Terrorists at war with US

Random thoughts on the passing scene:

I can’t get excited by the question of whether Sen. Robert Menendez had sex with a prostitute in Central America. It is her word against his — and when it comes to a prostitute’s word against a politician’s word, that is too close to call.

If an American citizen went off to join Hitler’s army during World War II, would there have been any question that this alone would make it legal to kill him? Why then is there an uproar about killing an American citizen who has joined terrorist organizations that are at war against the United States today?

Pain-killers

New York’s Mayor Bloomberg wants to restrict the use of pain-killers in hospitals. Is there any subject on which this man does not consider himself an expert? There are, after all, doctors treating individual patients who currently decide how much pain-killer to use.

One of the talking points in favor of confirming Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense is that he was a wounded combat veteran. How does that qualify anyone to run the whole military establishment? Benedict Arnold was a wounded combat veteran.

In the modern welfare state, a vote becomes a license to take what others create — and these others include generations yet unborn.

Can anyone explain why, when someone dies, most of what he has saved up over a lifetime should be turned over to politicians, rather than to his heirs?

Why do so many judges’ views of criminals seem to be the opposite of policemen’s view? It could be that judges see criminals when they are on their best behavior, while the police see them at their worst. But I believe it is because judges have usually spent more time in educational institutions than policemen, and have picked up more politically correct nonsense as a result.

With all the discussion about gun control, I have not heard anybody on any side of this issue mention how many lives are saved by guns every year — which are far more than are lost in even the mass shootings that get so much media attention.

Does anyone think that Iran and North Korea would be as threatening as they are if Ronald Reagan were president? I don’t think it was a coincidence that the Iranians freed their American hostages just hours before Reagan took the oath of office.

Anti-trust farce

The latest anti-trust farce is the Justice Department’s lawsuit to prevent the makers of Budweiser from buying up Corona beer. Even if this sale goes through, more than half of all the beer in the country will still be made by more than 2,700 other brewers, large and small.

I don’t know how many Hispanic votes the Republicans think they are going to pick up by going soft on illegal immigration. But it may not be enough to offset the votes they lose from their existing supporters, not counting the future voters added for the Democrats as a result of legalizing existing illegals and attracting more illegals in the future.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Distributed by Creators Syndicate.