Stop Pretending To Be Offended By Everything

by David Hansanyi.  Lena Dunham received plenty of criticism for her insufferable New Yorker piece titled "Dog or Jewish Boyfriend? A Quiz." In it, the creator of Girls weighs the pros and cons of getting a pet or keeping her Jewish boyfriend: "He doesn't tip," and "he never brings his wallet anywhere," and so on. The jokes may tell us something about   ... MORE

Walter E Williams: What's Gone Wrong With Democracy?

Majority rule can be dangerous.  The Economist magazine recently published "What's gone wrong with Democracy ... and what can be done to revive it?" The suggestion is that democracy is some kind of ideal for organizing human conduct. That's a popular misconception. The ideal way to organize human conduct is to create a system that maximizes  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - How Culture Kills Capitalism

Matt Barber: Starbucks Spills Coffee On Its Crotch

A PC backfire.      Espresso makes you hyper. When you’re hyper you sometimes make rash decisions. When you make rash decisions you usually regret it. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz evidently chugged a Venti-five-shot-double-pump-skinny-vanilla-latte last week before announcing Starbucks’ new “RaceTogether” public relations stunt. As he    ... MORE

John Stossel - Raping Culture

Another one of those social "epidemics."  Apparently, new laws are needed because at colleges, sexual assault is "epidemic." Rape is so common that there is a "rape culture." I hear that a lot. It is utter exaggeration. Fortunately, AEI scholar Christina Hoff Sommers is around to reveal the truth. "This idea of a rape culture was built on     ... MORE

Female Marines Now 0-26 On Officer Infantry Course

by Douglas Ernst.  Obviously, a sexist test.The failure of two Marine Corps officers to to pass the Jan. 8 first-day Combat Endurance Test of the infantry officer course brings the tally of female dropouts to 26. One more group of female officers will have a shot at graduation before the Marine Corps completes its integration experiment in June.    ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: The Equality Racket

Tactics of the ethnic grievance industry. Some time ago, burglars in England scrawled a message on the wall of a home they had looted: "RICH BASTARDS." Those two words captured the spirit of the politicized vision of equality — that it was a grievance when someone was better off than themselves. That, of course, is not the only meaning of   ... MORE

The Year The Crusade Against 'Rape Culture' Stumbled

by Cathy Young.     December has not been a good month for the feminist crusade against the "rape culture." The Rolling Stone account of a horrific fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia, which many advocates saw as a possible "tipping point"—a shocking wake-up call demonstrating that even the most brutal sexual assaults on   ... MORE

The World's 10 Most Responsible Governments

by Kenneth Rapoza.           Want a limited government that’s held accountable by society? Then start packing. With all this talk about fiscal responsibility in the U.S. and Europe, the World Justice Project’s latest rule of law index gives civil society a sense of which governments are fair and accountable. And the U.S. is not even in the top 15.      ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Black Progression And Retrogression

What if racism is not the problem?  There is no question, though it's not acknowledged enough, that black Americans have made greater gains, over some of the highest hurdles and in a very short span of time, than any other racial group in mankind's history. What's the evidence? If black Americans were thought of as a nation with their own gross ... MORE

Walter E Williams: What Is Rule Of Law?

Contemplating fairness.      President Barack Obama said just before the recent Ferguson, Missouri, riots, "First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law." Most Americans have little or no inkling of what "rule of law" means. Many think it means obedience to whatever laws legislatures enact. That's a vision that has led to human tragedy  ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: Ferguson

Failure in Ferguson is across the board.   The city of Ferguson, Mo., is now burned into our consciousness in a way that few other places are. In my youth, the race riots in Newark, Detroit and Los Angeles marked turning points in my own and in the public's awareness of the problems of a black underclass that perceives itself as being so   ... MORE

American Idol: The Death of America’s First Black Father

by Kira Davis.   American pop culture is filled with darlings. “America’s Sweetheart” has been everyone from the original 1920’s Sweetheart Mary Pickford (actually a Canadian) to Sandra Bullock to Jennifer Lawrence. “America’s Little Sister” was precocious Laura Ingalls. “America’s Mom” was ever-kind and tidy June Cleaver. But it was “America’s Dad”  ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Society As A Metaphor

FBI Report: Americans Less Violent, Except for Police

Violent crime lowest since 1978.    According to new FBI statistics released this week, violent crime rates in the US fell over 4% in the past year alone, bringing the amount of violent crimes lower than it has been in nearly 40 years. The statistics showed that there were an estimated 1.16 million violent crimes in the year of 2013, which is the      ... MORE

'Acting White' Remains a Barrier for Black Education

by John McWhorter. Here we go again. A black woman has articulately battled the idea that using standard English is "acting white" in a video that has gone viral of late, and Jamelle Bouie at Slate has called her out for propagating a myth that black students devalue school. In the eighties, (black) anthropologist John Ogbu with Signithia      ... MORE

Guess What Happened When The Police Went On Strike?

by Jeff Berwick.        It all started over a month ago, right here in Acapulco, Mexico, when I commented to a good friend, "Have you noticed how much better traffic has been lately?" He responded, "Yes, traffic flow has been so much better... it's because the Transit Police went on strike." It turned out that was the case.  The Transit Police in Acapulco   ... MORE

Fay Voshell: The Unabombers At The EPA

The dangerous true believers.       Students of recent history will remember Ted Kaczynski as the man who is responsible for three murders and sixteen bombings over a period of eighteen years. These actions were fully excusable from Kaczynski's point of view.  As he dispassionately puts it, “In order to get our message before the public with some   ... MORE

The Typical Household, Now Worth a Third Less

by Anna Bernasek.      Economic inequality in the United States has been receiving a lot of attention. But it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American household has been getting poorer, too. The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36 %    ... MORE

Allen Smith: Rhode Island Proves Legalizing Prostitution Will Decrease Rape And Sexually-Transmitted Diseases

It happened by accident.       For a brief period of history, Rhode Island was the only state where prostitution was legal in every county. Now, a new report shows legalized prostitution led to a decrease in rapes and sexually transmitted diseases within the state, the Washington Post reports. The report, published by the National Bureau of      ... MORE