The Homestead Act of 1862, signed into law by Abraham Lincoln, gave 160 acres of land in the undeveloped American West to anyone as long as he built on the land and lived there for 5 years. By 1900 more than 80 million acres of land in the West had been given away under the [...]

Reed Walters, the DA in Jena, LA, defends himself.

This approach, used in Irving, Texas near where I live, makes sense to me:
At the heart of the contention is Irving police’s use of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Criminal Alien Program. The plan provides for round-the-clock communication with federal authorities and is designed to detain illegal immigrants who have been accused of a crime. [...]

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, today gave a speech at Columbia University in New York. This has been controversial since, well, why does this guy deserve a forum like this? You might as well let the head of the American Nazi Party or Ku Klux Klan speak at Columbia.
So Lee C. Bollinger, the president [...]

Sorry, this is a long post.
With the stampede to denounce Jena, LA as racist, I have been trying to understand what has really gone on there. That is hard to do when people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson get involved. The message is simple: Jena is racist and a symbol of all America. Sharpton [...]

This seems like an odd thing to try to revive civil rights protests around:
In an off-campus attack on a Friday night, one of the Jena Six – Robert Bailey – was attacked with beer bottles by a group of white men at a party.
The next Monday, white student Justin Barker taunted Mr. Bailey about [...]

In my last post I wrote about the reports that Alan Greenspan said the Iraq War was all about oil. It ends up that this was just the way the media was spinning it. Jonah Goldberg clarifies:
Greenspan claims that the quote was taken out of context. Greenspan called the Post — Bob Woodward, no less [...]

Alan Greenspan has been getting a lot of attention this past week with the release of his new book. I have no problems with Greenspan, but one thing he has to say is way off the mark:
“Whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ American and British authorities were also concerned about [...]

Being the good commie-dictator type that he is, Castro speaks of 9/11:
HAVANA (Reuters) - Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said the U.S. government misinformed Americans and the world about 9/11, echoing conspiracy theories about the terror attacks against the United States six years ago.
In an essay read by a Cuban television presenter on Tuesday night, [...]

I have been listening to General Petraeus’s testimony before Congress today. He shows a slide for drawing down the troops steadily and over the next 2 1/2 years ending US ground operations there. He strongly warns against a faster draw down because Iraq may become much more unstable than it is now. And he claims [...]

I am no fan of former president Jimmy Carter. However, way back in the late 70s I thought he was just great. When Ronald Reagan emerged to challenge him, I thought Reagan was a buffoon. (A couple of years later though I was a strong Reagan supporter. I guess I finally figured out which one [...]