David Boaz

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has launched www.medicalmatters.org, a medical website and blog, as a special project of his PAC. Maybe MedicalMatters should partner with YouTube and give readers a chance to send in home video of themselves so they could be diagnosed by Dr. Frist.

In an online fundraising letter, President Bush (or someone authorized to sign his name) writes, “Republicans are also working to cut the deficit. The best way to reduce the deficit is to keep pro-growth economic policies in place, and be wise about how we spend your money — which …

By teaming up with the Democratic Leadership Council, is Hillary Clinton moving to the center in preparation for a presidential run Or is the DLC moving left to get closer to the front-runner Yesterday Senator Clinton released a DLC plan, the “American Dream Initiative,” a laundry list of government transfers and handouts.

The …

We’ve all heard about how actor-director Rob Reiner sponsored an initiative in California in 1998 to raise cigarette taxes to fund preschool programs. Reiner then became chairman of the state agency created by the initiative. And then he funneled $230 million of state spending through the ad and PR agencies that …

Over at the Guardian blog I offer some thoughts about presidential “signing statements,” with this challenge to conservative defenders of the administration:
When the Bush administration claims some power and promises to use it wisely, conservatives should ask themselves: would you want Hillary Clinton to have this power

From the Washington Post:
“At this point, it seems like the war on drugs in America,” added Spec. David Fulcher, 22, a medic from Lynchburg, Va., who sat [in a barracks in Baghdad]. “It’s like this never-ending battle, like, we find one IED, if we do find it before it hits …

Apparently I’m behind the times. I’ve always understood the term “social engineering” to mean what the American Heritage Dictionary calls “the practical application of sociological principles to particular social problems,” or what Mises called “treat[ing] human beings in the same way in which the engineer treats the stuff out of …

The Sunday New York Times has a great article ââ?¬â? the first of a series on aging ââ?¬â? titled “So Big and Healthy Nowadays That Grandpa Wouldn’t Even Know You.” Reporter Gina Kolata begins with this 19th-century biography:
Valentin Keller enlisted in an all-German unit of the Union Army in Hamilton, Ohio, in …

From the Washington Post:
[Kevin] Schieffer is trying to persuade the Federal Railroad Administration to give him a $2.5 billion loan for the project [to build a 1000-mile rail line from Wyoming to Minnesota], among the largest in history.

If it succeeds, it could be a boon to farmers — and Schieffer.

The …

Peter Beinart writes in the New Republic:
The struggle that initially roiled the Clinton administration–between deficit hawks and deficit spenders–is basically over; today, even the most liberal Democrats are fiscal conservatives.
Stephen Slivinski’s new book does demonstrate that today’s Republicans are bigger spenders than LBJ. But as the National Taxpayers Union notes …