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Checking party IDs
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2006 CommentThe following comes from the Gallup organization:
Americans are about as likely to identify as Republicans as they are Democrats according to a review of recent Gallup polls. However, once the leanings of independents are taken into account, the Democrats gain an advantage. Democrats have been on par with, or ahead of, Republicans in party identification since the second quarter of 2005.
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The immigration issue
Tweet Share on Facebook March 29, 2006 CommentMy U.S. News column this week is on immigration, and since I wrote it (Friday deadline), the playing field has changed. Late on Friday afternoon, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed, by a 12-to-6 margin, a bill with border-security provisions (less stringent than in the House bill passed last December) and with legalization and guest worker provisions (not covered in the House bill at all).
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Why conservatives aren't hired by mainstream media
Tweet Share on Facebook March 29, 2006 CommentI greatly admire the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz. He covers the media and covers it well. I think he makes every effort to be fair and open-minded and succeeds with only minor exceptions—I'm sure many people would say he does a better job at it than I do. One day some years ago, he wrote an article that included a description of me as a "right-leaning columnist."
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Charles Murray: Abolish the welfare state
Tweet Share on Facebook March 29, 2006 Comment (1)Twenty-two years ago, Charles Murray published Losing Ground, in which he advocated abolishing all welfare payments. Even those who were attracted by its reasoning, and by Murray's always elegant writing, considered it wildly unrealistic and wholly out of line with political reality. I was among that group; as Charles reminded me at a book party for his latest offering last night, I wrote something favorable about it in the Washington Post, which I can't find on the Internet.
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FEC rules on blogs
Tweet Share on Facebook March 28, 2006 Comment (2)The Federal Election Commission has passed a rule leaving blogs free of regulation. This is a victory for bloggers both left and right who feared being placed under the federal campaign finance laws. But it could be undone by later regulations, and Congress should pass the pending bill that would guarantee them freedom of expression.
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Europe fading
Tweet Share on Facebook March 28, 2006 Comment (1)Here is a definitive piece on Europe's problems from the "Brussels Journal" blog. Meanwhile, young French protesters decry the law that would allow people under 26 to be fired in their first two years on a job on the grounds they would have to do what their bosses asked and say that instead, they want "a real job." That is, one in which you don't really have to work.
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Kansas passes concealed-carry
Tweet Share on Facebook March 28, 2006 Comment (2)Over the veto of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, the Kansas Legislature has passed a law allowing law-abiding citizens to obtain permits to carry concealed weapons.
By my count, this makes Kansas the 39th state with such a "concealed-carry" law, which requires in most cases that the applicant has no criminal record (or civil restraining orders) and has been trained in using guns safely.
Governor Sebelius expressed some of the concerns that concealed-carry weapons opponents have often voiced (I shared them myself, when Florida became the first state to pass such a law in 1987): that there would be shootouts in the streets, that road rage would escalate into gunshot deaths.
The experience of states with concealed-carry weapons laws seems to have proved that these concerns are unwarranted. Ordinary law-abiding citizens, it seems, behave responsibly when they carry guns, just as they do in other respects. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm opposed that state's concealed-carry law when it was passed in 2001 (she was attorney general at the time) but has since said that fears about it had not been justified. She recently signed a law allowing those with a permit to carry a pistol to lend their guns to others with such permits.
While people in Washington talk about gun control as a response to violent crime, the legislatures in most states have gone in the other direction.
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Kansas passes concealed-carry
Tweet Share on Facebook March 28, 2006 Comment (23)Over the veto of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, the Kansas Legislature has passed a law allowing law-abiding citizens to obtain permits to carry concealed weapons.
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An official secrets act
Tweet Share on Facebook March 23, 2006 CommentThe lead editorial in the Washington Post today is a thoughtful look at the ramifications of the ongoing prosecution of two former American Israel Public Affairs Committee officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weismann, for disseminating classified information to third parties, including the government of Israel. The government has already secured a conviction of former Pentagon official Lawrence Franklin for disseminating the classified material to the current defendants.
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Don't ask, don't tell
Tweet Share on Facebook March 22, 2006 CommentHere's an interesting post from Dale Carpenter of the Volokh Conspiracy on gays in the military. Carpenter notes that the number of service members discharged for homosexuality fell rather steadily from 1982 to 1994, then rose starting in 1995 (he erroneously says 1994) up through 2001 (with the exception of a slight decline in one year), then fell sharply in 2002 and 2003 (the last year for which he has data). The pivot points in the curve are thus 1994 and 2001, both with obvious significance: 1994 marked the installation by statute of the Clinton administration's don't-ask-don't-tell policy, and 2001 was the year of September 11 and the beginning of our active response in the war against Islamofascist terrorists. DADT, as Carpenter points out, actually resulted in rising discharges of gays; after September 11, as during other wars, discharges of gays declined in number.
