In the deadly game of politics your enemies often do you more good than your friends. No one understands this better than Barack Obama.

A week or two ago Obama appeared to be drowning in the oil-soiled waters of Gulf of Mexico. Today he is the beneficiary of unintended largesse from a string of gaffe-prone Republican candidates and office-holders who, one way or another, appear to be siding with BP against him. Poor, beleaguered BP.
With Obama’s stock apparently on the upswing, one cannot overlook the contributions of the best enemy of …

Forgive me folks, but I’ve had a bad two weeks with my computer. In 2000 I signed on to Earthlink and when high speed cable became available via my local monopoly Comcast I signed on to it; so now I get Earthlink via Comcast, and outside of Chicago I use a Sprint stick instead of Earthlink dialup. Being a total idiot with computers (don’t ask me what a URL is, or the difference between a browser or a server), I just pay everyone, but when things don’t work …

Putting aside religious beliefs, nothing in life has 100% upside – nothing. But the closest thing to a guaranteed better, safer, and more fulfilling life is freedom. Freedom means responsibility. It also means failure, accidents and mistakes. This, in turn, leads to learning, which is why successes outweigh the failures. However, humans must be free to understand the consequences of their actions. Without consequences, there is little learning.

When freedom prevails, the ingenuity and inventiveness of people creates incredible wealth. This is the source of the natural improvement of the human …

All through Barack Obama’s presidential campaign he realized he must never appear to be visibly angry over any issue, lest he be dismissed as a clichéd “angry black man.” In fact, he displayed little emotion of any kind, appearing unflappable under the tensest circumstance, even the occasional heart-breaking night during the primaries.

It was all “No Drama Obama,” and he was lauded for it—though he certainly showed the ability to inspire emotion in others. As a side note, he did not dwell on poverty issues to any extent because that, …

Let’s be honest: politicians just love the millions of barrels of oil blasting from a BP deep-water drill site in the Gulf of Mexico. The month-long scramble to cap the gusher is for them a don’t-miss opportunity to slap around big business and government. And to feed the “do something” syndrome that grips America today.

At the moment of this writing, three—three—Congressional hearings were underway as politicians pledged their darndest to get to the bottom of it all, even if it takes their last, dying breathe.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), never …

Apparently, I have been very bad.
At least that’s according to ComEd.  Recently, I thought I was opening a bill from the electric company.  Instead, I was being chastised.
As part of a pilot program from ComEd,  I was issued a “Home Electricity Report.”   The crux of the matter is the “Last Month Neighbor Comparison.”   The first line, a green bar about ¾ of an inch long, noted that on average my “efficient” and presumably oh-so-good neighbors, had used 764 KWh (Kilowatt- hours) of electricity.  A blue bar under it, about an …

The Republican congressman from the Chicago suburbs is running for the Illinois Senate seat formerly occupied by President Obama, but he is currently spending his days on the campaign trail attempting to placate a conservative base furious over his vote for the House climate bill.
The moderate Kirk has long been viewed as the GOP’s best hope of recapturing a Senate seat in the solidly blue state. But in the couple of weeks since announcing his Senate bid, Kirk has been repeatedly hit from the right over support for the climate …

After being confronted earlier this month at a townhall meeting with constituents who oppose the cap-and-trade scheme embodied in Waxman-Markey, Kirk wrote the following letter attempting to justify his support for the measure.
Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast, author or editor of several publications on climate change, most recently the 880-page Climate Change Reconsidered by S. Fred Singer and Craig Idso, points out the flaws in Kirk’s letter below.
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Congressman Kirk’s letter to a constituent:
Dear ____________________ :
Thank you for taking the time to contact me about the American Clean Energy and Security …

While President Barack Obama’s newly proposed budget would finally allow Nevada to rid itself of a nuclear waste dump planned to be buried in tunnels deep under Yucca Mountain, it would leave Illinois with the shaft.
Obama’s decision to zero out the Nevada nuclear waste repository is a betrayal of his Illinois constituents, forcing nuclear power plants here to continue to “temporarily” store more than 7,000 tons of dangerous, radioactive waste — more than any other state — in cooling ponds near rivers and Lake Michigan. It would mean that the …