This post by Rick Hess is a response to Fawn Johnson's post on the National Journal blog, "Education Experts."

The normal way that free societies encourage "responsible" behavior when it comes to the cost of services is to allow sellers to set a price and buyers to decide whether they're willing to pay it.

The fact is, the government had been deferring “recapitalizing” its military for more than a decade and a half and that bill came due precisely when the economy went into recession, government revenues declined precipitously and the deficit exploded.

The two most pro-consumer technological revolutions of the past generation have been the rise of big box stores such as Wal-Mart and the maturation of a global payment card system on which Wal-Mart depends. It's a pity that political progressives are on the wrong side of both these revolutions.

Deflation remains the signal concern in this economy, but inflation worries are not unreasonable given current fiscal trends.

America's fevered health care debate has begun to spread around the world like a virulent pathogen.

This morning, ABC aired a Barbara Walters interview with Syrian “dictator by accident” Bashar el Assad, whom she found to be “not like Qadhafi.” (Crazy does come in different flavors, Barbara.) After an airy tour around Damascus, where Walters found that “life goes on,” she took off her tour guide outfit to grill Assad gently about his reign of terror.

Under current law, the U.S. Department of Defense automatically faces significant spending cuts over the next 10 years—cuts that america's civilian and military leaders have cadidly described as "devastating" and "very high risk."

Al Gore"s extreme proposals on climate change are smart politics--and bad policy.