I don’t think that there’s a single federal agency that wouldn’t be improved greatly by simply razing it to the ground and starting over. The CIA should have been disbanded years ago, and replaced with something else.
It should still be. My biggest disappointment (among many) with the Bush administration is that, while it talked tough on the war, it was never willing to refocus the government on fighting and winning it, instead increasing and consolidating bureaucracies, and continuing the war on US citizens (e.g, drugs). That’s the problem with having a “compassionate conservative” and a big-government Republican in charge. It’s why I pine for a Fred Thompson, who at least talks like a federalist.
Are political campaigns unfair to women? Probably. There are many, many reasons why electing Hillary Clinton president would be a bad idea, but the fact that she looks her age isn’t one of them.
[Update a few minutes later]
I guess other people have to be wondering, though, if this haggard look is the result of a campaign (and one that is still in a primary, having not even gotten to the general), what would she look like after four years of the presidency? Will she even survive a general campaign? I recall being shocked in 1980 at how much Jimmy Carter appeared to have aged in his term.
“There wasn’t a thing on the table that I could eat” said a frustrated Love. “They kept putting food in front of me, but I kept trying to tell them that I was a vegan. I pointed to the food and said it really loudly and slowly ‘vegan, veee-gaaan’ but they didn’t seem to understand. They just kept encouraging me to eat.”
Love’s lack of Mongolian language skills coupled with the families lack of English language skills provided the perfect environment for a cultural misunderstanding to take place. And before long the Mongolian family had come to understand that “vegan” meant “sick” and quickly began to set out to find a remedy for their guest’s illness.
Oyon left the table for a moment and returned with what appeared to be two recently severed chicken’s feet. She then dipped the feet into some of the congealed pig’s fat and took Love to a back room where she proceeded to try to spread the substance on her ears in an effort to remedy her sickness.
When I was digging through my December 2003 archives to see what I was writing about the Wright brothers anniversary, I ran across this space policy essay that I wrote a few days later. As long as I’m doing reruns today, it still holds up pretty well, I think, so here’s an encore, from almost four years ago.
That’s how long it’s been since the Wrights first launched their first airplane from the dunes of Kitty Hawk. That also means, now, that it’s been four years since the X-Prize was won. We haven’t made as much progress since then as many of us hope, but I think that things are moving along reasonably well. I in fact expect to see an acceleration of suborbital activity, in the near future, with John Carmack hoping to fly into space in the next two years. I think it was Arthur Clarke who pointed out that we tend to be overoptimistic in the short run, and overpessimistic in the long run, partly because we tend to think linearly.
Anyway, I’m going to reprint my thoughts from four years ago, including links to two other pieces that I wrote at National Review and TCSDaily (then TechCentralStation).
I can’t believe that this guy could really get the Republican nomination. And of course, just because he’s in the lead doesn’t mean that he has a good chance, since he only has a plurality, not a majority, and seems unlikely to get one. And if he does somehow get the nomination, I can’t see the party rallying behind him.