The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that the California Air Resources Board overestimated pollution from off-road diesel vehicles by 340 percent. The agency had used that estimate as the basis for tighter emission regulations, adopted in 2007, that applied to bulldozers, dump trucks, forklifts, and other heavy-duty diesel machinery. Those controls halted the use...
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The 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to my father, Mario Vargas Llosa, is great news for those of us who value freedom. His work, as the Swedish Academy recognized in its public statement, explores the oppressive structures of power and the plight of the individual who rebels against them. His novels examine this...
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From the synopsis for the forthcoming film, “The Socialist,” to be released in November 2010: Every age seeks visionaries to leave, in the wake of their genius, a changed world—but rarely are they found without a few strikeout also-rans getting a crack first. In 2008, millions of Americans thought they had found the real...
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In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the social and political elite of the British North American colonies and, after they gained their independence, the United States of America was overwhelmingly WASPish — consisting of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. In the twentieth century, the composition of the elite changed enormously. This fact was brought home to...
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Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, argues in the October 3 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education that “sustainability” is surpassing “diversity” as a leading cause célèbre of activism in the academy. The trend can be seen both at the administrative level and in the student body. As evidence of...
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Dr. Emily Skarbek, Director of the Independent Institute’s Government Cost Calculator was interviewed on the nationally syndicated, web, radio blog, “Taking Back America”. During the interview, Dr. Skarbek uses MyGovCost.org to explain the specific effects of rampant government spending for any individual in America. Dr. Skarbek illustrates how an individual can find out what...
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Economic progress manifests itself in a continuous stream of new goods and services generated by, to use Joseph Schumpeter’s term, creative destruction. We tend to focus on the new stuff we have — the microwave ovens, the cellphones, the flat screen televisions — as a sign of progress, barely noticing the things they have...
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Why would another federal “stimulus” package fail to promote long-term economic growth? How violent was the American West? What hidden strengths do the Taliban have in common with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War? What are we to make of last week’s police protest in Ecuador? Learn the answers to these questions by...
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Dr. Emily Skarbek, Director of the Government Cost Calculator was interviewed on the nationally syndicated radio program, “The Jason Lewis Show” (Premiere Radio Networks). In the program, Dr. Skarbek uses MyGovCost.org to explain the specific effects of rampant government spending on the personal situation for any individual in America. Download audio file (18 minutes)

With sadness, I report the death of an old and cherished friend, Joe Sobran. Joe wrote and edited for National Review until he and William F. Buckley, Jr., had a falling out; he had a long-running engagement with CBS Radio as a commentator; and he wrote a syndicated newspaper column. For most of his life,...
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