Peter Hannaford

School boards over the years, when faced with opposition to a bond issue, have often resorted to a doomsday threat to get voters in line. If the bonds don’t pass, they would say, school sports — starting with football season —…

At 4 p.m. last Friday, April 20, clusters of dedicated marijuana users lit up to mark the anniversary of an annual “holiday” whose origins are unclear. That most of them looked both grim and determined was no accident. Marijuana growing…

The U.S. Department of Energy’s inspector general was sound asleep when Secretary Steven Chu and his crew of federal venture capitalists (using taxpayer money) were dishing out $500 million in 2009 to the Solyndra Corporation to make solar panels. Solyndra…

During the Reagan years the term “liberal” was discredited, having been widely equated with high taxes and spending. Gradually, liberal Democrats stopped using the word to describe themselves. Yet, old habits die slowly. In the days of FDR and LBJ…

Let’s say you own a store with a good clientele, but sales have been slipping in recent years. A new store with new products has faster service at lower prices and is open 24/7. You’re losing money. What do you…

When he was a boy, Jerry Brown must have asked Santa Claus for a toy train set but not gotten one. How else can one explain the California governor’s obsession with building a “high-speed” train other than it being compensation…

American manufacturing is coming back. By how much and for how long is uncertain, but the signs are clear and they are growing. For example: General Electric, a huge conglomerate, may be in the forefront of the movement. Overall the…

In two areas the Obama Administration has been proving itself too clever by half. It had hoped to score a double play by subsidizing “green” energy companies and forcing Catholic institutions into a once-size-fits-all contraception policy. Instead, both efforts have…

Throw Taiwan under the bus? That would be the result if a trial balloon recently floated were to become a reality. Paul V. Kane, a former international security fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, last fall published…

One year when George W. Bush was president, there was talk of his making recess appointments when Congress would be on holiday. Senate Leader Harry Reid countered by keeping the Senate technically in session by having one or two members…