Free Republic

John Stuart Mill's classic essay "On Liberty" gives reasons why some people should not be taking over other people's decisions about their own lives. But Professor Cass Sunstein of Harvard has given reasons to the contrary. He cites research showing "that people make a lot of mistakes, and that those mistakes can prove extremely damaging." Professor Sunstein is undoubtedly correct that "people make a lot of mistakes." Most of us can look back over our own lives and see many mistakes, including some that were very damaging. What Cass Sunstein does not tell us is what sort of creatures, other...

"To see what is in front of one's nose," George Orwell famously asserted, "needs a constant struggle." Congratulations this week to three journalists who have finally taken up that constant struggle: Christopher Buckley, David Gergen and David Brooks. All three used to insist that Obama was some species of centrist or moderate. Now that Obama has proposed the most massive expansion of government in the history of the republic, each has recognized that just conceivably he might have been mistaken. A humorist--and, I should disclose, an old friend--Christopher Buckley exercised his acute comic sense during the presidential campaign, judging John...

THIS fall, stacked amid the hefty new college admissions books like "The Best 361 Colleges" and "Financial Aid for the Utterly Confused" is a guide about an entirely different sort of college acceptance. The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students (Alyson Books) profiles 100 of the country's "best campuses for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, and it arrives at a time when gay students are more vocal and visible. It's looking more like half or most gay and lesbian Americans are coming out before they get to college, said Bruce Steele, the guide's editor in chief. Unlike in the...

Meeting Doctor Doom Forrest M. Mims III Copyright 2006 by Forrest M. Mims III. There is always something special about science meetings. The 109th meeting of the Texas Academy of Science at Lamar University in Beaumont on 3-5 March 2006 was especially exciting for me, because a student and his professor presented the results of a DNA study I suggested to them last year. How fulfilling to see the baldcypress ( Taxodium distichum ) leaves we collected last summer and my tree ring photographs transformed into a first class scientific presentation that's nearly ready to submit to a scientific journal...