If Iraq’s National Museum had not been looted, the conspiracy theorists – the antiwar, anti-Bush commentators and protestors – would have had to invent the story. Instead, they merely invented the story of how it happened.Here are some of the interpretations racing across the Internet from loony to loony. George W. Bush is a cultural […]

A rush toexpandin AuburnAuburn’s Lake Street School is a busy school on a tiny lot in a quiet neighborhood. Students need expanded facilities but neighbors want to preserve their properties. It’s a classic impasse with legitimate pressures and demands on each side.Enter the specter of eminent domain.The very idea that government can take private property […]

Ali is getting help now.Let’s begin there, both because it is good news and because several readers asked me to keep them apprised of his progress after I wrote about him a few days ago.I called him “the ruined boy” – Ali Ismaeel Abbas, a 12-year-old Iraqi who lost much of his family and both […]

The other day, the MSN Web site ran an advice column entitled “Illegal Questions.” Like Kid Gavilan’s bolo punch in slow motion, you could see what was coming.Some questions in job interviews are “illegal,” it reported, although such questions help employers evaluate the practicality of hiring certain candidates.Funny thing is, for all we hear about […]

Use it up,wear it out,make it do We generate more trash than we ever have and we have fewer places to bury it.There were 20,000 landfills in the United States in 1978, but as they have reached capacity they have closed. By 2008, there will be 1,234 landfills still available to accept the nation’s waste.Recycling […]

We all know about Donald Rumsfeld’s tough management style and no-nonsense manner. But one aspect of Rumsfeld’s tenure hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves: his call to scrap the military retirement age of 62, and the related rule under which four-star service chiefs are limited to one four-year term.Why not? If the fit-looking guy running […]

“Why does anyone need assistance to commit suicide? There are plenty of weapons, tall buildings, high bridges, closed garages with motors running, heroin and sleeping pills, to name a few commonly employed methods that have been successful.”Rep. Thomas Shields made this observation in a letter to a young constituent. The obvious question is: Why would […]

Congress:Beholdenand afraidCalling Sen. Olympia Snowe a Franco-Republican is supposed to be derogatory?Not in Franco-rich Maine.The Club for Growth, which works to elect conservative Republicans to Congress, is so miffed that Snowe and two other members of Congress didn’t back the president’s $726 billion tax cut proposal that it launched a television campaign Friday comparing Snowe, […]

If the war is not over, the end at least seems visible. The tyrant’s likenesses are coming down, the people are dancing in the streets and kissing U.S. Marines.And perhaps in this moment, it is in poor taste to remember the ruined boy.Indeed, some might think the mention of him dampens the festive air. But […]

For a number of years, the liberal armies of academia and some of the news media did a good job bottling up conservative ideas by branding them hateful, or divisive, or unworthy of serious discussion. That worked for a while, until the resulting pressure created an explosion of conservative talk radio and a booming industry […]