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Iraq's new birth of freedom

March 10, 2010  •  The Boston Globe

This week's parliamentary elections in Iraq brought 12 million voters to the polls -- a remarkable 62 percent turnout, notwithstanding a vicious wave of Election Day bombings that killed 38 people and destroyed several buildings in Baghdad.

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Uniform standards are not a good fit

March 6, 2010  •  The Boston Globe

Massachusetts and Rhode Island were two of the 16 finalists named this week in the Obama administration's "Race to the Top" competition for a share of $4.3 billion in education "stimulus" funds. Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced the finalists on Thursday; those that made the cut have agreed to embrace policies favored by the administration, such as higher caps on charter schools and tying teachers' raises to performance.

Central to the administration's approach to education is its drive for uniform national standards in reading and mathematics. The White House announced last month that it intends to "require all states to adopt and certify that they have college- and career-ready standards . . . as a condition of qualifying for Title I funding." Duncan has reserved $350 million to assist states that consent to common curriculum standards; those that don't will be barred from seeking Race to the Top grants.

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Gore's overheated doomsday rhetoric

March 3, 2010  •  The Boston Globe

The case for global-warming alarmism is melting faster than those mythical disappearing Himalayan glaciers, but Al Gore isn't about to back down now.

In a long op-ed piece for The New York Times the other day, Gore cranked up the doomsday rhetoric for which he has always had a weakness. Human beings, he warned, "face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it." His 1,900-word essay made no mention of his financial interest in promoting such measures -- Gore has invested heavily in carbon-offset markets, electric vehicles, and other ventures that would profit handsomely from legislation curbing the use of fossil fuels, and is reportedly poised to become the world's first "carbon billionaire." However, he did mention "global-warming pollution" no fewer than four times, declaring that "our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation" if we don't move decisively to reduce it.

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A ride in Big Brother's Audi

February 14, 2010  •  The Boston Globe

THE AUDI MOTOR COMPANY'S IDEA of an environmentally-correct America, to judge from the TV commercial it spent several million dollars to air during the Super Bowl, is one in which homeowners could be arrested for using incandescent light bulbs, customers choosing plastic bags at the supermarket would be mandhandled by the Green Police, and anyone tossing an orange peel into his kitchen garbage pail might suddenly find himself in the beam of a searchlight, hearing a voice bark through a loudspeaker: "Put the rind down, sir! That's a compost infraction!"

It's also a place where highway traffic would back up at an "eco-roadblock," but a motorist driving a "green" car like Audi's A3 TDI would be waved right through the checkpoint.

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'Engagement' won't unclench the mullahs' fist

February 10, 2010  •  The Boston Globe

Welcome to a second year of Barack Obama's "engagement" with Iran.

The president's outreach to the brutal theocracy in Tehran began in the very first moments of his presidency.

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