Hail the Conquering Hero

December 31, 2015

President Obama and a contingent of nearly 500 Americans returned last week from the much-anticipated climate conference in Paris, armed with a historic new international agreement – finally – to address what the President has called the most urgent threat to our national security, and our planet. What a fitting message to the terrorist thugs […]

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The Albatross Around Our Necks

December 31, 2015

Hardly anyone noticed an important occurrence this week on the tiny Pacific Atoll forever known to history as Midway, site of the most decisive naval battle of World War II. American military activity on the island was shut down about 20 years ago, and Congress made the deserted place a national wildlife refuge. This week […]

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Low Energy Candidates

December 31, 2015

In several of the presidential campaign debates, candidates have referred to each other as “low-energy,” and the accusation has stuck, especially when leveled by Donald Trump at Jeb Bush. But in one sense, all of the candidates on both sides are “low-energy,” that is, none of them are really talking much about energy issues. Even […]

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Getting Ahead by Destroying Others

December 31, 2015

Among truly ambitious people, I have learned that there are two distinct types: those who seek to improve themselves and their value to others, and those who think they can get ahead by dragging others down. There are many ways to destroy competitors, in business or in politics, but that strategy rarely produces lasting success […]

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A Rose is Still a Rose

December 31, 2015

Gertrude Stein wrote her famous line “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” in a 1913 poem and repeated it in other works throughout her life. She explained it as meaning “things are what they are,” that simply using the name of a thing evokes imagery and emotions. But what if we […]

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How Much is Enough

December 31, 2015

How much land should the government own? Most westerners don’t give it much thought, but stoically accept the reality that government owns almost all of the land around us. But in the nation’s capital there is a serious debate underway about it, for the first time in a century. When I headed the Colorado Department […]

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States Can Save Feds the Trouble

December 31, 2015

The Environmental Protection Agency finally published its final “Clean Power Plan” last week, and it was greeted this week with more lawsuits than anything EPA has ever tried. More than half of the States have already filed suit to stop the regulations, as have labor unions, utilities, rural electrics, manufacturers, business groups, and many others. […]

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Ignore the Message, Shoot the Messenger

November 5, 2015

A new study says that the EPA horribly underestimated the impact its new regulations might have on power plants across the nation. The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a Washington-based think tank that has studied energy policies and their effect on the economy for over 20 years. Its report now joins dozens of other […]

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You Honeyfuggling Puzzlewit!

October 30, 2015

During former President Theodore Roosevelt’s independent campaign of 1912, he famously referred to incumbent President William Howard Taft as a “puzzlewit.” The self-defining term is a rarely-used but creative and entertaining word for someone stupid. It provoked Taft, who responded by calling Roosevelt a “honeyfuggler.” That’s worse. It describes a swindler who plots to deceive […]

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A Solution in Search of a Problem

October 15, 2015

Americans often react to problems with a conclusion that “there ought to be a law.” But on occasion, we get so wrapped up in the process of making law that we forget what the problem was. This is especially dangerous at the federal level, where the rulemaking process takes so long that the problem may […]

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