-
Economic Freedom
Tweet Share on Facebook January 16, 2007 Comment (2)The Index of Economic Freedom for 2007, sponsored by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation, is out. Here is Mary Anastasia O'Grady's article in the Journal on it, and here is the Heritage website entry, the data, and the rankings. Only seven countries receive "free" ratings, with a score above 80, and every single one of them is primarily or substantially English-speaking: Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, the United States, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. The next nine countries, with scores between 75 and 80, are mostly smaller European countries: Luxembourg, Switzerland, Canada, Chile, Estonia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland, and Finland. Canada, of course, is primarily English-speaking, and my impression is that knowledge and use of English is widespread in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Iceland.
-
Legislative Privilege, Free Speech
Tweet Share on Facebook January 12, 2007 CommentJosh Chafetz, Oxford Ph.D., Yale lawyer, and former blogger at oxblog.blogspot.com, has written what looks to be the definitive book on legislative privilege, Democracy's Privileged Few: Legislative Privilege and Democratic Norms in the British and American Constitutions. His publisher sent me a copy, and I look forward to paging through–especially the parts about the 17th-century English House of Commons, given my recent research for my forthcoming book on the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89, Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America's Founding Fathers. Amazon still has the word uprising in the subtitle; I've asked Crown Forum to use upheaval instead.
-
Thoughts on the President's Speech Last Night
Tweet Share on Facebook January 11, 2007 CommentNear the beginning Bush noted that sectarian violence increased markedly after the bombing of the Samarra mosque early in 2006. In retrospect, that probably should have prompted the rethinking that has gone on since the November election. Evidently Gens. John Abizaid and George Casey and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld didn't think so at the time. Military history is full of examples of mistakes; this appears to be one of them.
-
Somalia and Postmortem on 2006
Tweet Share on Facebook January 10, 2007 CommentRalph Peters exults, appropriately and with the necessary caveats, about the defeat of Islamists in Somalia. The Wall Street Journal editorial page adds more. It appears that we may have killed the mastermind of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998. There's a fascinating story of how our special operations guys acted there that presumably cannot yet be told. I hope we will hear it someday.
-
What's Going On in Somalia
Tweet Share on Facebook January 9, 2007 Comment (2)It appears now that the Ethiopian Army has had some help from U.S. forces in subduing the Islamic militants in Somalia. Here's a take on the subject from Austin Bay, who served as a colonel in Iraq. Here is a roundup on Pajamas Media. CBS News's David Martin broke a story on U.S. forces' involvement. And here's an Associated Press report on hunting down Islamic militants.
-
My Latest
Tweet Share on Facebook January 8, 2007 Comment (1)Here is my Creators Syndicate column for this week, and here in the Weekly Standard is my remembrance of the late Seymour Martin Lipset.
-
Wesley Clark
Tweet Share on Facebook January 8, 2007 CommentArianna Huffington reports some interesting comments from former and possibly future presidential candidate Wesley Clark, via Prof. Stephen Bainbridge. Here are Clark's comments:
-
Partisanship in the House
Tweet Share on Facebook January 3, 2007 CommentI find it a little surprising, but not so dismaying as the Washington Post does, that the incoming House Democratic leadership has decided to try to pass its "100 hours" legislation without holding committee hearings or allowing Republican alternatives to be taken to the floor. Back in January 1995, as House Republicans have pointed out, the new Republican majority at least went through the motions of holding committee hearings on its agenda. And it's a fair point that at least one of the Democrats' proposals, government negotiation of Medicare prescription drug prices, addresses a complex issue on which the process of going through committee deliberations would be a good idea. I take it that the Democrats expect this to be vetoed by George W. Bush or, perhaps, bottled up in the Senate; they don't expect that their bill will become law.
-
Happy New Year
Tweet Share on Facebook January 2, 2007 CommentTwo happy developments late last year.
The first, and surely the more important, is the apparent rapid success of the Ethiopian Army in defeating the al Qaeda-linked Council of Islamic Courts front that seemed to be in control of much of Somalia, including the capital of Mogadishu. Now the Ethiopians have taken not only Mogadishu but, reportedly, the final Islamic Courts stronghold of Kisimayo, in the southwest part of the country.
