Archive
The. Very. Best. Valentine. Ever.
This year I came up with the best Valentine's Day gift ever for my wife and daughter. It's inexpensive and, unlike a bouquet of flowers, should last beyond their lifetimes. They'll love it! I can't think of a better way to express how much I love them. Rather than...
Zero Dark Thirty’s Losing Premise
Zero Dark Thirty is a movie the CIA wants you to see. It tells a tale of the search for Osama bin Laden wherein the key lead comes from a man softened up by waterboarding, sleep deprivation, confinement in a coffin-like box and other forms of pain and humiliation. It...
Stronger At Home, More Respected Abroad
Americans agree it's time to strengthen our nation at home and abroad — but how can we make it happen? We can start by making wise choices in the federal budget and with our efforts to cope with our nation's debt ceiling problem. We can make smart military strategies,...
Banning Assault Weapons Makes More Sense than Arming Teachers
They've been holding hearings on gun control up on Capitol Hill in Washington. It's always an inspiring spectacle. There are few things as bracing as watching terrified lawmakers duck behind the Second Amendment while they justify their lack of significant response to...
The Ever-So-Brief Success of the Income Tax
The modern federal income tax turns 100 this year, and historians are already holding special events to commemorate the anniversary. But if we really want to understand just what the federal income tax has accomplished — and failed to accomplish — over the last 100...
A Better Way to Say I Love You
"Why do American companies sell pesticides that are banned in the U.S. to my country?" my Colombian friend Luz asked me. I had no good answer. Yet, this question lies at the core of the bouquet of roses you might give or receive this Valentine's Day. Nearly all roses...
High Time for Hemp
Four years ago, Michelle Obama picked up a shovel to make a powerful symbolic statement about America's food and farm future: She turned a patch of White House lawn into a working organic garden. I'm guessing that now, as she begins another four years in the people's...
Free Trade Economics 101
The Road Back to Serfdom
Here I am In working prime, But all the jobs Are just part-time. The ancestors of many Americans came here to escape mingy monarchs, oppressive priests, and baleful barons who controlled all aspects of communal life back in their countries. They bravely left...
This Week in OtherWords: January 30, 2013
This week in OtherWords, we're mixing food and politics. Wenonah Hauter skewers the government's lackadaisical regulation of genetically engineered salmon, Jill Richardson calls for a fresh outlook on the relationship between weight and health, Jim Harkness asks...
