Category: Pete du Pont

There are currently 81 voucher programs operating in the United States. Four are education vouchers like Pell grants, which students can use at any school.

Americans have taken for granted instantaneous and reasonably priced energy for more than 50 years. Flip the switch and the light or television goes on; turn the knob and the burner lights up; stop at the gas station and fill your tank. But as any Californian will tell you, that assumption no longer holds. California and other places are beginning to run out of electricity, the most basic energy resource of all.

I've been amused by the howls of outrage from democrats about president Bush's new bi-partisan commission for the reforming social security. They complain that Bush is stacking the deck in favor of his partial privatization position, which is true.

The best George W's going to get on his tax cut is a reduction from 39 percent to 36 percent — the highest tax bracket instead of the 33 he campaigned on. Some conservatives are arguing he should promise to veto the bill until congress gets it right. I can sympathize, I just can't agree.

Leftist critics worry President Bush's faith-based charity plans will allow mingling of church and state. Some on the right worry religious groups will come to see themselves as part of the federal welfare state, not an alternative to it.

"Cato" was the pen name of two early 18th century Englishmen, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. They wrote a series of letters about the role of government, the nature of statecraft, and the application of natural law and natural rights. Oddly enough, the letters didn't create a stir in England, but they were perhaps the single most influential body of work read by the men who created the American Revolution and wrote the constitution.

Imagine you're a hardcore environmentalist, and I come to you and say, "I can reduce pesticides by millions of pounds every year."

The current edition of American Outlook magazine presents an excellent series on the differences. Irwin Stelzer identifies two crucial ones: the right and freedom of the individual to pursue his own dreams and opportunities, and the requirement the government to obtain the consent of the governed before launching substantial economic or social policy revolutions. The lack of these two principles has brought about disastrous public policies on the Continent.

The Netherlands has passed the termination of life on request and assisted suicide act, which clears physicians who kill patients on request or aid in assisted suicide. It passed the dutch senate just as the annual remembrance of the holocaust began.

At the recent Summit of The Americas in Quebec City, the thousands of protesters didn't care about saving the jobs of american steel workers or french farmers. They weren't advancing world peace or free health care. Their agenda was fundamental: End capitalism, establish global socialism.

The congress's joint committee on taxation just released a new study on tax simplification. The statistics – which have nothing to do with simplicity – are mind-boggling.

Breaking news: a secret vote at Joliet state prison has led to the ouster of the long-serving warden, with rule enforcement now to be decided by a collection of death row inmates.

What do you do when you have money to burn? Buy an NBA team? Create a philanthropic empire? Run for the senate?

Information technology has made society much more transparent. Personal, medical and financial information can be used by insurers, marketers and employers.

There are currently 81 voucher programs operating in the United States, according to a 1998 study by the General Accounting Office and Urban Institute analysts. Eleven of those are federal government programs.

Right up there with the taxpayer simplification act, my favorite recent federal legislative moniker was the paperwork reduction act of 1995.

If you want a cogent analysis of the so-called campaign reform now the craze in congress, how about asking somebody whose job it is to study it: Bradley Smith, who's actually a member of the Federal Election Commission, in a new book called "Unfree Speech," Smith says McCain-Feingold type reforms are wrongheaded.

You know democrats are running scared when the worst they can do in Bush's first 100 days is run fright ads about arsenic in the water, an issue that carries a lovely little dart: Senate democratic leader Tom Daschle voted for the arsenic levels he now castigates Bush about.

This month President Bush followed through on another campaign promise by formally appointing a bipartisan commission to craft a proposal for an investment-based reform for Social Security.

I recently came across a book that most people could find useful – especially one group.

Yesterday I talked about the sorry state of American education's reading instruction, and why the fight to improve is a local one. Today, why it's a tough fight.

Antitrade protesters push for world socialism, against freedom.

Former Education Secretary Bill Bennett recently weighed in on the subject of literacy – or rather, the lack of it.

Phillip k. Howard's new book focuses on the triumph of so-called individual rights – rights based on litigation. A few examples will suffice.

The house recently passed a bill that would relieve much of the so-called marriage penalty. Close, but no cigar.