Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Thomas Sowell: Syndicated columnist The recent conviction of Martha Stewart for lying to federal investigators looking into “insider trading” is one of the sad signs of our times. If you create enough laws, everyone will be a criminal. Perjury should of course be a crime, even when it is committed by a President of the United States. But insider trading is something else. The big objection to insider trading is that it is not fair that one side in a stock trade has knowledge the other side does not. Some have analogized it to...
From time to time some kind readers suggest I run for public office, even for president. No need for those on the left to panic. It is not going to happen. Such suggestions, however, cause me to imagine what my platform would be if I were in politics. Since politicians like to have campaign slogans, instead of “Bring it on!” my slogan might be “Get rid of it!” to describe all the laws, policies, and government agencies that I would abolish. A more positive slogan would be “conservative radicalism.” That is, my policies wo... Full story
The president of Brown University has appointed a committee to look into the history of the connections of that institution to the slave trade. This is to be no academic exercise of scholarly research. There is obviously supposed to be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons was coy on the one hand but clear on the other. According to the New York Times, “Dr. Simmons said she would not reveal her opinion on reparations so as not to influence the committee.” “Here’s the one thing I...
Every political campaign seems to have some buzzword, and this year’s buzzword is “outsourcing.” Since the economic recovery has not yet reached the stage when new jobs are being created to the extent expected and hoped, the idea that American jobs are being sent overseas has political mileage, whether or not it has much economic substance. A recent poll of economists by the Wall Street Journal found that only 16 percent of them saw outsourcing as having a significant impact on the overall job picture. More important, the p...
The problem with the “gay marriage” issue is that the more fundamental issue is not gay marriage. The real issue is who should decide such issues — that is, what kind of country and what kind of government do we have or want to have? What does democracy mean if any headstrong minority can violate the laws passed by a majority and enshrined in centuries of legal precedents? Some headstrong minorities have taken to the streets and some have violated the rule of law in the very courts of law, while wearing their judicial robes...
Those of us who believe in the brotherhood of man have to be able to accept the negative, as well as the positive, aspects of that belief. For example, a stupid and counterproductive idea that catches the fancy of one part of the human race in one part of the world in one era is likely to have a fatal attraction to other people in other places and times. One such dangerous notion is the idea of being able to undo the wrongs of history. History is so full of wrongs there are almost unlimited ways to go wrong trying to correct...
The British Broadcasting Corporation has made itself look ridiculous by issuing orders that its reporters are not to refer to Saddam Hussein as an ex-dictator. Apparently using the word “dictator” would compromise the BBC’s neutrality and call its objectivity into question. Unfortunately, the BBC is not alone. In much of the American mainstream media, terrorists are referred to as “militants” or “insurgents.” Rioters are called “demonstrators.” As American flags went up around the country in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, a... Full story
If you wonder what has gotten California in such an economic mess, here is a recent sample: The state legislature has passed a law requiring landlords to give tenants 60 days’ notice, instead of 30 days, before evicting them. In other words, if you are renting to a tenant who refuses to pay the rent, plays his music loud all night and makes himself a pain to all and sundry, he can give you the finger for two months before you can get rid of him — all courtesy of California politicians. If you think federal safety reg... Full story
Profits are certainly without honor among the intelligentsia. The very word produces negative reactions, even from people who cannot give you a single reason why money carrying that label is worse than money called by other names. Many professional athletes and entertainers earn salaries higher than what the vast majority of business owners earn as profits, yet there is no moral indignation from those who are in the business of moral indignation. Some claim not to be against profits, as such, but against “obscene p...
Lawlessness usually conjures up images of a wild frontier or mobs in the streets. But the painful reality is that the supreme examples of lawlessness in our times are in the august and sedate chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States. If you think the issue in the recent Supreme Court decision upholding campaign finance legislation is whether campaign finance reform is a good idea or a bad idea, then you have already surrendered the far more important and more fundamental idea of Constitutional government. There is n...
When the joy of Christmas starts turning to the desperation of trying to find the right gift, that is the time to turn to that old standby — books. You don’t have to know someone’s measurements to buy a book, nor does it have to match their current wardrobe or fit in with the decor of their home. One size may not fit all but there is a right book for everybody from 2 years old to 92. This year has had a large crop of outstanding new books, so you ought to be able to find something for almost everyone. If you want to condu...
It was gratifying news when fans around the country volunteered to donate their kidneys to basketball star Alonzo Mourning, who would otherwise have to cut short his career because of life-threatening medical problems with his own kidneys. However, the head of the New York Organ Donor Network said it was a shame “that it takes a personal tragedy of someone famous like Alonzo to raise awareness” of a need for organ donations when 17 people on the waiting list die daily. What is an even bigger shame is that laws block the sup...
Reader responses to the discussion of government-controlled medical care in this column raised questions that need answering. The most frequently raised question was why American pharmaceutical drugs sell for less in other countries. Some readers considered this proof that the sellers of these drugs were making excessive profits. They argued that, since the companies were obviously making profits when they sold their drugs in Canada, they must be making super-profits when they sold the same drugs for higher prices in the... Full story
It is always fascinating to see elementary economics make front-page news. It was front-page news in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal that there are long waiting times for seeing medical specialists in Canada and in other countries with government-controlled medical care systems — but not in the United States, where some politicians are trying to get us to imitate these countries. Shortages where the government sets prices have been common in countries around the world, for centuries on end, whether these shortages have taken...
Many Americans are concerned because millions of illegal immigrants enter this country and little seems to be done to stop them. But California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, is upset because now something is being done to catch some of them. Police raids on dozens of Wal-Mart stores are “terrorizing” illegal immigrants, according to House Minority Leader Pelosi. What would she do about illegal immigrants? Legalize them. This mindset is not confined to Nancy Pelosi. The... Full story
The nomination of Justice Janice Rogers Brown of the California Supreme Court to become a federal Court of Appeals judge has brought out vicious special interest groups with their long knives — and a long record of smears and character-assassination, going back to the campaign of wholesale misrepresentations that defeated the nomination of Judge Robert Bork in 1987. Leading the charge against Justice Brown, as it did against Judge Bork 16 years ago, is the grossly misnamed organization “People for the American Way.” This...
They say “truth will out” but sometimes it takes a long time. For more than half a century, it has been a “well-known fact” that President Franklin D. Roosevelt got us out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. That view was never pervasive among economists, and even J.M. Keynes — a liberal icon — criticized some of FDR’s policies as hindering recovery from the depression. Only now has a book been written in language that non-economists can understand that argues persuasively that the policies of the Roosevelt administratio...
If you have a right to respect, that means other people don’t have a right to their own opinions. My computer operating system is so out of date that people don’t even write viruses for it any more. If the debate among candidates for governor of California did nothing else, it gave a demonstration of what political “experience” means, as Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante did a smooth, soft-shoe dance away from tough questions. It is “experience” like this that has led to the mess that California is in. Our children and grandch...
Everyone knows that black students in general do not perform as well in school as white students, much less Asian American students. But few realize how painfully large the gap is. Even fewer know that there are particular black schools, even in low-income neighborhoods, where students perform above the national average. Discussing racial gaps in education is taboo in some quarters. But this subject is discussed deeply and thoroughly in a new book titled “No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning” by Abigail The...
In hip and non-judgmental California, Democrats are suddenly expressing shock over Arnold Schwarzenegger's past sex life, his father's politics, and the example that his movies may have set for the young. Senator Dianne Feinstein expresses alarm over the fact that Arnold used ugly-looking military weapons in movies about military combat. Democrats are shocked, shocked. Voters ought to be disgusted, disgusted. With the state's financial disasters and Californians fleeing to other states by the hundreds of thousands, you might...
Why do we celebrate the Fourth of July? After all, we are taught from kindergarten to the universities that all cultures are entitled to equal respect. Why then celebrate the creation of a nation that is no better than any other nation? Indeed, if you heard only the litany of sins from American history that our students get throughout their years in educational institutions, you might think the United States was worse than a lot of other places. Most people, however, believe their own eyes, their own ears and their own...
Random thoughts on the passing scene: • If there was affirmative action in golf, nobody would give Tiger Woods half the credit he gets — and deserves. • Would you prefer to have a “compulsory” health care system imposed on you and your doctor or to have “universal” health care? Or do you realize that they are the same thing in different words? • Name three things coming out of the Middle East today besides oil and terrorism. If you can’t do that, try naming one thing. • If I were to get to heaven, I would probably find an ex... Full story
The Jayson Blair scandal has most of the elements of the modern American classic. There’s a celebrity angle, a race dimension, a drug and alcohol excuse, and hypocrisy in high places. The only missing element so far is sex. No doubt when the TV movie of the story is done, it will add a curvaceous girlfriend to round out the plot. Let’s start at the end. Here’s a little quiz: After plunging himself and his newspaper into a major credibility crisis, 27-year-old Jayson Blair met with a) his pastor, b) his parents, c) a defen... Full story
The term “useful idiots” has been attributed to Lenin, as a description of those mindless people in the Western democracies who would always find ways to excuse whatever the Soviet Union did. Columnist Mona Charen’s new book “Useful Idiots” shows that such people are still with us. Long after the Soviet Union’s horrors had become too widely known around the world for their sympathizers in the West to be able to get away with whitewashing the USSR, new Communist dictatorships arose to become the new objects of the affections...
