Representative Paul Ryan’s recent Medicare spending proposal has greatly stirred the political pot going into next year’s congressional and presidential elections. Not only has the proposal been blamed for the recent Republican loss of the staunchly conservative New York 26th district, it has also continued to feed into the larger debate on government spending. Due … Read more
The 2012 Republican field so far has not generated much enthusiasm, with voters rather dissatisfied with the options they have. The lack of excitement accorded to it is embodied by a recent CNN post about how the field is “historic” as no sitting senators are running on either side, something which hasn’t happened since 1944. … Read more
“Our spending has caught up with us, and our debt will soon eclipse the size of our entire economy. No longer can we kick the can down the road.” So declared Speaker John Boehner in his maiden speech to the U.S. House of Representatives. In the weeks following Boehner’s assertion, budget battles have consumed Washington, … Read more
The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America, by Jay Sexton. Hill and Wang, 2011. $27.00, 304 pp. For a work of academic history, Jay Sexton’s The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth- Century America is a brisk and rewarding read. In a little under three hundred pages, the author, a lecturer at … Read more
On March 2, the U.S. Supreme Court released its opinion in one of the most controversial cases of its term, Snyder v. Phelps. By an 8-1 majority, the Court ruled that under the First Amendment’s freedom of speech clause, protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church could not be charged with intentionally inflicting emotional distress by … Read more
On March 20, Hugo Chavez once again became the subject of international headlines when the Venezuelan president condemned U.S.-led military action in Libya, arguing that intervention was part of an American plan to control Libya’s oil supplies. Chavez further alluded to the possibility of an American intervention in Venezuela, to which he responded, “Don’t even … Read more
Ben Yu was a freshman at Harvard last fall until he took a semester off. He is now one of twenty-four recipients of the Thiel Fellowship, a $100,000 grant that encourages people under 20 to drop out of school and pursue start-up companies. This summer, he will be moving to San Francisco work full-time on … Read more
Matt Yglesias recently took to his blog to decry one of the great evils of our time: Harvard students who donate $10 to support their school. To make his case, he sets up a straw man — namely, the idea that we give Senior Gifts primarily to “promote social justice”: [L]ook, if you’re considering giving $10 … Read more
With Memorial Day around the corner, it is not only a time for us Americans to look back at the sacrifices our service men and women have made for our country, but also how we as a country have returned the favor. Libertarians may often be caricatured as heartless and rigid individualists, but I, for … Read more
Since its inception in 1913, the Federal Reserve has faced questions over its independence from the political sphere. For the most part, such efforts of politicians and bureaucrats seeking to direct monetary policy have been rebuffed. As Harvard economics professor N. Greg Mankiw told the HPR, “Congress decided that it made sense to have monetary … Read more