Forbes.com

For decades many in the American political and policy establishment--including close supporters of President Obama--have looked enviously at the bureaucratic powerhouse of the European Union. In everything from climate change to civil liberties to land use regulation, Europe long has charmed those visionaries, particularly on the left, who wish to remake America in its image.

The great strength of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been its ability to mask its fundamentally authoritarian character with the trappings of democratic elections. To be sure, the only candidates who are allowed to run for office are those who accept the basic--and very narrow--contours of Iran's constitutional order. Those who believe that the state treasury shouldn't be used as a piggy bank for elite military officers and their mistresses and cronies, for example, are ineligible for office, which… more

With few exceptions, President Obama's Cairo University address has been welcomed, by Americans and voices across the Muslim Middle East, as a rare and remarkable gesture. The most striking aspect of the address, by now a familiar part of the Obama style, was its evenhandedness. The president came across less as a truculent defender of America's interests and aspirations and more as an impartial, scholarly figure who hoped to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable.

The supposed "battle" over the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor is in truth a political sideshow, one that is briefly distracting the public from real debates over the future of our badly broken health care system. While I'm quite sure that Newt Gingrich and Tom Tancredo and Rush Limbaugh sincerely believe that Sotomayor is a dangerous racist, most Americans, including most Republicans, would find the idea more than a little eccentric.

When Jack Kemp died earlier in May, the self-described "bleeding-heart conservative" was celebrated for his efforts to expand the Republican party.

By nominating Jon Huntsman Jr. of Utah to be the next ambassador to China, the Obama White House has dealt Republicans a serious blow. Along with Mark Sanford of South Carolina and various 2008 also-rans, Huntsman has widely been seen as a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. And now he's taken himself out of contention, eliminating one of Obama's most politically gifted potential rivals.

At the end of his wry speech to the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, President Barack Obama expressed sympathy and solidarity with the assembled journalists, noting that the American news business is in dire shape and that it serves a vital function. And of course the journalists, no strangers to self-importance, were flattered and grateful. Obama is a shrewd politician, and he knows his audience.

In The Elementary Particles, one of the most scabrous denunciations of the Sexual Revolution and modern life ever written, Michel Houellebecq essentially offered a case for the destruction of humanity as we know it in favor of a race of peaceful, pleasure-loving, jealousy-free post-humans. And after reading Mark Regnerus on the subject of marriage, I can see why.

One of my most vivid memories from childhood involves coming home from elementary school and finding that my family's VCR had been stolen. Even now, I'm not entirely sure how it happened, as there was no obvious sign of forced entry.

As the Tax Day Tea Parties fade into history, I've heard a number of conservatives argue that we're at the crest of a wave. Just as the property tax revolt of the 1970s led to California's Proposition 13 in 1978 and, some argue, the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the tea parties represent outrage against the excesses of big government under Barack Obama. Liberals maintain that the tea parties were instead a fringe phenomenon ginned up by talk radio,… more