Robert W Tracinski

When the Bush administration agreed to subcontract its Iraq policy to a Swedish civil servant--chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix--many feared that Blix would be an accommodating diplomatic type, eager to smooth relations with his Iraqi handlers and play to the...

The leaders of the Venezuelan opposition have demanded immediate new elections to replace would-be dictator Hugo Chavez, arguing that the referendum scheduled for this August will give Chavez time to establish a dictatorship and render elections meaningless. These...

The outbreak of doctors' strikes in America is spreading. So far, doctors in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Florida and New Jersey have held temporary strikes to protest the prohibitive cost of medical malpractice insurance. Now, doctors in Illinois have announced plans...

In an admission that they have no congressional leadership to offer, the Democrats won't send Tom Daschle or Nancy Pelosi to deliver the Democratic rebuttal to the president's State of the Union address. They have given that job to Washington Governor Gary Locke, who...

A recent news article described the nationwide strike in Venezuela, in protest against the nascent dictatorship of Hugo Chavez, as seeming "like something from fiction." Well, yes, it seems very similar to one work of fiction in particular: Ayn Rand's prophetic 1957...

After Sept. 11, a few intellectuals optimistically predicted the "end of irony" -- that is, the end of the pseudo-intellectual pose of cynicism and skepticism endemic in our turn-of-the-century culture. The end of irony is not quite upon us, but at least one recent...

This year, more than most, many people are choosing to spend their Christmas by searching for a haven of peace and tranquility in their homes and families. But we have not been able to do so without a few reminders of the value and the cost of that peace. I have been...

Rebelling against tyranny is a lonely business these days. If the brave citizens of an oppressed country dare to resist evil, they can expect the rest of the supposedly civilized world to react with hostility or indifference. That's the case right now in Venezuela,...

Environmentalists are up in arms about a recent Bush administration proposal to reduce red tape on logging in federal lands. But what this controversy is really about is not just the "conservation" of forests, but the conservation of the vast, arbitrary authority of...

Beauty pageants are not usually events fraught with geopolitical significance. But then again, they are not usually held in the middle of a battleground in the war between Islam and the West. The collapse of the Miss World pageant in Nigeria is an important case study...

For months, courageous protesters have braved riot police to oppose the depredations of a warlike and oppressive regime bent on world domination. No, I am not talking about the "anti-war" protesters who menace the cities of Europe and America--the creeps who scale the...

President Bush can count two unexpected victories in the past week: a broad mandate from the American people -- in the form of an unprecedented mid-term congressional sweep -- followed by a unanimous United Nations Security Council vote approving the administration's...

Like many people, it crossed my mind early in the Beltway Sniper case that this might be a terrorist attack. I reserved judgment, realizing -- unlike the armchair experts who flocked to fill airtime on cable news channels -- that I did not know all of the facts...

Since when did being a journalist mean forgetting your responsibilities as a human being? If you think I'm being too harsh on today's press, consider the coverage of the Beltway Sniper attacks. It goes beyond just publishing leaked information about messages left by...