Increasing numbers of people find themselves in legal never-never land, where they cannot follow the law of their home country without violating the law of another country for which they can be prosecuted. Intelligence agents of all countries have always faced such...

“Public choice theory” in economics, in part, explains the way self-interest of those in government and other institutions motivates them to avoid solving problems in order to keep their jobs and perks. Now, a new series of studies by researchers at Harvard and other...

  This past week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-proclaimed socialist, won the Democratic primary for a congressional seat in New York. Why would a sane person advocate a political movement that was responsible for well over a hundred million deaths in the last...

Most Central Americans are poor because many of the people who run their governments are corrupt and/or incompetent. And that basic fact will continue to overwhelm efforts to stop the illegal migration into the U.S. Most do not fear that their rich, unlike their poor,...

Will there be too few or too many jobs in the future? We are told as a result of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution with endless robots, autonomous vehicles, etc. that there will be far fewer jobs. Yet last week, despite record levels of automation, the...

Two of the world’s biggest polluters are China and Russia. You would think that U.S. environmental groups would be major critics of these countries; yet, the reality is some take money from entities controlled by these governments and disseminate their propaganda....

Was Watergate worse than the present scandal? Do you know what the crime was in Watergate? It has been 46 years since the famous break-in at the Watergate hotel in June 1972. In sum, officials of President Nixon’s re-election campaign were trying to obtain information...

This past week, with the passing of Faith Ryan Whittlesey, America lost the best example of what an ambassador should be. By happenstance, Ambassador Whittlesey also served twice in, perhaps, the best example of what a country ought to be — Switzerland. Faith...

Why do people want “money?” Obviously, so they can buy goods and services now or in the future. But, in actuality, it is not money people want, but purchasing power. Is it necessary to have a stock of money to have purchasing power? Well no, provided people have...

The GDP of North Korea is less than half that of Fairfax County, Virginia, and only a little more than half of Vermont’s, which has less than 3 percent of the population of North Korea. Honduras is the second-poorest county in the Americas but it has a larger GDP than...

Many apparent Washington conspiracies are nothing more than sheer incompetence — or a combination of attempted conspiracy coupled with a high degree of incompetence. The investigation into the alleged interference by the Russians into the 2016 election is looking more...

People are more careful in spending their own money than they are in spending other people’s. Even though this core principle about human behavior has been understood for thousands of years, many taxpayers seem to be perfectly comfortable with turning over a...

President Trump and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos dislike each other. The Washington Post, owned by Mr. Bezos, runs many stories each day attacking the president. Some are fair and about real issues. But many are petty or just plain wrong. Even The Post’s alleged “conservative”...

Prague is a glorious city with many beautiful and historic buildings going back nearly a thousand years. It managed to escape almost all bombing during WWII, and thus was able to preserve the best of its past — to the delight of both citizens and tourists. I am here...

If your employer gives you a 2 percent wage increase, and inflation is 3 percent, has your real income increased or decreased? Assume you bought a horse barn and 40 acres of land for $200,000 in 1988 for a riding school you operated. You have just retired from your...

In 1914, just over a century ago, the average worker had to work about three hours to buy a bushel of wheat. Today it takes five minutes for the average American worker to buy that same bushel of wheat. The real (inflation-adjusted) price of aluminum is now about...

There is some information that the government should never publish because it is so little understood by the political class and the media. A prime example is the trade deficit number. The trade deficit is of little importance, but as we now see, a focus on that...

Is the just-fired Andrew McCabe (former number two and, at one point, acting director of the FBI) corrupt? I would argue yes, even though we do not know the full extent of his alleged transgressions. Corruption, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is...