The Cheney precedent: Will Ryan serve as ‘assistant president’?

The Cheney precedent: Will Ryan serve as ‘assistant president’?

Sol W. Sanders   Jack Garner, a Texan whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt chose as his first vice president for “balance,” put it succinctly: The vice presidency was “not worth a bucket of warm p–” (later cleaned up to “spit”). But Garner, ironically enough, helped block FDR’s power grab when that most charismatic of presidents tried […]

Never mind the facts: Our love affair with China goes on and on

Never mind the facts: Our love affair with China goes on and on

Sol W. Sanders Old friend columnist Joseph Alsop once told me of arriving in China with a clanking sword he had hassled across the Pacific, given him by his cousin, FDR, along with an instant “Inside-the-Beltway” Navy commission. President Roosevelt sent him immediately after Pearl Harbor to Chungking as “political adviser” to Claire Lee Chenault […]

Free transfer of technology could snuff out a relatively new concept: freedom

Free transfer of technology could snuff out a relatively new concept: freedom

Lev Navrozov I call countries that are not free “slave countries,” though Soviet propaganda proclaimed that “Soviet Russia” was the only first “free” country in the world even after it conquered some countries to the west of it, after which those countries became “free” countries in the Soviet propaganda, in contrast to “the rest of […]

Drastic fixes for critical crises or dodgy compromises for bumps in the road?

Drastic fixes for critical crises or dodgy compromises for bumps in the road?

Sol W. Sanders “Moderation in all things”, said a pre-Christian North African Roman dramatist, Terence [Publius Terentius Afer]. But like so many artists, he latched on to a beautiful artifact but got the logic wrong. He’s echoed these days in the oft repeated mantra from talking heads calling for compromise. It usually follows a description […]