Policy Review articles from March 1995

Policy Review archives from March 1995

The courage of our convictions: the abolition of parole will save lives and money.
March 22, 1995... On Father's Day 1986, Richmond Police Detective George Taylor stopped Wayne DeLong for a routine traffic violation. DeLong, recently released from prison after serving time for murder, shot and killed the policeman. Leo Webb was a divinity...

A farmer's scarlet letter: four generations of middle-class welfare is enough. (farm subsidies)
March 22, 1995... Crop subsidies for the 400-acre farm that we rent here in northwest Missouri average $10,000 a year, and I've gotten in the habit of spending it all. But Pat Roberts, congressman from Dodge City, Kansas, and the new chairman of the House...

Clinton's cocaine babies: why won't the administration let us save our children?
March 22, 1995... Nothing could be more heart-breaking than the sight of a baby born with an addiction to cocaine. There is very little doctors and nurses can do to ease the pain of these innocent newborns, whose mothers' use of hard, illegal drugs during...

Big bird goes cold turkey: public broadcasting can flourish without government subsidies.
March 22, 1995... When Bell Atlantic Chairman Ray Smith offered to help Congress find alternative sources of money to replace federal funding of public-television broadcasting, PBS supporters protested en masse. And when Jones Intercable--which already distributes...

The unconstitutional Congress: the GOP misses the best argument for limiting government.
March 22, 1995... The framers of the Constitution were great clockmakers in the science of statecraft, and they did, with admirable ingenuity, put together an intricate machine, which promised to run indefinitely, and tell the time of the centuries. --James M....

Black flight: years of liberal government drives away D.C.'s middle class. (District of Columbia)
March 22, 1995... Washington is a city of monuments. Its grandest and most expensive is a work still in progress, but nearing completion: the District of Columbia itself, which commemorates the ruin of American liberalism. The D.C. government is bankrupt today...

Pride and prejudice: black business leaders ask: is it time to set quotas aside?
March 22, 1995... During the coming year, Americans will begin a serious debate over the meaning and value of affirmative action. Among the early signs: A proposed ballot initiative in California aims to amend the state constitution to prohibit preferential...

Coming after U: why colleges should fear the accrediting cartel.
March 22, 1995... A tiny "Great Books" college in California, tucked away in a mountain meadow, would seem an unlikely minuteman in a struggle for the academic liberty of America's colleges, universities, and professional schools. But so it is. Thomas Aquinas...

Hire education: an affordable college that sets the standard for career training.
March 22, 1995... Speaking in Galesburg, Illinois, in January, President Clinton proposed a federally funded job-training program "to keep the American Dream alive in the 21st century." Cost to American taxpayers: $3.5 billion a year. If he had driven about an...

Thy neighbor's rap sheet: how do you know whether a killer lives next door?
March 22, 1995... On New Year's Eve 1975, after an evening of taking LSD and watching cop shows on television, 15-year-old Raul Meza showed up at a convenience store near his house in Austin, Texas, armed with a deer rifle. Meza emptied the cash register, then...

The land of the free throw: a New York basketball league builds community.
March 22, 1995... The most popular outdoor basketball court in New York City is half the regulation size, offers no place to sit, and has sidelines bounded by a chain-link fence 20 feet high. Those who play here are literally encaged. Yet this ridiculously...

We aren't the world: an exit strategy from U.N. peacekeeping. (United Nations)
March 22, 1995... Just the other day, it seems, the national debate about the U.S. role in the United Nations turned for the most part on the issue of money--on U.S. contributions and U.N. waste, and how reducing the former might diminish the latter. That issue...

Did your mom eat your homework? Schools shift the blame for academic failure to parents.
March 22, 1995... Parents and politicians tend to blame the education establishment for the sorry state of learning in American public schools. The educrats are not taking this lying down. They've found their own scapegoat: parents. Public-school boosters have...

Fisher of men: a Baltimore minister promotes black Christian manhood. (Frank Madison Reid III)
March 22, 1995... The alienation of African-American men from the churches of their communities is perhaps the single greatest tragedy facing black America. "While 75 percent of the mosque is male, 75 percent of the black church is female," laments Jawanza...

Will these women clean house? GOP freshman lawmakers back congressional reform.
March 22, 1995... If 1992 was the "Year of the Woman" in American politics, then 1994 was the "Year of the Conservative Woman." Nine women incumbents--all liberal Democrats--lost their House seats in the November elections. Seven conservative Republican women were...

The readiness trap: the U.S. military is failing to prepare for the next big war.
March 22, 1995... During the 1992 presidential race, the Fleetwood Mac song "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" became the official anthem of the Clinton campaign. Once in office, the new administration lost little time infusing every facet of its domestic agenda...