Blogs for 2007 - Road to the Middle Class

I know his humility and decency, his intelligence and thoughtfulness, his respect for every person he comes in contact with, his unwavering commitment to principle-based decision-making, and the quiet and compassionate hearts of the man and his graceful wife, Laura.

I unfold

Bush to Help Subprime Borrowers

by Christopher Chantrill

OBVIOUSLY some sort of assistance to financially strapped homeowners was coming down the pike, and today President Bush is outlining his proposals, Ded Riechmann writes. Bush will:

- Urge Congress to pass legislation that would give the Federal Housing Administration more flexibility in assisting mortgage holders with subprime mortgages.

- Pledge to work with Congress to reform the tax code to help troubled borrowers rework their unfold

How to Reclaim the Streets

by Christopher Chantrill

IN THE OLD days, we all know, adults used to correct children who misbehaved. They corrected their own children and they corrected other peoples’ children. In public.

But in our day, this ancient practice has become controversial. Partly it is because all men approaching children are assumed to be sexual predators, and partly it is, as Theodore Dalrymple writes in the London unfold

The Three Principles of Government

by Christopher Chantrill

NOW THAT I’m getting into the guts of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws, it is time to start dealing with the principle that he asserts underlies each form of unfold

Blacks Move to SF Suburbs: Liberals Hardest Hit

by Christopher Chantrill

THE LIBERAL issue de la semaine as we French linguists have it is blacks moving from San Francisco and especially from their traditional home in the Fillmore district. As John Ritter reports in USAToday:

African-Americans are abandoning this famously progressive city at a rate that has alarmed San Francisco officials, who vow to stop the exodus and develop a strategy to win blacks back to the city. In June, Mayor Gavin Newsom unfold

Can Peaceful Christianity Beat Militant Islam?

by Christopher Chantrill

ROBERT SPENCER’S book Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t unfold

Is It Over Yet?

by Christopher Chantrill

THE DOW was down another 280 points today, and so Bill Steigerwald asked Fed historian Allan Meltzer if it’s over yet.

I think it’s too soon to say it’s over. It’s the result of errors on the part of both the regulators but especially the banks and financial institutions. The banks and financial institutions were making loans that they had every reason to know could not possibly survive.

There are, as there always are, unfold

Appoint a Special Prosecutor?

by Christopher Chantrill

IN THE WAKE of the resignation of Albert Gonzales as Attorney General, Robert Bork thinks that the president’s problems have just begun.

The president must soon nominate a successor to Gonzales and Senate Democrats are surely contemplating making the confirmation of that person contingent upon the appointment of a special prosecutor.

And that would mean investigations and sub-poenas and grand juries and the whole unfold

Fixing the System For Highways

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYONE is naturally outraged by the collapse of an interstate highway bridge over the Mississippi river in Minneapolis.

And because it happened on President Bush’s watch it’s his fault.

Obviously, it is not just the bridge that is broken but the system. How could the sensible maintenance of bridges have been so neglected, Americans ask?

The answer is the usual one. Liberals. There was a time when government didn’t do too much, and one of the major tasks that people expected of it was unfold

The End of Secularism

by Christopher Chantrill

I HAD TAGGED the New York Times Magazine article by Mark Lilla on “The Politics of God,” meaning to get to it later. Now I find that the irreplaceable “Spengler”, the Asia Times columnist, has detected in the article an important social and political inflection point. It represents, he unfold

Education: What to Do?

by Christopher Chantrill

THE OTHER day, rancher, military expert, and college teacher Victor Davis Hanson went shopping in his hometown, the town where six generations of Hansons had gotten “a good, competitive K-12 education.”: Not any more.

I noticed that the 20-something cashier could not count out change. The next day, at the electronic outlet store, another young clerk could not read -- much less explain -- the unfold

The Politics of Demonization

by Christopher Chantrill

WHY DO DEMOCRATS hate Karl Rove so much? And why do Republicans hate Senator Clinton, asks political scientist Jay Cost?

He quotes from the e-mail of a partisan, who believes that Karl Rove has “a serious lack of ethics.” Rove is “capable, vindictive and mean-spirited... and he has run dirty campaigns...”

Leaving aside the obvious code words from the Democratic side of the divide, Cost reminds us what unfold

Women Like Big Government

by Christopher Chantrill

YES, THEY really do. John Lott has run the numbers in his new book Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don’t unfold

A Conservatism of Fraternity

by Christopher Chantrill

LET’S DO some serious thinking. That’s the watchword now we’ve reached the end of the Bush era. What should conservative ideas be based on and how should we persuade the American people that our ideas help them in their lives?

Danny Kruger is a special adviser to David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom, and he’s recently published unfold

Your School Kid is "Invisible"

by Christopher Chantrill

SENATOR Hillary Clinton has recently been reported asserting that ordinary people are “invisible” to President Bush.

She would know, of course. At the recent convention of the National Education Assocation, writes Phyllis Schlafly,

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., told delegates that she will fight school vouchers "with every breath in my body."

In other words, when unfold

Bernanke's "Rookie Mistake?"

by Christopher Chantrill

FOR THE last two weeks the Federal Reserve Board and the European Central Bank have been adding massive liquidity to the financial markets. Yet the Fed declared that “declared that inflation was their paramount challenge just two weeks ago,” as Bloomberg’s Craig Torres writes.

"It was a rookie mistake,’’ said Kenneth Thomas, a lecturer in finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in unfold

Climate Change Deniers

by Christopher Chantrill

IT’S TURNING out to be a rough year for the Climate Change Deniers, you know, the chaps who deny that the main driver of the Earth’s climate is the Sun. And it’s a bit embarrassing when a blogger, albeit an older, well-qualified blogger shows up NASA and its claim that 1998 was the warmest year in US history. Roy Spencer explains:

First, NASA’s James Hansen and his group had to fix a Y2K bug that a Canadian statistician found unfold

Dem Dodges on School Choice

by Christopher Chantrill

PRESIDENTIAL candidate and United States Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) sent his children to private schools. Why not to government schools, Joe, like the government schools you force everyone else’s kids to go to? Kathryn Jean Lopez has the answer.

Well, you see, Biden’s wife and daughter were killed in a car accident and so his two children were living with his sister. His sister worked at a private school and so it unfold

Rove on Rush

by Christopher Chantrill

KARL ROVE was on the Rush Limbaugh Program today for about 15 minutes, and spoke about what it was like to be in the White House, and work for President Bush.

Then Rush Limbaugh asked Rove what he would “like people to know about the president that they don’t know.” Rove replied:

Look, the thing the American people need to know about him is he is just as passionate today about doing his job of protecting America unfold

Time to Curb "Sanctuary Nation?"

by Christopher Chantrill

THE UNITED States has laws to identify and pick up illegal aliens and deport them. But they don’t work, reports Michelle Malkin.

The reason they don’t work is because open-borders interests have sabotaged them by restricting funding for them, objecting to them on civil liberties grounds, and pushing local and state governments to forbid public employees from checking them to verify citizenship status.

This is unfold

Beyond Rove, The Hard Thinking

by Christopher Chantrill

BEYOND THE Rove Myth, there is reality, and Fred Barnes dishes it out. Political advisers like Karl Rove can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

They can advise a candidate or a party how best to deal with a situation. But they can’t change the situation. And they can’t transform the circumstances at the time of an election.

Karl Rove can’t do magic, like make political realignments unfold

Now They Tell Us

by Christopher Chantrill

THE MUCH-TYPED “surge” is working. Even the global MSM is noticing, as Instapundit Glenn Reynolds observes. “There seems to be a lot of turnabout going on, all of a sudden,” he writes.

Exhibit A is this cover story in Germany’s Der Spiegel:

Ramadi is an irritating contradiction of almost everything the world thinks it knows about Iraq — it unfold

Karl Rove Resigns

by Christopher Chantrill

LOVE HIM or hate him, Karl Rove is the outstanding Republican political operator of our time. Between him and Bill Clinton it would be tough to choose.

And think of what he achieved. He got a rather unexciting candidate elected twice to the White House. And he kept the Republicans in control of Congress up until the always-vulnerable second-term off-year election.

That is a stunning achievement.

Why is he leaving now? New York Times reporter unfold

End of Civil Liberties?

by Christopher Chantrill

IS THE NEW warrantless wiretapping law passed by Congress last weekend the end of civil liberties as we know it, or just a prudent measure to allow the government to monitor terrorists?

You can guess where liberal E.J. Dionne would stand:

The episode was the culmination of a shameful era in which serious issues related to national security and civil liberties were debated in a climate of fear and unfold

US Tipping Balance of Power in Mideast

by Christopher Chantrill

IT’S BEEN notable to me that the o-called “surge” in Iraq has involved US troops ganging up with Sunni militias to drive Al Qaeda out of the Sunni heartlands. There has been very little news about US forces doing anything about Shia militias.

According to Robert Haddick the US policy has not gone down well with Shia Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. al-Maliki has no interest in helping Sunnis. “He sees the Sunnis whom General Petraeus is now unfold

Army Says Beauchamp Articles False

by Christopher Chantrill

IT LOOKS like it could be time to start rolling out the long German words with respect to the anonymous New Republic Baghdad diarist now revealed as Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp. The word I am thinking of is Schadenfreude, or taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others. Even the New York Times is getting into the act in a modest way. Reports Patricia Cohen

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A New Look at the Industrial Revolution

by Christopher Chantrill

WHY DID the industrial revolution begin in Britain? And why did it begin in the decades before 1800? Economist Gregory Clark in A Farewell to Alms unfold

Education Fatties Won't Diet

by Christopher Chantrill

THE GOVERNMENT education monopoly eats about $500 billion a year for K-12 education. Check usgovernmentspending.com for the details. And literacy hasn’t budged in 150 years.

So Newt Gingrich went on TV to tell folks to do something about it, reports Henry Payne. Detroit seems to be as bad as anywhere. So Newt burned in like a laser:

“The Detroit unfold

Is DailyKos Really Rush for Liberals?

by Christopher Chantrill

WE RIGHT-WINGNUTS and hatemongers look at the output of the DailyKos with bemusement. Because conservatives are sensitive, with good reason, about seeming negative and hate-filled and mean-spirited. We expect to be pilloried for hate-filled rhetoric.

Yet the writers at the DailyKos (forget the commenters) spew out hate and conspiracy theories on a daily basis, observes blogger John Hawkins.

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Bush Attacks Excess Dem Spending

by Christopher Chantrill

HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi says it’s “only” $22 billion. But President Bush had a different attitude, threatening to veto nine of the 12 appropriation bills, as Joseph Curl reports.

The president said yesterday he already has proposed increasing discretionary spending by 6.9 percent, but that Democrats want to add $205 billion in additional spending over the next five years.

Well, it’s about unfold

What Voters Know That Isn't So

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU CAN call it economic illiteracy, as John Stossel does. Or you can talk about the The Myth of the Rational Voter unfold

Murdoch Gets the Prize

by Christopher Chantrill

YESTERDAY Rupert Murdoch finally overcame the finicky objections of the legacy Dow Jones owners and bought Dow Jones for about $5 billion, report Richard Perez-Pena and Andrew Ross Sorkin in The New York Times.

The decision signals the end of an era for Dow Jones and the Bancroft family, an intensely private clan that for generations had allowed The Journal to operate independently and become one of the unfold