If the Senate has its way, online sales taxes are coming to a computer near you. The so-called Marketplace Fairness Act sailed through the Senate on Monday by a 69-27 margin. If approved in the House, the act won't just cost you money. It will also put the United States on the road to adopting a European-style national sales tax. When politicians say something's about…

The White House now believes Syrian strongman Bashar Assad has used the poison gas sarin against his own people. Last August, President Barack Obama called the use of chemical weapons a "red line." He now faces a hard choice: Admit his red line was phony or intervene in a conflict he has sought to avoid. The Syrian crisis is not just about sarin. Assad has killed more…

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin expressed his sympathy for the victims of the Boston bombings last week. But make no mistake: Putin sees the bombings as an opportunity to rebuild relations with the United States on his terms. His crocodile tears shouldn't delude us into chasing a second "reset" in relations with Russia. After all, the first reset was one of the Obama…

Margaret Thatcher, Britain's greatest prime minister since Winston Churchill, will be laid to rest Wednesday. In life, Thatcher never rested. American politicians, who have fallen into a bad habit of legislating for the camera, need to learn her habit of sweating the details instead. Thatcher believed that, in the end, you could only succeed by preparing and thinking. As…

Margaret Thatcher was not a woman who liked to look back. She never enjoyed watching her appearances on television, and when her office praised her after a victory, she replied by asking what they were going to do next. Only a leader with that kind of commitment could have rescued Britain from the slump in which it was mired in the 1970s. The quality of national…

On Friday, March 29, the negotiating conference for the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty collapsed. The mainstream media, echoing the left-wing advocacy groups that backed the treaty, will tell you that three nations -- Iran, Syria, and North Korea -- blocked a treaty everyone else loved, one that would supposedly bring order to the international trade in conventional arms. The…

One of the most discussed issues at the U.N.’s Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) conference is whether ammunition should be fully included in the scope of the treaty. Predictably, opinion at the conference is strongly (though not universally) in favor of full inclusion. This mistake illustrates the broader fallacies of the ATT. Currently, ammunition is included in the draft ATT,…

Sitting in the back of the room as the UN’s member states negotiate the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is a disorientating experience. That’s partly because it’s not a negotiation as Americans understand the term: it’s a series of more or less unconnected national interventions on particular points of interest, while the actual drafting happens out of sight. It’s also because…

The negotiation of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which I am observing at the U.N., offers a wonderful environment in which to observe the various species of hypocrisy. But like any zoo, you pretty well know what’s in the cage. Iran will be smoothly menacing, Syria will spit venom, and every developing nation will demand “implementation assistance,” i.e. more foreign aid.…