William Murchison from Creators Syndicate

Pain, Suffering and Capital Punishment for 01/08/2008

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Such is the state of modern society that the U.S. Supreme Court gets the job of deciding how much pain the victim of capital punishment feels — never mind what kind of pain the victim's victims may have felt.

Kind of interesting — and very modern: part and parcel of the process by which our institutions attempt to work off guilt for all manner of things done in the past and n ...

Updated: Tue Jan 08, 2008

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Race, Sex and Other Political Irrelevancies for 01/15/2008

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

So, why not a woman for president? Why not a black? Why not a sclerotic, left-handed tin-typist from Fargo, N.D. — so long as the individual in question served our national purposes while displaying the all-too-rare attributes of intelligence, judgment, decisiveness and patriotism?

We were destined to have this conversation once a half-black candidate and a white woman emerged as t ...

Updated: Tue Jan 15, 2008

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What Makes an Economy Run for 01/21/2008

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Politicians tend to get serious when the economy turns suddenly and snarls. Well, semi-serious — which isn't bad for people whose livelihood depends on saying things intended mostly to leave an impression.

Let's hope for the best, therefore (while preparing for a measure of disappointment), as the Washington establishment tackles Recession, as in, How-do-we-prevent-one?

The ...

Updated: Mon Jan 21, 2008

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Could the Republicans Win This One? for 01/29/2008

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The impression takes root and grows. Say! The Democrats could lose this one. Could lose big, in fact.

On which premise no one should stake even his subprime mortgage. But boy, oh, boy, this Clinton-Obama thing, expanded now to compass the Kennedys and their mystique, must strike Republicans as the work of Providence.

Our long, long, long presidential campaign is producing clarific ...

Updated: Tue Jan 29, 2008

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The Right and the "Wrongs" of McCain for 02/05/2008

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

A number of political conservatives have been beating up on John McCain as insufficiently conservative. It's fathomable, but just barely so.

We catch a few fellow Republican senators and some conservative activists saying things like, "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine" (Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi) and "McCain's record is as bad and ...

Updated: Tue Feb 05, 2008

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The Right and the "Wrongs" of McCain for 02/05/2008

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

A number of political conservatives have been beating up on John McCain as insufficiently conservative. It's fathomable, but just barely so.

Trial and Terror for 02/13/2008

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Americans will be learning a lot about themselves as six Islamist terror "suspects" (I guess we have to say, technically) held at Guantanamo Bay finally face trial on murder and war crimes charges connected with 9/11.

A country in which women fall in love with convicted murderers, one largely alienated from the president who brought down Saddam Hussein, may have some surprises ...

Updated: Wed Feb 13, 2008

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Checking Out Obama for 02/20/2008

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Obama Express hurtles through the night, flattening skeptics and, with especial relish, Clintonites. But the Express's present fuel — hope and change and whoop-de-do — is going to run short once the campaign, not against Hillary, but against a generally united Republican Party, commences.

This generally united Republican Party is already raising hard questions about just ...

Updated: Wed Feb 20, 2008

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Portrait in Stained Glass for 02/26/2008

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

God only knows how it came to this. Just 78.4 percent of Americans currently profess affiliation with a Christian body. And a quarter of Americans ages 18-29 disclaim membership in any religion. Meanwhile, 12.1 percent of adults describe their religion as "nothing in particular." All this while Mormons and Muslims outbreed everyone else.

Or so the Pew Forum on Religion & Pu ...

Updated: Tue Feb 26, 2008

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The Government and the Marketplace for 03/04/2008

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0800

We may not know precisely, we Americans, what we want the next president to do about energy prices. What we shouldn't want him — or her — to do is as plain as a gasoline pump primed to deliver at 3-bucks-plus per gallon.

Some might consider getting down on hands and knees for this one: Please, oh, please, don't try regulating us into the kind of "solution" that solv ...

Updated: Tue Mar 04, 2008

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American's Senior Moment for 03/11/2008

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The joke's on the jokesters — the late-night comics punching away at John McCain for the unforgivable offense of having attained his three score and 10. (For kids, that's a reference to a really, really old book called the Bible, and a "score," guys, is 20.)

"Codger jokes," says The New York Times, abound in comic circles: "digs about dementia, pills, prost ...

Updated: Tue Mar 11, 2008

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No Week for Weak Candidates for 03/18/2008

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

There is perhaps one advantage worth noting in having a long, looong presidential campaign: You get to see the candidates react to a variety of circumstances. Though, from Barack Obama's angle, that's not precisely an advantage.

In one week's time, Obama:

1. finds himself deeply embarrassed by his pastor's racial rants and by his own inability to explain how he never heard any of ...

Updated: Tue Mar 18, 2008

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Playing the Race Canard for 03/25/2008

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

It being a free country and all, no one has to have a "conversation" he doesn't want to have, a fact that explains our longstanding non-conversation on race: the one we're going to continue not having, never mind the pundits and Barack Obama.

A conversation has at least two participants. That's one more than most American liberals desire. A liberal, black or white, doesn't by a ...

Updated: Tue Mar 25, 2008

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The Regulation Blues for 04/01/2008

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The emerging theme is regulation, as in, don't we need more of it? Democrats certainly think we do. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan to overhaul the regulatory structure for financial institutions gives Democrats a vested interest in disliking it, or appearing to anyway, on account of its birthplace — the Bush administration.

As everyone who reads blogs or follows the Democr ...

Updated: Tue Apr 01, 2008

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The Sound Bite War for 04/08/2008

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The sound bite presidential campaign of Barack Obama — working to transform itself into the sound bite presidency of Barack Obama — delivers a puzzling judgment on the Iraq war. It is that the war, to quote Obama, has "made the American people less safe."

We heard it again during the rhetorical run-up to Gen. David Petraeus' latest debriefing to Congress concerning ...

Updated: Tue Apr 08, 2008

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The Bad News and the Good for 04/16/2008

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Here comes the Pope, whose disposition for bad news, one may hope, is a strong one, inasmuch as the U.S. media keep dishing out the bad tidings. The media theme is that, whatever else His Holiness may find here, in addition to an endless diet of presidential campaign news, he will find a flock looking askance at him.

"A growing segment of U.S. Catholics," says a Catholic profes ...

Updated: Wed Apr 16, 2008

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Politics and Religion for 04/22/2008

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Over in Pennsylvania, Barack Obama was saying of Hillary Clinton, "She seems to have a habit of saying whatever it is that folks want to hear." And Clinton was saying of Obama, "He has sent out mailers, he has run ads, misrepresenting what I have proposed."

Meanwhile, in New York City, at Yankee Stadium, Pope Benedict XVI was saying things such as, "The Gospel te ...

Updated: Tue Apr 22, 2008

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The Proxy Presidential Campaign for 04/29/2008

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Politics is crazier even than we sometimes think. Half the time, it seems, instead of addressing issues of great solemnity with the attention they deserve — foreign foes, energy supplies, government overspending — we talk endlessly about ... would you believe Jeremiah Wright?

What on earth?

The Barnum & Bailey of the black church as center ring attraction in the pr ...

Updated: Tue Apr 29, 2008

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How Not To Lower Those Pump Prices for 05/06/2008

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Hillary Clinton-John McCain gambit on sky-high gasoline prices — suspend federal gasoline taxes for the summer — is a tactic sensible voters might constructively latch onto. Not because it would end the pain, rather, because the political class seems to have more violent things in mind. Maybe we could appease the great congressional beast by throwing it a little tax recess. I wo ...

Updated: Tue May 06, 2008

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McCain Can Win for 05/13/2008

Tue, 13 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

What was her name again — the woman in the pants suit, running for president? Never mind. The business before the house is getting ready for the most rumbustious race for the presidency since the one we keep hearing about with those interminable rehashes of 1968.

John McCain versus Barack Obama. It's odd, in a sense, that we've come to this. Not since 1940, when the Republicans sen ...

Updated: Tue May 13, 2008

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