Excessive government slows the rate of economic growth in countries. This has happened throughout western Europe. Year after year growth is slower, and year after year the countries become a little less affluent than they could have been.
Some Europeans, many of whom have a more leftist bent on political matters than most Americans, look down [...]

Willisms shows the chart below. When social spending is done in the name of compassion - are these really the policies most helpful to people? It seems that most people would prefer to have jobs.
France’s government takes up 52.8% of the economy! I am amazed the place works at all. Of course the problem is [...]

In the comment section of this post about intolerance and the PC police, regarding allowing researchers to investigate IQ differences among groups, a commenter writes this:
I should also add that it is unconscionable that professors are being investigated by police for the research they conduct or what they publish. Cases in point: Rushton investigated by [...]

Chrenkoff finds this:
Bizarrely, both the main Sunni terror group, Ansar Al Sunna, as well as Shia radical Muqtada al Sadr, have been both calling on supporters to register to vote in the constitution referendum. “[One] statement issued by six of the seven Ansar groups promised that there will not be attacks against Americans on the [...]

Andrew Sullivan linked to my last post regarding research into group differences in IQs. In noticing this, Atrios then linked to my post, I guess because he sort of starred in it. He then wrote that discussions about IQ differences “brings out the stupids”. Dang my feelings are hurt.
Atrios also left a comment in the [...]

Charles Murray has a new essay, The Inequality Taboo, in Commentary magazine. The blogosphere is abuzz with posts about it (examples: Instapundit, LGM, Atrios, Parapundit, AndrewSullivan, SteveSailer, BradDelong, MattYglesias, GeneExpression, KevinDrum).
Murray, who wrote the 1994 bestselling book, The Bell Curve, gives an update of his views on the status of research into IQ differences [...]

Christopher Hitchens writes about the justifications for the Iraq. After Afghanistan, what were we to do next?
But what about the next one? For anyone with eyes to see, there was only one other state that combined the latent and the blatant definitions of both “rogue” and “failed.” This state–Saddam’s ruined and tortured and collapsing Iraq–had [...]

Over at The Road to Euro Serfdom they quote from a CBO report :
EU members shielded 39 percent of their agricultural production from international competition with tariffs of more than 100 percent.
Well, the EU may be the worst, but the U.S. is not far behind at 29 percent shielded. These subsidies directed to [...]

Michael Yon is a writer embedded with the military in Mosul, Iraq. He is not paid and is there on his own to write about what he sees. He gets by on donations to his blogsite.
Here is his blogsite - just start reading. It is gripping stuff. I hope he survives his stay in Iraq.
His [...]

Daydreaming might lead to Alzheimer’s Disease? Get out.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and others discussed securing the southern border tonight on Fox News. What is amazing is how rapidly the nature of public discussions of the border issue are changing. When I first started this blog a few months ago, and wrote this post about fixing the border, my position would have been [...]