Bruce Walker

Asclepius Shrugged

Asclepius is the Greek god of medicine. Even in the mythology of the Greeks, healing was a business fraught with danger by the practitioner. Zeus, legend goes, was angered because Asclepius did his job too well, and punished him accordingly. In some cultures – China is a good example – the physician treating a patient was liable if the patient died, no matter what the reason. American tort lawyers seem to believe that any imperfect medical procedure must be malpractice, and juries seem to nod along in agreement.

Chanukah in Poland

President Komorowski of Poland met with Jews in the Belvedere Palace, the Polish "White House," to light a menorah candle and celebrate Chanukah with the Jewish community. Poland has proven a land of resilient faith. The Catholics of Poland during the Cold War, alone among Communist nations, had crucifixes in state schools. Komorowski was a political prisoner in Communist Poland and was beaten by the police as a student. He is a Catholic who has been a seminary teacher. President Komorowski, in lighting a candle on the menorah at Chanukah, is continuing a tradition created by his predecessor, who died a few months ago in an awful airline crash.

Time Magazine’s Politically Correct List of Powerful Women

Time Magazine has come out with a list: the "The 25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century." Look it over. It is nothing more than a depressingly familiar collection of Leftists laced with condescending tokenism to the rest of womankind.

The Price of Failure in the Korean War

The bellicose Communist regime in North Korea may soon plunge the world into a real hot war. Its evil rulers threaten Seoul with thermonuclear destruction and brute force is the only card that Kim Jong Il and his lesser thugs have to play. The hungry, tormented slaves of this vast concentration camp live, perhaps, closer to the Hellish world described in Orwell's 1984 than any people in human history. North Korea offers nothing good to the rest of the world at all. We have bribed its leaders just to leave mankind alone, but our bribery has failed.

Bombs Don’t Kill People, Terrorists do

The Left's obsession with focusing on dangerous things, rather than dangerous people, shows up in different ways. Bombs are designed to be safe. My father served at Fort Sill Army Base during part of his time in military service. That base is home to the United States Army Field Artillery School. In addition, every Marine trains in field artillery trains at Fort Sill, as do friendly military forces from other nations. The sheer amount of potential destructive power in the hands of these young men dwarfs everything that each terrorist group in the Middle East could ever muster. Yet Fort Sill is a very safe place to be. Extreme caution is taken to make sure that the vast munitions at this base are no threat to anyone. Why? The people with artillery are the good guys. Artillery shells don't kill people: bad guys do.

Watch the 2011 Elections

All eyes are focused now on November 2012. Will Republicans coalesce behind a principled conservative who can articulate the theme which resonated with voters in November 2010? Will new congressional districts, drawn by Republican state legislatures and reflecting a move away from Democrat parts of America into Flyover Country, lead to a bigger Republican majority in the House of Representatives?

Keeping the Lame Duck from Waddling

The shenanigans of the Left are legion. During the Health Care debate, Nancy Pelosi pondered “deeming” a bill as having passed the House of Representatives. Obama’s flacks completely turned around what experts said about the danger of drilling for oil after the Gulf Spill. Republicans, who will judge the actual winner of close House races, should recall just how blatantly partisan the House has acted in the past to choosing Democrat candidates who “won” – Lee Hamilton is the perfect example.

Time to Tackle Right to Work

The 2010 landslide means that Republicans in the House can stop any new legislative initiatives by the Democrats and that Senate Republicans, if united, can stop almost anything Democrats want to do in that body as well. House Republicans can also send to the Senate bills that will put political pressure on Obama and Senate Democrats, like a complete extension of the Bush tax cuts. But at the federal level, Republicans cannot actually do anything without Democrats caving in.

The State Legislative Tsunami

Was the 2010 midterm election a Republican tsunami? Although pundits waffle because a few Senate races were not won, the clearest proof of a Republican Tsunami is found in state legislative elections. On November 2, 2010, Republicans and Democrats vied for seats in 87 state legislative chambers. (Nebraska has a nonpartisan legislature; Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana and New Jersey did not have state legislative elections this year; and Kansas, New Mexico, and South Carolina did not hold elections for seats in the upper chamber of their state legislatures.) There were about 6,115 state legislative elections this November in those 87 chambers.

The Death of Camelot

Fifty years ago, American government – even American society – entered into a wonderland of youth, prettiness, chic, and charisma. John Kennedy had defeated Richard Nixon in the presidential debates (or, at least, JFK defeated Nixon in the eyes of the millions of Americans who watched the debates - those who heard them on television felt that Nixon had won.) The election of 1960 was incredibly close and could have torn the country apart, except that mean-spirited Nixon (unlike Nobel Prize winner Gore) chose to concede and spare the nation a political civil war.

The Death of Government

Government has gotten a bad name among conservatives. There is far too much government in our lives. Government regulates the light bulbs we can use, the process of hiring employees, the licenses which businesses need to operate, and, of course, the mammoth monster of public debt and taxes which have reached such surreal levels that each American – man, woman, senior citizen, and infant – owes a mind-numbing $44,000 of federal debt.

A Reform the Tea Party Should Embrace

One of the greatest delights of the Tea Party is disdain for traditional partisan affiliations. The grand theme of the movement is reduction: cut taxes, reduce deficits, limit regulation, and remove the concentration of power in Washington which creates a Never-Never Land for entrenched politicians of both political parties. In fact, the heart of many Tea Party concerns is the plague of unaccountable and self-serving elected officials in Washington. What is true in our nation’s capital is true, on a smaller scale, in our state capitals.

A Revolutionary Reform

Republicans, even if they win both houses of Congress, will have limited power to actually undo the damage of the Obama Administration's use of the Democrat's heady majorities in Congress since 2011. Nominal control of the Senate will not even translate into Republican power to bring measures to a vote, because Democrats can filibuster any measures proposed by Republicans. The Republican majorities may reach 55 seats in the Senate and, perhaps, 270 seats in the House--if the election is a perfect storm for Republicans--but even that will not allow the override of an Obama veto.

Polls Show Conservatism is a Sleeping Giant

One of the most effective ways that the leftist establishment has found to keep conservatives helpless bystanders is to minimize the breadth and depth of conservatism. If conservatism is on the fringes of society, if the vast majority of Americans reject conservative values, if conservatives only reflect a narrow slice of our society, then ignoring the conservative message makes some political sense.

Are We Really Suffering From Too Much Religion?

Americans have been sold a bill of goods concerning the complicated nature of the society in which we now live. Some things are, indeed, more complicated and fast-paced; of that there can be little doubt. But some things are, in fact, just as simple as they ever were. Such simplicity presented itself for examination when two separate news stories, both from my home state of Nebraska, caught my eye in the last couple of weeks. Juxtaposed, the two form a microcosm of the sad moral state of American society in the 21st Century.

Republican State Legislatures and Conservative Initiative

Hidden in all the predictions of Republicans capturing the House of Representatives and perhaps, also, the Senate, and winning key gubernatorial races is the coming victory of Republicans in state legislative races this November. It is easy to follow Senate and gubernatorial races – they are few in number and have large polling samples. Lots of people care who wins these races. Analyses of House races are more difficult, because of the sheer number of races and also because of the impact of oddly shaped congressional districts. But professional pundits still study swing districts and can estimate gains fairly closely.

How Bad is Lisa

The decision by Lisa Murkowski to mount a write-in campaign to cling to her Senate seat is just another example of how bad she has been for conservatives. Are Alaskans begging her to run? Well, consider her political history. Her father, Frank Murkowski, gave up his Senate seat in 2002 to run for governor. As governor, Frank appointed his daughter Lisa to fill his unexpired Senate term after he was elected governor and resigned from the Senate. What qualifications did she have – I mean, other than being his daughter? She had served in the lower chamber of the Alaska State Legislature.

What O’Donnell Means

Christine O’Donnell is the Republican nominee for Joe Biden’s old Senate seat. What does that mean? Well, in conjunction with the other conservative victories in Republican primaries the same day – Ayotte in New Hampshire, with Sarah Palin’s support, also won the Republican nomination for the Senate – that the once potent Northeastern Country Club Branch of the Republican Party is dead. Where are the RINOs now? I mean, besides Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, whose state may well soon have a Tea Party governor, what is left of RINOs?

Tax Me More

The current arguments over the Bush tax cuts, if the grade school playground “make the rich pay their fair share” taunts can be called arguments, avoids an obvious question: huge numbers of these “rich” Americans are leftists, and yet these rich leftists try to reduce their tax burden as much as possible. If the best government policy towards wealth is to tax it heavily, then why don’t leftists lead the way? Isn’t this sort of leadership – leadership by example – the most effective?

The Left Keeps Losing Everywhere

Many conservatives look at their first chance to defeat the left in six years when nervous Democrats try to explain before November how the Messiah Obama may not be so magical after all. The left is looking at a big defeat in America in two months, but the left has been getting slobber-knocked all over the modern industrialized world.