Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? Most people think it is a gift from God, who revealed His laws and elevates us with His love. A smaller number think that we figure the rules out for ourselves, using our capacity to reason and choosing a philosophical system to live by. Moral naturalists, [...]

Three waves of new taxes are coming. And what the hell is the “Economic Substance Doctrine”? Resurrection of the death tax, however, isn’t the only tax problem that will be ushered in Jan. 1. Many other cuts from the Bush administration are set to disappear and a new set of taxes will materialize. And it’s not [...]

Through the highway camera system, it was hoped that an additional burst of revenue would roll in. Instead, it became a massive drain on the state's budget. Not only did it not bring in the hoped-for revenue, it didn't even make enough money to pay for expense of installing and maintaining the cameras. The citizens simply [...]

Let’s go back to our humble friend, the pencil. They’re cheap. They’re everywhere. But nobody knows how to make one. It is mentally and physically impossible. Think that through for a minute. You would have to chop and cut the wood yourself. If you use an axe, you’d have to mine, smelt, and process the iron [...]

So every time a member of the public sells more than $600 worth of gold to a dealer, Piret said, the transaction will have to be reported to the government by the buyer. Pat Heller, who owns Liberty Coin Service in Lansing, Mich., deals with around 1,000 customers every week. Many are individuals looking to protect [...]

This piece by Angelo Codevilla, America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution, is worth reading in its entirety. Codevilla’s thesis is that the class divide in America is not left/right, not Democrat/Republican, but ruling and the ruled (what he calls the “country class”). This is reminiscent of Virginia Postrel’s “The Future and Its [...]

Sigh. Eat healthier, say the Obamas — as the president scarfs pastry and cheeseburgers. Vacation in the Gulf States, they say as they head off to Maine. Drive less and reduce pollution, they say as the 17-car motorcade travels four blocks to a speech. via Dude in 17-vehicle motorcade tells fed workers to drive less | [...]

Yesterday, an event took place here in the United States that got little comment – cue the crickets… WordPress host Blogetery and 73,000 WordPress blogs were shut down, marking the beginning of a modern day 1984 society in the US. A chill rippled through the blogging world and the internet sparking 1st Amendment fears and [...]

The White House is claiming that the so-called stimulus created between 2.5 million and 3.6 million jobs even though total employment has dropped by more than 2.3 million since Obama took office. The Administration justifies this legerdemain by asserting that the economy actually would have lost about 5 million jobs without the new government spending. I’ve [...]

Journalist David Freedman walks us through an impressive list of false and conflicting claims made by experts in a variety of fields that really drives home the dubiousness of much — if not most — of what passes for expert wisdom. The book is worth this carefully assembled and annotated collection of dueling truth claims [...]

I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. "Jeff, you're so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division." That's not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know [...]

“The commission leaders said that, at present, federal revenues are fully consumed by just three programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. ‘The rest of the federal government, including fighting two wars, homeland security, education, art, culture, you name it, veterans — the whole rest of the discretionary budget is being financed by China and other [...]

For those of you who don’t know, “universal constructor” is the name I give to PHP constructors that always and only take a single parameter. The parameter is an array of key-value pairs, which is then merged with a set of default keys and values. Finally, the array is unmarshalled, usually into object properties. One [...]

* Congratulate ourselves on the glory that is America? No, that’s delusional. We inherited America, and are squandering its strengths. * Congratulate the founders on their accomplishments? Nice, but they would prefer that we maintain their work — not wreck it. * Pondering how to get America back on track? Yes. Watching [...]

I saw this movie in the theater when it came out, and I found it a very powerful experience; let’s say my allergies acted up through the whole thing. On my rating scale, I give it the highest marks: “see it twice at full price”. I just watched it again this evening, via Netflix [...]

But what surprised me was the reason that many fans defended rules that make it hard to score goals in soccer. Several commenters said that soccer would be boring if the best team always won, which makes the luck factor a good thing. I agree that it is important for the underdog to have a chance. [...]

I have accepted an offer from Company 52 to be their Vice President of Engineering. Many thanks to everyone who helped get the news out about my job search, to those who provided referrals and leads, and to those with whom I had the pleasure of speaking regarding their open positions, including such luminaries [...]

The Supreme Court held Monday that the Constitution’s Second Amendment restrains government’s ability to significantly limit "the right to keep and bear arms," advancing a recent trend by the John Roberts-led bench to embrace gun rights. … Two years ago, the court declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess guns, at least for [...]

Instapundit » Blog Archive » SENATOR ROBERT BYRD has died. UPDATE: More thoughts from West Virginian Don Surber. Also from E….

It’s getting harder for me to answer a solid “no” to this question. A police-state uses the law as a mechanism to control any challenges to its power by the citizenry, rather than as a mechanism to insure a civil society among the individuals. The state decides the laws, is the sole arbiter of the law, [...]