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Visitors from a Weird Planet By Burt Prelutsky When I tell liberals that I can’t figure them out, they tend to assume I’m owning up to my own intellectual shortcomings. They figure their thinking is so profound that it’s simply beyond the scope of little old me. Well, let them enjoy their fantasies. The truth is, I can’t fathom their belief system because it seems so divorced from reality that if we discovered tomorrow that, like the pods in the movie, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,� liberals only look like human beings, but are actually from outer space, I’d be...

Pol: Shooting won't change gun laws Email this story Printer friendly format April 17, 2007, 6:44 PM EDT WASHINGTON _ Rep. Charles Rangel, a top House Democrat from Harlem, said Tuesday the shooting carnage at Virginia Tech won't change the nation's gun control laws. He told an audience at the National Press Club that he didn't think the Second Amendment should be repealed and added that fellow Democrats told him the fatal shootings of 33 people Monday would not change votes in Congress on gun issues. advertisement Rangel, who chairs an influential tax-writing committee, also took a jab at a...

There have been conflicting reports about the timing of American troop withdrawals from Iraq. Gen. George Casey, commander of U.S. forces there, has announced that the United States intends to begin a "fairly substantial" withdrawal of U.S. forces after the projected December elections establish a constitutional government. Other sources have indicated that this will involve 30,000 troops, or some 22 percent of U.S. forces in Iraq. Some high-level statements from Baghdad have indicated that the beginning of withdrawals may be delayed until next summer. On either schedule, progress is dependent upon improvements in the security situation and in the training...

NEW YORK The relationship between the United States and China is beset by ambiguity. On the one hand, seven presidents have affirmed the importance of cooperative relations with China and a commitment to a one-China policy.   Nevertheless, ambivalence has suddenly re-emerged. Various U.S. officials, members of Congress and the news media are attacking China's policies, from the exchange rate to military buildup, much of it in a tone implying that China is on some sort of probation.   Before continuing on this subject, I must point out that the consulting company I chair advises clients with business interests around...

Extraordinary advances of democracy have occurred in recent months: elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine and Palestine; local elections in Saudi Arabia; Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon; the opening of the presidential election in Egypt; and upheavals against entrenched authoritarians in Kyrgyzstan. Rarely have conditions seemed so fluid and the environment so malleable. This welcome trend was partly triggered by President Bush's Middle East policy and accelerated by his second inaugural address, which elevated the progress of freedom in the world to the defining objective of American foreign policy. Pundits have interpreted these events as a victory of "idealists" over "realists"...

To Effectively Spread Democracy, We Must Balance Values and Geopolitical ChallengesExtraordinary advances of democracy have occurred in recent months: elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine and Palestine; local elections in Saudi Arabia; Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon; the opening up of the presidential election in Egypt; and upheavals against entrenched authoritarians in Kyrgyzstan. This welcome trend was partly triggered by President Bush's Middle East policy and accelerated by his second inaugural address, which elevated the progress of freedom in the world to the defining objective of U.S. foreign policy.Pundits have interpreted these events as a victory of "idealists" over "realists" in the...

Political dilettante that I am, I often find myself both confused and fascinated by many things I read on a daily basis around the web. Whether my post-read mental state is the former or the latter, I almost always end up reading more about the subject that inspired my aforementioned state of mind. And thus, when I read about the shadowy "neo-con plots", I wanted to know more, particularly since the plots to which pejorative descriptions were applied appeared on the surface to be attempts to democratize otherwise totalitarian governments around the world. What was I to do? Well, friends,...

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