Latest Commentary

Sequestration and death

Lame duck sessions of Congress can belie their name and result in a flurry of last-minute legislation. Unfortunately, those who have their hopes pinned on a sudden cloud of sanity descending onto...

The Internet shows the importance of government-funded innovation

Did the government invent the Internet? In a polarizing opinion piece published July 22 in The Wall Street Journal, L. Gordon Crovitz (former publisher of that newspaper and so by nature a private...

Drumming out morale at GSA

The latest revelation of a pointlessly expensive General Services Administration event--this time a $268,732 awards ceremony in Crystal City, Va. in November 2010--brings up questions of federal...

Small business scorecard not a cry for action

Another year, another small business prime contract scorecard that shows the federal government falling short of its collective 23 percent goal. But, I refuse to join in the annual rending of...

The First Amendment and voter supression

Restrictions on freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment must clear a high bar before they can be implemented. The latest laudable example of this is the Supreme Court's June 28...

Muddling as an outcome of tragedy

The worst tragedies are when both sides of a divide are plausibly right. So, it's difficult to pass judgment either on the Defense Department comptroller or Pentagon human capital officials in...

Brinkmanship on the debt ceiling bad for our country

Economic brinkmanship seems to be in vogue these days, as evidenced by Greece and the euro, with both Germany and Greece having staked out positions that threatened to send the shaky world economy...

Oppose the Smith-Mundt amendment

A lot of paranoia about an amendment to the fiscal 2013 House national defense authorization that would loosen Smith-Mundt Act limits on domestic distribution of public diplomacy is just...

Free THOMAS!

Especially for a voluble group of self-proclaimed believers that the private sector can do better than government, the House Appropriations Committee looks mightily like it's trying to protect a...

Magical thinking at OMB

Changing any large organization is difficult work. But not only is the federal government big, it's got Congress as a cranky 535 person board of directors, a workplace culture that favors slow...