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People seem infatuated with the “miracle” of government, and their infatuation grows if their government calls itself a “democracy.” As a result of their infatuation, people far too often believe romantic notions about its benevolence. In the United States, the last two years have seen high-profile examples of this. When the economy fell apart, many clamored for the government to “do something.” Similarly, a goodly number of people have been complaining that the health care system is not as... Read Full Story

After two years of economic turmoil it seems that the message that governments are spending too much money is finally getting out. In fact, the crisis today is solely caused by government spending far too much, and doing so while pretending, Keynesian style, that the spending will actually fix the economy. David Stockman, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Reagan and who is working on a book about the financial crisis, is one of those who is now... Read Full Story

A scientist working at the University of Sheffield in the UK has discovered the largest star ever found. The scientist, Paul Crowther, professor of astrophysics, led an international team of scientists using both the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope to make the discovery. What they found was a star, R136a1, located in the Tarantula Nebula within the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a small galaxy neighboring the Milky Way. Read Full Story

Despite efforts to stop them, criminal street gangs have been active inside the U.S. military. And, according to one recent report, the situation has gotten much worse. In 2006, Jeffrey Stoleson, a sergeant in the Army Reserve then in Iraq, described an unbelievable scene to reporter Frank Main of the Chicago Sun-Times . Based on Stoleson's account, and the many pictures he had taken, Main wrote: "In a storage yard in Taji, about 18 miles north of Baghdad, dozens of tanks were vandalized... Read Full Story

Oil has stopped flowing into the Gulf in the wake of BP's installation of a new cap on its broken well in the Gulf of Mexico. Earlier this week BP installed a new sealing cap on the well, starting the company's latest attempt to shut off the flow of oil that has disrupted economic activity and threatened the environment in the Gulf of Mexico since April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and killed 11 people. In a press release about the effort, BP warned that the cap was untried... Read Full Story

Years of big spending by politicians at all levels have left the nation vulnerable to economic turmoil. While at the federal level this is masked to a degree by manipulation and inflation of the money supply, among other factors, local and state governments have no such luxury, and many are struggling to find ways to pay increasingly high expenses. Increasingly, the onus is falling on taxpayers in the form of increased and burdensome taxes, and on public-sector employees who face reductions... Read Full Story

Who is Prisoner X? That is the question being asked in Israel following the brief publication of a story about a mysterious prisoner by Ynetnews, the news website published by Yedioth Ahronoth , the nation’s leading Hebrew-language newspaper. According to the few sketchy details made public, the prisoner, dubbed “Mr. X,” is being held in a special wing of Israel’s Ayalon prison. That wing, known as Unit 15, has but a single cell, and has historically be used to hold only the most important... Read Full Story

The Federal Communications Commission is set to begin a move to regulate the Internet. According to CNSNews.com , by a “3-2 party-line vote on Thursday at the FCC,” the agency “began the formal process of reclassifying the Internet as a telecommunications service instead of an information service — it’s current classification.” Currently, as an information service, the FCC can exercise only “ancillary” authority, which does not allow it to regulate the Internet directly. If the Internet is... Read Full Story

June 11 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of explorer, scientist, and environmentalist Jacques Cousteau. Born in 1910, he served in the French Navy before and during World War II, and went on to invent the " Aqua-Lung " which revolutionized underwater diving and exploration. He became famous with the production of his television specials, including The World of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and later, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau . Today he is viewed as a hero by many, and is fondly... Read Full Story

In China, one man has had enough. Yang Youde, who lives near the city of Wuhan, has had to begin defending his property rights with homemade artillery . He's not fighting off who you might think. There are no roving gangs of thugs, no sneaky, shifty criminals eager to invade his home. No, privatized criminals like these present no threat to Yang. Instead, the threat comes from his own government. According to London's Telegraph newspaper, Yang is fighting off developers who want his land. The... Read Full Story