New Op-ed Tech Central Station: On the new Energy Bill Going Through Congress

Here is a link to my new op-ed:

With gas prices around $3 a gallon, the Senate last week passed new energy legislation. It will ultimately go to conference with the House to work out differences between the Senate and House bills. But any bill that gets agreed upon seems certain to increase the swings in gas prices and leave the average American worse off.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) claims that oil companies are colluding to drive up the price, "they wink at each other and do the same thing." Likewise, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) blames the companies for taking advantage of Hurricane Katrina to raise prices: "You have a hurricane, and all of a sudden you see prices going up like that. That has... everything to do with people trying to make money off the backs of this tragedy."

With such reactions, it is not too surprising that a new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll shows that 38 percent of Americans view the U.S. oil industry's "gouging, greed, profits" as the main reason for higher gas prices. The second reason is "the Bush Administration" at 21 percent. . . . .

Online discussion at the Washington Post Today

I just finished a long online discussion at the Washington Post. It was pretty draining to type up the answers to those 22 questions, but I hope that people find the discussion useful. Overall, I thought that the questions were very good. With almost 5,500 words of discussion (the equivalent of about 6 or so op-eds), there is a lot of material there. A link is also provided to an online discussion done by the Brady Campaign on the same issue.

New Op-ed on Gun Free Zones in USA Today

I have an op-ed in today's USA Today entitled: Bans don't deter killers: Look what happened at Columbine and Virginia Tech, both ‘gun-free zones’.

New Op-ed on What Should We Advise Women who are being Stalked?

Sonya Jones and I have a new op-ed on the recent failure of restraining orders in protecting women: Flawed Laws Help Stalkers Victimize Women.

What do you do when the police can’t protect you?

Police may be the single most important factor for reducing crime, but there is something the police themselves understand: They almost always arrive at the crime scene after the crime has occurred.

Expecting people to trust the police to protect them and to behave passively is a recipe for disaster.

The last couple of weeks have seen a couple prominent murders where restraining orders did women little good. Numerous news organizations, such as ABC News, have run headlines asking "How Do You Stop a Stalker From Killing You?"

Unfortunately, despite acknowledging that "many women find themselves on their own," the media are drawing the wrong lessons. To simply advise that women "Get the hell away from him" often doesn't go anywhere near far enough. . . .

Trying to set the Police Executive Research Forum Straight

Fox News has an op-ed from me on the hysterical claims from the Police Executive Research Forum that violent crime rates are soaring in the US.

It is a remarkable con job.

Over the last six months, the Police Executive Research Forum, the chief executives of primarily large police departments, has gotten the media concerned that the country is threatened by a sudden upsurge in violent crime and murder.

A New York Times story on March 9th started the current round of hysteria with the headline that "Violent Crime in Cities Shows Sharp Surge."

An earlier front-page story in January in USA Today caused a similar ruckus.

One wonders whether the reporters ever thought of getting a critical comment for their story. . . .

New Op-ed on Guns and the 2008 Campaign

I have a new piece up at National Review Online.

For those who support the Second Amendment, the main problem is that Giuliani has rarely met a gun regulation he didn’t see as “reasonable and sensible.” In 2000, he pointed out how he was “a very strong supporter of gun-control legislation” and called for everything from federal gun-licensing and registration to banning guns based upon their price.

Only in the last couple of months has he finally gone on the record as opposing a gun law: he came out against re-imposing the assault-weapons ban. Yet he originally supported this law when it was first adopted, and he wanted it renewed as recently as 2004, when it expired. . . .