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Syndicated Columns

Opinion: U.S. should stay out of Syria
June 19, 2013
Two recent newspaper editorials illustrate the double-mindedness some feel about President Obama’s decision to provide small arms and ammunition to Syrian rebels. The Washington Post headlined an editorial: “No time for half-measures: Syria’s rebels need a robust intervention from the Obama administration.” The New York Times took a more realistic approach: “After Arming the Rebels, Then What? President Obama should be careful about being dragged into the brutal Syrian war.” I’m on the side of the Times.
U.S. can avoid ‘slippery slope’
June 19, 2013
As President Obama contemplates his many bad options in Syria, he may want to consider the Aspin Doctrine, an argument for intervention abroad made by President Clinton’s first secretary of defense, Les Aspin.
Opinion: Weak action on Syria undercuts U.S.
June 18, 2013
The Obama administration’s policy on Syria is a strategic disaster that undercuts its entire foreign policy from the Middle East to Asia. If you think I’m exaggerating, read on.
Opinion: Latin America courts U.S. startups
June 18, 2013
The exodus of young Latin American entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley and other U.S. technology centers may soon become a two-way street — growing numbers of U.S. techies are heading south to benefit from generous aid packages for high-tech startups.
Opinion: U.S. must support Mideast moderates
June 17, 2013
What is America doing in the Middle East? I hear that question being asked increasingly as the Obama administration finally moves toward military support for the Syrian opposition. People are rightly looking for a strategy that connects U.S. policy in Syria with what’s happening in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Turkey and elsewhere in the region. 
Opinion: Redskins mascot can’t be justified
June 16, 2013
See if this makes sense to you: For years, I’ve argued with certain African-American people about their insistence upon using the so-called N-word which, to my ears, is, inalterably, a statement of self-loathing. They say I don’t understand. They say the word no longer means what it has always meant. They say it’s just a friendly fraternal greeting.
Opinion: Morality ‘wars’ undermine Constitution
June 16, 2013
In May 1918, with America embroiled in the First World War, Iowa’s Gov. William Lloyd Harding dealt a blow against Germany. His Babel Proclamation — that was its title; you cannot make this stuff up — decreed: “Conversation in public places, on trains and over the telephone should be in the English language.” The proscription included church services, funerals and pretty much everything else.
Opinion: Security over privacy not a false choice
June 15, 2013
Thirty-five years ago in United States v. Choate, the courts ruled that the Postal Service may record “mail cover,” i.e., what’s written on the outside of an envelope — the addresses of sender and receiver. The National Security Agency’s recording of U.S. phone data does basically that with the telephone. It records who is calling whom — the outside of the envelope, as it were. The content of the conversation, however, is like the letter inside the envelope. It may not be opened without a court order.
Opinion: Bureaucrats at root of government trust
June 14, 2013
As soon as the Constitution permitted him to run for Congress, Al Salvi did. In 1986, just 26 and fresh from the University of Illinois law school, he sank $1,000 of his own money, which was most of his money, into his campaign to unseat an incumbent Democratic congressman. Salvi studied for the bar exam during meals at campaign dinners.
Opinion: NSA leader challenging rule of law
June 13, 2013
Journalists have a professional commitment to the idea that more debate is better, so we instinctively side with leakers. But I’m skeptical about some of the claims of Edward Snowden, the young NSA contractor who leaked secrets about that agency’s surveillance programs to The Washington Post and the Guardian.
Opinion: Don’t trade freedom for ‘safety’
June 13, 2013
It will not be with guns. If ever tyranny overtakes this land of the sometimes free and home of the intermittently brave, it probably won’t, contrary to the fever dreams of gun rights extremists, involve jack-booted government thugs rappelling down from black helicopters. Rather, it will involve changes to words on paper many have forgotten or never knew, changes that chip away until they strip away precious American freedoms.

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