David Boaz

In the new Afghanistan, which seems uncomfortably like the old Afghanistan, the cabinet has revived the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Discouragement of Vice. The government will once again be able to keep an eye out for short beards, chess playing, slipping veils, alcohol, and other vices.

An …

The often astute Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein writes that Rep. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), a candidate for the Senate, is “a budget-balancing fiscal conservative.”

Well. According to the National Taxpayers Union, Cardin voted 13 percent of the time to restrain taxes and spending in 2005, making him slightly more spendthrift than the …

Here’s an idea for the cash-strapped Louisiana Democratic Party: for next year’s Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, instead of paying big bucks for first-class air travel and hotel rooms for some national party poohbah, why not have the dinner feature Rep. William Jefferson, currently the target of an FBI investigation, and businessman …

NPR reporter Luke Burbank, guest-hosting “Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me,” mocked Sen. Joe Lieberman’s decision to run for re-election as an independent after losing the Democratic primary. Burbank ridiculed Lieberman, saying that “nothing, not poor poll numbers, not scorn from his party, not losing the damn primary, …

The Associated Press states as fact that Sen. Lincoln “Chafee is a fiscal conservative.” OK, let’s go to the tape.

According to the National Taxpayers Union, Chafee voted to restrain taxes and spending only 33 percent of the time in 2005. He introduced 43 bills to raise spending and only two …

When the Education Department was created in 1979, many critics warned that a secretary of education would turn into a national minister of education. Rep. John Erlenborn (R-Ill.), for instance, wrote,
There would be interference in textbook choices, curricula, staffing, salaries, the make-up of student bodies, building designs, and all other …

A New York Times columnist says it may be a mistake to try “to make government run more like a business.” Citing research by Matthias Benz and Bruno S. Frey, summarized by Larry Yu, the Times says that government works better than the private sector:
The authority over government is split …

Pathological liar Robert Reich offers a commentary on Wednesday morning’s “Marketplace Radio” (not posted yet) complaining that American companies are not lobbying for more spending on science and math education because they are unpatriotically opening labs and software design offices in India and China. So let’s see . . . …

A big story on the front page of the Washington Post Style section is illustrated with a beautiful, stylized photo of new CBS anchor Katie Couric. In tiny letters almost invisible to the naked eye, the photo source is identified as CBS. In other words, it’s a publicity photo, not …

Speaking of my claim yesterday that “people spend other peopleââ?¬â?¢s money far less efficiently than their own,” this just in from the Associated Press:
The federal program that provides legal help to poor Americans turns away half of its applicants for lack of resources. But that hasn’t stopped its executives from …