A recent Wall Street Journal editorial nicely illustrates how Washington works. The Bush administration has been pushing for a measure to "normalize" trade relations with Vietnam. (Normalize is a Washington term that does not mean free trade.) Congress said no just as President Bush was preparing to visit that country last week, a major embarrassment for the administration. But as the Journal pointed out, "[T]his failure is an even bigger fiasco than it appears because of the White House's pandering to the U.S. textile industry. It's a case study in how protectionists never stay bought."Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the website of the Foundation for Economic Education.
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The war in Iraq goes on, but we shouldn’t let it overshadow the war at home — one that frequently takes the lives of people who don’t deserve to die. It’s known as the War on Drugs, but it’s really a war on people who themselves are not making war against anyone. Too often individuals minding their own business are killed by government officers. In the name of decency, this war must end.
By now many people have heard that an 88-year-old Atlanta woman who lived alone was shot dead November 21 by police raiding her home on the basis of a confidential informant’s claim that he had bought crack cocaine from a man at that location. However, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the unidentified informant says the police told him after the shooting to lie about the drug buy.
Read the rest of my latest op-ed at the website of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
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