"Feeding the masses on unicorn ribs". That was how Walter Russell Mead once poured scorn on Obama's misbegotten attempts to revive the US economy by creating five million "green jobs."

Mead was quite right, of course. And there was plenty of evidence to back him up, such as the 2009 report by a Madrid university professor Gabriel Calzada Alvarez that for every expensive "green job" created by government subsidy, 2.2 jobs were destroyed in the real economy.

The Obama administration responded as only the Obama administration knows how: by calling in its left-wing attack dogs. Friendly organizations including George Soros's Center for American Progress and various well-funded wind industry lobbyists were recruited to monster this unhelpful evidence, which was dismissed for its "lack of rigor."

It's in this context we need to view the Environmental Protection Agency's dispiriting announcement of its latest assault on US industry - disingenuously billed as a "commonsense plan to cut carbon pollution from power plants."

Because here's the bottom line:  The more "clean energy" you develop, the more scum-sucking corporatist parasites you attract, the more eagles you slice and dice, and the greater the burden you place on both the taxpayer and the economy - all to no discernible practical purpose whatsoever.

It's starting to look like 1948 all over again.

Mark Twain observed that while history doesn't repeat itself, it often rhymes.  The 2012 presidential campaign is now rhyming with that of 1948 in iambic trimeter - the poetic form tragedians of Ancient Greece such as Aeschylus and Sophocles used to best express portending doom.

So let's revisit that extraordinary yesteryear of 1948, resulting in the most famous upset in American politics - Democrat Harry Truman defeating Republican Tom Dewey - and see how we can avoid a similar outcome by using it to our advantage.

How to do so is an opportunity being handed to Rick Perry on a platter.  The opportunity is to agree with Zero...

When it comes to fanatical Islam, we're entranced by the symptoms but refuse to name the disease.

The extremes to which Western elites will go to avoid blaming radical Islam for terrorism cripples our efforts to protect innocent Moslems. Terrified of offending butchers, we insist that we're the bigots, not them. We make excuses for monsters.

Boko Haram, whose name means "Western learning is forbidden," kidnaps 200 schoolgirls, and the world rightly takes notice.

But what about the thousands of peaceful civilians, both Christian and Moslem, Boko Haram has killed, purportedly to install an Islamist state? What about the medical workers, pious volunteers, who are murdered in a faith's name?

Hollywood suddenly woke up to Islamic fundamentalism last week in the strangest possible way, boycotting the Beverly Hills Hotel because it's owned by the Sultan of Brunei, who plans to impose the cruelest provisions of Sharia law on his fiefdom's women.

Hey, I'm all for the boycott (can't afford the joint, anyway), but this is a combination fashion-statement and NIMBYism par excellence. On vacation, those same stars will stay happily at the Four Seasons, even though a Saudi prince has owned nearly half of its shares. How are women's rights going in Saudi Arabia?

One of the most beloved members of our To The Point family has passed on.

Anyone who knew him could assure you that you'll never meet a kinder, more decent man than John Nehring.  There was a sweetness, a gentleness to him, combined with a profound love of liberty and a core of pro-American steel.

An Eagle Scout and National Merit Scholar from Columbus, Ohio, John graduated near the top of his class at the Air Force Academy.  He was an F-4 Phantom fighter pilot in Vietnam, got a Masters degree in economics at Georgetown, taught business & economics at the Air Force Academy, served in the Air Force for 30 years and retired as a full bird colonel.

For the past several years, John taught economics at Embry-Riddle University in Colorado Springs, opening his students' eyes to the great advocates of economic freedom, such as  Ludwig von Mises, Frederic Bastiat, and Milton Friedman.