Charles Freeman, America’s Next Political Rorschach Test

In her new book, Alger Hiss and the Battle for History, the brilliant intellectual historian Susan Jacoby describes the Hiss case of the early post-World War II period as a kind of political Rorschach test. If you‟re a liberal, she writes, you believe that Hiss, a former top State Department official in the 1940s who …

Budget Commission? Bad Idea; Responsible Budgeting is Congress’s Job

As President Obama focuses the nation’s attention on the prospect of huge, long-term federal budget deficits, some experts in Congress and elsewhere will try to build momentum to create a “budget commission” that would draft a deficit-cutting plan on which Congress would then vote. The idea is borne of frustration with soaring deficits and with …

Terrorists Fight Back With ‘Libel Tourism’

Facing growing threats to free speech across the West from what’s called “libel tourism,” lawmakers in Washington and London are beginning to awaken to propose legislative remedies. Their response is long overdue. Libel tourism is the practice by which the subjects of critical books or articles – such as Arab billionaires who allegedly finance terrorism …

China’s Human Rights Movement Could Soon Test Obama

Something is stirring in the world’s most populous nation, and it could eventually mark a watershed event in the march for human rights. That something is called “Charter 08,” a manifesto that more than 300 Chinese scholars, writers and activists issued online in December, that more than 8,000 Chinese of all vocations have since signed, …