Washington — I have always thought that there was something very odd about this COVID pandemic. From start to finish, it has been entoiled in claims of politics. The Democrats murmured against what dark doings President Donald Trump was up…
At a time when the American economy could use more people, restrictions on immigration continue to trap unused talent in low-productivity countries. To unleash it, the United States could simply let these immigrants in and let them work. They’d become…
Washington — Some years ago as the pandemic was making its first stirrings, I heard from assorted pundits across the fruited plain that America was going to be changed forever. We would never get back to pre-pandemic normalcy. We would…
When the sponge is full of water, the new water runs off it. Public opinion — and myself when I’m at the bar — is like a sponge. Public opinion is becoming increasingly impermeable. In these times of information saturation,…
I have very brave friends. One is a diver and feeds sharks in the aquarium. Another one bungee jumps from bridges. And another, the craziest, runs a WhatsApp group for parents at school. I recently wrote to him to see…
Editors do impose a degree of discipline on writers, but the smarter authors succeed by building layers of self-discipline. This ranges from forcing themselves to work and mercilessly amputating favored limbs of early drafts, all the way to refraining from…
As things stand, there are two clear realities regarding the Chinese government’s culpability for the COVID-19 pandemic. The first is that China shoulders a large part of the blame for the ongoing disaster. Its slow, opaque response in the initial…
In a strict sense, this is not a comment on how I’ve been spending my time during this pandemic, but how certain others might better spend theirs. In the days before the shutdown our lives were supposedly so busy many…
Every state and local politician who imposed lockdowns pursuant to the COVID-19 pandemic claimed their decisions were based on “the science.” In reality, they ignored the advice of leading epidemiologists, relying instead on statistical models produced by “experts” with histories…