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Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Alan Keyes are fighting for the Illinois Senate seat. I am from California, but this is the first time I have seen two minorities on extreme sides of the political spectrum, Obama an extreme liberal Democrat, and Keyes an extreme conservative Republican, and both highly educated, going toe to toe. So I've been following this race somewhat closely. Throughout their discussions on abortion, Obama gave his reasons for supporting abortion , Obama said he opposes abortion after a fetus becomes able to exist outside a woman's body. "Prior to viability, the problem is that this potential life is in someone else's body. ... I don't feel it is appropriate for me then to simply dictate to that person, to that woman, what she should do with her body," Obama said. There are two arguments here, one is the "Viability Argument" the other is the "Choice Argument". I have already addressed the choice argument at lengt...

Why is it that the states with the highest unemployment rates (Oregon, Washington and Alaska, for example) have the highest minimum wage laws? Why is it that in any one area the most unskilled workers, usually comprised of teenagers and minorities, have a much higher unemployment rate than the rest of the population? The answers are explained in a concise article provided by the Ludwig Von Mises Institute explaining why Economists are against raising the minimum wage. What You Need to Know About the Minimum Wage The short answer is that Economists are against the minimum wage precisely because it hurts the poorest members of society the most . As the Wall Street Journal has noted , "This is one of the most settled propositions in economics, second only perhaps to free trade." What's ironic about this is that, contrary to public opinion, it is actually those who oppose raising the minimum wage that have the poorest members of society in mind. This was a difficult concep...

I just finished watching Brainwashing 101 , a "film showing how universities use tools such as "speech codes" to force political [liberal] views upon students". You can watch it free here . One of the things that caught my attention was a character in the film. Sukhmani Singh Khalsa pictured below. The first impression one would get from seeing Sukhmani would be to assume that he is a Muslim and liberal in his beliefs, given the similarities between his headgear (turban) and that of the Taliban of Afghanistan. The fact of the matter is that he is a Sikh and conservative. Sikh’s are not Muslims and have had a rather violent history with Muslims. Working as an Engineer at a wireless company and going to UCSD gives me the opportunity to interact with a lot of Sikhs. My officemate, who comes from a Sikh family, tells me that most people you meet in this country who have turbans are not Muslims, but Sikhs. The moral of the story is that the next time you meet someone wea...

Let us never forget.

The WSJ($) is reporting that the same countries that would vote for John Kerry for President would also vote for a weaker America, the article writes, It turns out that another survey, this one taken by the Marshall Fund in June, found that 58% of Europeans consider "strong U.S. leadership to be undesirable." Leave aside the fact that Europe seems to prefer "strong U.S. leadership" when the Marines are storming Normandy or imposing a peace that Europeans failed to achieve in the Balkans. More significant for the current moment is that these polls show that the same Europeans who overwhelmingly favor the election of John Kerry also favor a weaker America. We'll let our readers decide what that says about the two American candidates. It looks like even Europeans understand that if their goal is a weaker America, John Kerry is their man. ;)

Russell Roberts, Professor of Economics, writes that it does. He explains himself here , than here , and here . Great reads. Update: Added Walter Williams discussion on the topic .

As noted in the Heritage Foundation Policy Weblog : Researchers have completed a study of Colombia’s secondary-school voucher program, PACES, which “awarded nearly 125,000 vouchers to low-income high school students…between 1991 and 1997.” The vouchers covered approximately half of the average private-school tuition for selected students, provided they continued to make “adequate academic progress.” Produced by the National Bureau of Economic Report, this report is one of the first to measure the long-term impact of vouchers. By comparing winners and losers of Colombia’s voucher lottery (a perfect control experiment), the study finds A 15-20 percent increase in secondary school graduation rates for voucher recipients; A .2 standard deviation bump in standardized test scores for voucher recipients; A closing of the performance gap between boys and girls among voucher recipients; and The greatest improvement for voucher recipients among the lowest-performing students. So there ...

Employment is an increasingly lagging indicator. Tyler Cowen, Professor Of Economics, explains . Update: Arnold Kling also weighs in .

Many in the media have been reporting what Vice President Dick Cheney didn't say , while claiming that he did say it. So I'm going to try and set the record straight with what Cheney did say. As reason has noted , Here's the full relevant statement from the transcript: Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us. Most of the reports either omit the rest of the quotation entirely, or append it elsewhere, as though they weren't part of one long, multi-clause sentence. As I read this, he's not saying the danger is that if we elect Kerry, then the danger is that we'll be attacked. He's saying that if we elect K...

"To take no notice of a violent attack is to strengthen the heart of the enemy. Vigour is valiant, but cowardice is vile." --Ancient Egyptian. The Pharaoh Seunsert III. cit. H.R. Hall, Ancient History of the Near East, p. 161. According to a global poll more people throughout the world would vote for John Kerry over George W. Bush in the upcoming elections. I've often been asked how I could support a President who has the whole world protesting against him . There is the undeniable fact that no country on earth has freed more people than the United States since WWII. "Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Afghanistan, Grenada, Kuwait, South Korea, the former captive nations of Romania, Bulgaria, the Czechs, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania (all holding elections since the early 1990s), and the other former Soviet republics". And who has caused the most problems? Who gave us communism, which was the 20th century's greatest killer-killing many more than Hitler himself...

How do you think the country that "contributes twice as much money to fight AIDS globally as the rest of the world combined, and whose drug companies developed the medicines that stopped the progression of HIV" would be treated at a giant conference on AIDS like the one held in Bangkok in July? If you answered with respect and admiration you would be wrong. The answer is vilification and the country in question is the United States. It is treated that way precisely because of its Christian principles .

You often hear the number 45 million quoted but you rarely hear who comprises these numbers. Everybody just assumes it's the poor, the few who can't afford it. Dr. David Gratzer has gone through the numbers and his results will shock you. He writes, A full 16% of the uninsured, the study found, have incomes above $75,000 a year and could obviously afford insurance if they chose to buy it. Roughly a third of those lacking insurance earn $50,000 a year or more. You may think that a poor single mom with three children living in South-Central Los Angeles is among the uninsured, but in fact, she is eligible for Medicaid, as are her children. The BlueCross BlueShield study notes that 1 in 3 of the uninsured are eligible for — but not enrolled in — a government-sponsored health program. Because Medicaid and children's health programs allow patients to be signed up literally in the ER, these individuals could be covered; they just choose not to do the paperwork. And of the remai...

A leading Catholic official is blasting a proposal in the Netherlands that would allow children under the age of 12 to request assisted suicide.

Adam Young has an informative article detailing The Origin of Income Tax .

"[John Kerry's] real conundrum is that his voters disagree with one another on almost every major foreign-policy and terrorism issue. So, no matter what Kerry says, he will alienate a goodly portion of his voters.... One example: [Pollster Scott] Rasmussen asked if Iraq was a part of the War on Terror or a distraction from it. Republicans overwhelmingly said it was integral - by 79-14. But Democrats were divided. Half said it is a distraction - but 36 percent felt it was a key part of the war effort. So what is Kerry to say? Either way, he loses votes. And if he waffles, he strengthens his reputation for flip-flopping" -- former Clinton adviser Dick Morris, writing in the New York Post.

Max Borders, the project director and editor of aBetterEarth.org, lists the top ten .

Bob Herbert, columnist for the New York Times, writes about the supposedly bad situation of the American worker, he concludes, American workers are in an increasingly defensive position. In a tight labor market, when jobs are plentiful, workers have leverage and can demand increased wages and benefits. But today's workers have lost power in many different ways - through the slack labor market, government policies that favor corporate interests, the weakening of unions, the growth of lower-paying service industries, global trade, capital mobility, the declining real value of the minimum wage, immigration and so on. The end result of all this is a portrait of American families struggling just to hang on, rather than to get ahead. The benefits of productivity gains and economic growth are flowing to profits, not worker compensation. The fat cats are getting fatter, while workers, at least for the time being, are watching the curtain come down on the heralded American dream. Economist...

That would be the Republican party . Over the last generation, reports Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington, professional elites have become both "less nationalistic" and "more liberal than the American public. This is revealed by 20 public opinion surveys from 1974 to 2000." One authoritative study of a dozen different elites, including top civil servants, lawyers, religious authorities, military officers, entertainment moguls, union leaders, nonprofit managers, business executives and media chieftains, found that every one of these groups but two (businesspeople and the military) was twice to three times as liberal as the public at large. It's not as if the Democrats have taken over the top of the socioeconomic ladder and the Republicans the bottom. Rather, Democrats dominate at the very upper and lowest rungs, while Republicans find their following in the middle. As a result, the old way of thinking about U.S. politics--little-guy Democrats vs. wealt...

The Republican Party is strongly courting the Catholic vote . And many Catholics, once considered a Democrat stronghold, are making the switch. The article writes, Abortion is a major issue for many Catholic leaders. Bishop Rene Gracida, retired head of the Corpus Christi, Texas, diocese who gave the convention's closing prayer Wednesday night, told the rally, "This heresy that human life is not sacred" is a threat comparable to denials of Jesus' divinity. Gracida prayed that God would "help them to achieve the election of George W. Bush." Without naming the president, the Rev. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life prayed that those attending would "mobilize countless others to vote and to vote correctly." Cardinal Edward Egan was giving the benediction at the convention following Bush's acceptance speech Thursday night. Also, according to Catholic Answers , one of the most prominent Catholic Organizations in the country, a true Catholic has no ...

According to the Friedman Foundation, demand for school choice is strong in DC . The details about the DC program are, Passed earlier this year, the D.C. school choice plan will eventually provide at least 1,700 students in families earning up to 185 percent of the poverty level with vouchers worth as much as $7,500 to attend private or parochial schools. Priority goes to children attending low-performing schools as defined by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Kevin Grier, Professor of Economics at the University of Oklahoma, writes about Mexico's Economic growth problem , I believe the primary two problems with mexico are both political (1) very little real competition in the domestic economy (2) no true rule of law. Fundamentally its still a society where personal connections or bribes get lots of things done. The "ideal" of everyday anonymous transactions working out well even when there are time intervals between beginning and end (payment and reward) just is not there. Also the Mexican civil war at the beginning of the 20th century probably had something to do with the low growth in the first half of the century. That was no joke, that war. The "golden years" could easily be high transitional growth getting back on the BGP after the devastation of the civil war, kind of Mexico's mini version of the Japanese and German growth miracles after WWII. imho Mexico is middle income due to "location location loca...

In a break with tradition, the Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York, the city’s main firefighters union, endorsed George W. Bush for President . Bush's eyes welled up as he accepted the endorsement of the Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York, the city's main firefighters union, which broke with its parent union to back the Republican president.

I must say that my favorite speech at the RNC was by far Arnold Schwarzenegger's. If you didn't get a chance to watch it I strongly recommend you do. If you can't watch it , at least read it . Here are a couple highlights, I was born in Europe ...and I've traveled all over the world. I can tell you that there is no place, no country, more compassionate more generous more accepting and more welcoming than the United States of America. To my fellow immigrants listening tonight, I want you to know how welcome you are in this party. We Republicans admire your ambition. We encourage your dreams. We believe in your future. One thing I learned about America is that if you work hard and play by the rules, this country is truly open to you. You can achieve anything. My fellow immigrants, my fellow Americans, how do you know if you are a Republican? I'll tell you how. If you believe that government should be accountable to the people, not the people to the government...then...