Somali pirates launched fewer successful attacks on commercial shipping in 2011. European Union nations want that trend to continue through 2012 and beyond. Last week, EU nations agreed to let their military forces patrolling the Somali coast conduct strikes on pirate facilities up to two kilometers inland. Attacking pirate bases represents a significant change in military policy but is in line with... Read more.

America's constitutional structure is built on checks and balances. The idea behind these checks and balances is simple: We want interest counteracting interest, ego counteracting ego. We don't want any one person to gain too much power — or any one faction or any one way of thought. Gridlock, for lack of a better word, is good. President Barack Obama, however, has a different idea. He believes... Read more.

Just as the political air is filled with talk of the inevitability of Barack Obama's re-election — we are told that the kids at his Chicago headquarters are brimming with confidence — in come some poll numbers showing him behind. Not by anything statistically significant, mind you. But when you get the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls and the Politico/George Washington University Battleground... Read more.

When my father arrived in America at the age of 3, he spoke two languages. Neither was English. He was a grade-school dropout after his mother made him wear his older sister's shoes because he had none of his own. He said he was a graduate of the "school of hard knocks." When he became a father, he talked about a college education for his son and daughter, and started putting money away for... Read more.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote a story about a family that discovered a diamond as big as the Ritz-Carlton Hotel sitting beneath a mountain in a remote corner of Montana. The big rock presented a great dilemma. Selling off tiny pieces could yield a massive fortune. But if the world uncovered its existence, diamond prices would plummet. To maintain their secret — and an artificial scarcity in... Read more.

One of the highly developed talents of President Barack Obama is the ability to say things that are demonstrably false, and make them sound not only plausible but inspiring. That talent was displayed just this week when he was asked whether he thought the Supreme Court would uphold ObamaCare as constitutional or strike it down as unconstitutional. He replied: "I'm confident that the Supreme Court... Read more.