History

A positive appraisal of 2011:

In the time since the end of the Cold War, there have been many years in which advocates of freedom and democracy found endless reasons for gloom and few for hope. This was not one of those years.

I use to get a kick out of Sen. William Proxmire's Golden Fleece awards for creative wasting of taxpayer money. It looks as if Sen. Tom Coburn is trying to fill that niche with his "Wastebook 2011" report highlighting over $6.5 billion in examples of "some of the most egregious ways your tax dollars were wasted."

Examples of wasteful spending highlighted in “Wastebook 2011” include:

Seems like this book would be a good read:

Today's pop quiz: Which two GOP presidential candidates have served in the military?

Here's one of them, ripping one of the candidates who didn't serve:

Oops. We forgot to celebrate Bill of Rights Day yesterday. Not there was much to celebrate, considering the frequency with which our constitutional safeguards are ignored:

Speaking of momentous milestones:

There was no triumphalism and certainly no shock or awe. The end of the war in Iraq was subdued and simple: a small band playing as the US forces flag was furled with 200 troops watching on quietly.

Amen:

Pssst!

Everything old is new again:

As President Obama travels to John Brown's old stomping ground in Osawatomie, Kansas where Theodore Roosevelt made his New Nationalism speech in 1910, Newt Gingrich has announced that he is a Theodore Roosevelt Republican.

Tomorrow is the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and there's a lot of buzz about a newly declassified memo from 1941 hinting of a coming attack. This is great fun for those who think everything is a conspiracy, so a small history lesson is in order:

An interesting and underreported phenomenon is the movement of some conservatives to the drug-legalization position. A recent convert is columnist Mona Charen, who cites Milton Friedman's opinion that the war on drugs keeps the price of drugs artificially inflated and amounts to a favor by the government to drug lords.