Damning the Koch Bros.

Did the libertarian businessmen break American laws in Iran?

Democrats’ Dangerous Allies

Why the group that stands to gain from the Wall Street protests is the Tea Party.

Van Jones’ Tea Party Envy

Radical power brokers moving fast to manufacture a movement.

The Left’s Tea Party?

Why the Occupy Wall Street campaign is destined to fail.

The Libyan Muddle

Obama’s confused speech sheds little light on America’s incoherent intervention.

Anna Parashkevova, RIP

One of the great perks of being associated with the Washington D.C.-based Phillips Foundation is meeting young, enterprising journalists setting out to make their mark in the world. Anna Parashkevova (Anna Moya by marriage), was very much in that category. Born in Bulgaria, she immigrated to the United States with her family, went on to [...]

“Iron Man” and the Cultural Contradiction of Liberalism

My former colleague Elizabeth Ames has a sharp and provocative piece up at FoxNews on the Left’s contradictory view of capitalism. She cites the example of the recent “Iron Man” movie sequel, whose hero, Tony Stark, is the kind of high-living capitalist that the big-government Left typically reviles. As Elizabeth puts it, “Tony Stark exemplifies [...]

How Not to Help the Poor

A few years back, New York’s billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg came up with an anti-poverty program that could sound practical only to those accustomed to buying their way out of trouble. Instead of, say, encouraging economic independence and fostering self-sufficiency among New York’s underclass, the administration offered to bribe them. The [...]

Meet the new Palestinians — same as the old Palestinians

The New York Times today reports on a hopeful-sounding development: After years of anti-Israel violence have failed to improve their plight, the Palestinians in the West Bank are trying a new approach. So, what are they doing? Building their economy, reining in corruption, marginalizing extremists, curbing anti-Israel incitement? Not exactly:

Goods produced in Israeli settlements [...]

Gorby the Democrat

Mikhail Gorbachev is a living negation of the axiom that history is written by the winners. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, whose existence he tried desperately to salvage, Gorbachev has improbably recast himself as a heroic democrat who, however imperfectly, brought down the edifice of communist repression and now champions democracy for his [...]