To see it, you need to ascend to the second floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and wend your way to the northernmost corner. Here is the American art gallery. Slip through the long hall of bottles and vases, and past the earthy and sometimes gritty works of the Ashcan school. Stop in…
Wouldn't it be nice if voters punished politicians who increase budget deficits? Well, according to one research paper, they do.
Regulatory reform appears to be gaining traction in Washington, D.C. The White House directed agencies to halt the issuance of new regulations. Congress also got in the act. In its first week in session, the House of Representatives passed three bills to reduce the proliferation and costs of…
The men who drafted the Constitution rightly earned our eternal praise. In 1787, they met in Philadelphia, where they pondered, debated, and haggled for four months. James Madison, George Washington, and the rest scrapped the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with a new governing document.
The men who drafted the Constitution rightly earned our eternal praise. In 1787, they met in Philadelphia, where they pondered, debated, and haggled for four months. James Madison, George Washington, and the rest scrapped the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with a new governing document.
To a degree, the British government’s recent freak-out over alcohol is understandable. The nation's tabloids regularly carry stories featuring individuals getting falling-down drunk and doing stupid things. "Drunk chef, 23, who used an aerosol deodorant can and lighter as a makeshift flamethrower…
Congress spent $310 billion last year on some 250 agencies and programs that were no longer — as required under the law and Congress's own rules — authorized to receive and spend funds. This problem of "expired authorizations" has grown with the ever-expanding size of government; and it contributes…
Since arriving in the U.S. Senate in 2011, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has made many of his colleagues crazy. Unwilling to go along to get along, Lee has called out publicly our nation's legislature for its profligacy and habit of showing up for work barely half the year. Six months into his time in…
In his final State of the Union, President Obama declared his belief that "a thriving private sector is the lifeblood of our economy," which he paired with the assertion that "there are outdated regulations that need to be changed and there’s red tape that needs to be cut."
The Environmental Protection Agency misused tax dollars in the service of public propaganda, according to a legal opinion just handed down by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The misdeeds came during the agency's public-relations blitz to drum up support for its new Waters of the United…
A little over a century ago, Rep. Frederick Gillett (R-Mass.) read something in the New York Times that vexed him. The Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Roads advertised that it was seeking to hire a publicity expert. Gillett could not understand why a government agency needed someone to…
From 1911 through 1967, the old U.S. Post Office offered savings accounts. The enterprise started because private banks seldom insured deposits. The establishment of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 1933 removed the raison d’être for postal banking. By the time Congress ended it,…
Some credulous Beltway media sure took the bait last week. Consider:
I had my first reckoning with big government in a small town in New Jersey. The incident remains startlingly fresh in my mind, although it was years ago. A traffic island on a main road, perhaps 20 feet in length, was being demolished. Perched above the brightly vested construction workers was a…
Congress returns from its two week break on Monday. If it has any respect for itself, it will promptly schedule a vote on President Obama’s most recent veto.
The third time will apparently be the charm for the Federal Communications Commission’s “net neutrality” regulations. Having been shot down twice by the courts in earlier attempts to regulate broadband, members of the commission—enterprising bureaucrats that they are—found new legal authority for…
Today, America bids farewell to the Magna Carta. The 800-year old document returns home to Lincolnshire, England, after six months in America. It landed at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in July, and spent the past few months at the Library of Congress.
The American public often rails about bureaucracy. It is not difficult to fathom why. Who amongst us has not fumed while standing in a long line at an understaffed post office? And how many of us have thrown up our hands in frustration at the complexity of income tax instructions and outsourced the…
Yesterday’s presentation by the U.S. Treasury was a comical spectacle—at least for those of us with sardonic senses of humor. The good news? The deficit for FY2014 (which ended September 30) was 29 percent lower than the deficit was in FY2013. Increased corporate tax receipts drove much of the…
Reports have surfaced of a professor with a mania for self-examination. His line of inquiry, however, is not of the Socratic philosophical sort. An expert in computer science, he is collecting data on his bodily functions. To improve his diet (and reduce his weight) he tracks what he eats down to…
The past few years have brought a steady stream of awful news about America’s finances.
Are you feeling impulsive? Well, if you are in the District of Columbia there is nothing to fear—the government is doing all it can to protect you from yourself. D.C.’s health department has issued draft regulations that would require anyone seeking a tattoo to wait 24 hours to be inked. A…
The Battle of Bretton Woods sets forth in smooth prose and concise detail an authoritative narrative of the who-what-when-why of the great monetary conference of some 70 years ago. It is jam-packed with heady discussions of balance of payments, exchange rates, supranational currency, monetary…
In retrospect, it was only a matter of time. Forced from power, the once almighty leader had been removed from his palace and imprisoned in a former merchant’s home. There he and his family were stripped of many of their luxuries and subjected to insults of his captors. Revolutionaries seldom are…
The George Washington Temperance Society was started in a Baltimore bar in 1840. Its six founders—William K. Mitchell, John F. Hoss, David Anderson, George Steers, Archibald Campbell, and James McCurley—were not raging evangelicals; nor were they dissolute gutter-loungers. They were middle-aged men…
James Anderson finally is getting his due. In 1796, George Washington hired the Scotsman as a plantation manager. Anderson quickly convinced the outgoing president to build a distillery. By 1798, the five still facility was gurgling forth 10,000 gallons of whiskey and other distilled spirits, which…
Two Christmases ago I received Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life. I felt both delight and angst. I find our first president endlessly fascinating, and I have enjoyed previous Chernow books. But it is more than 900 pages long; when would I have the time to read it? It sits on a shelf above my desk…
My before-dinner drink almost inevitably is a martini or a whiskey on ice. Despite running an online booze review site for over a decade and tasting nearly every alcoholic beverage known to man (and liking many of them), I reflexively return to these stand-bys.
Boozehound
Ellen and Edith
Bourbon
King of the Lobby
The Ideological Origins of American Federalism by Alison L. LaCroix, Harvard, 320pp., $35
Eloquence and Reason
Under God
The Making of a Tropical Disease
Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons
Breathing Space
Prophet of Innovation