confirmation testimony, CIA Director Leon Panetta blurted, "From all the information I've seen, I think...]]> Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 One point Holder did allude to, without specifics, was this:

"It is not safe for this nation to assume that the unaddressed social problems in the poorest parts of the country can be isolated and will not ultimately affect the larger society."

Fair point. And what are some of those social problems?

A 70 percent illegitimacy rate in black America, an incarceration and crime rate seven times that of white America, a 50 percent dropout rate in many urban high schools, African-American graduates reading and computing on average at eighth-grade levels.

And about these problems what is the black leadership...]]> Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 "(O)nce war is forced upon us," said MacArthur, "there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.

"In war, there is no substitute for victory."

But if victory over the Taliban has been ruled out by the United States, have the Taliban ruled out a victory over the American Empire to rival the one their fathers won over the Soviet Empire?

What price are we prepared to pay, in "prolonged indecision," to avert such an end to a war now in its eighth year?

America had best brace herself for difficult days...]]> Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Final returns are now in on the eight years of George Bush. Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services has crunched the numbers. And, pace Kudlow, the only relevant comparison is to Herbert Hoover.

From January 2008, right after Kudlow's column ran, through January 2009, the U.S. economy lost 3.5 million jobs. The private sector loss of 3.65 million jobs was slightly offset by 148,000 jobs created by federal, state and local governments. Say what you will, the Bush years were boom times for Big Government.

And the private sector? Beginning and ending in recession, the Bush presidency added a net of 407,000 private sector jobs over...]]> Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Earlier, there was talk of 30,000, bringing the U.S. total to 63,000. Now, there are reports Obama may commit no more than the three brigades promised in 2008, and only one brigade now.

Clearly, the United States is checking its hole card. Can we draw to a winning hand? Or is this hand an inevitable loser -- and we must cut our losses and cede the pot? No longer, anywhere, is there talk of "victory."

Nor is the diplomatic news good.

Last week, Kyrgyzstan gave us six months to vacate Manas, the air base used to resupply U.S. forces. A week before, guerrillas blew up a bridge in the Khyber, cutting the 1,000-mile supply...]]> Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 As Brown pleaded from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that Britain must not retreat into "protectionism," strikes spread to Scotland, Wales and Ulster.

Britain's commitment to let foreigners buy up its utilities and industries and bring in foreign workers to run them has backfired. Brown's own Labor Party is now angrily demanding that he live up to his pledge: British jobs for British workers.

"The Return of Economic Nationalism," wails the alarmed cover of The Economist. And understandably so.

For the stimulus bills of both Houses have a "Buy American" provision mandating that in "public works" only U.S....]]> Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 In Mexico, according to Forbes, "the media and the masses long have held a sneaking suspicion that there is something shady about Slim. He is described as a rapacious monopolist who built his empire on cozy ties to Mexican presidents ... ."

For this column, however, the issue is not how Carlos bought up the Mexican telephone monopoly, but whether this Big Enchilada has bought up Andrew Rosenthal's editorial page.

For, two weeks after Carlos' bailout cash arrived, Rosenthal's page launched a hysterical attack on the patriots' movement that seeks to halt the invasion of the United States from Mexico.

Targets: my sister Bay;...]]> Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 While the debate is endless over whether the New Deal ended the Depression or caused it to endure until World War II spending pulled us out of the ditch, few deny that FDR left a monumental legacy.

We see it in the great dams of the West and TVA in the South, in the REA that first brought electricity to America's farms, in deposit insurance, unemployment benefits and Social Security.

Lyndon Johnson seized on the trauma of JFK's assassination and racial incidents such as Selma Bridge to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Ronald Reagan seized on the humiliation of the Iranian hostage...]]> Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Are we deluding ourselves? Worldwide, the mightiest force of the 20th century, ethnonationalism -- that creator and destroyer of nations and empires; that enduring drive of peoples for a nation-state where their faith and culture is dominant and their race or tribe is supreme -- seems more manifest than ever.

"Vote Reflects Racial Divide" ran the banner in The Washington Times over Tuesday's story datelined, "Santa Cruz, Bolivia." It began:

"The Bolivian vote to approve a new constitution backed by leftist President Evo Morales reflected racial divisions between the nation's Indian majority and those with European ancestry."

...]]>