George Will

Columns

• Fighting a coercion clause in health care reform - 11/19/2009

  PHOENIX, Ariz.

• A picture can lie — and it matters when one does - 11/15/2009

  The 20th century was 100 years of amplitude.

• The U.S. is setting a gold standard on debt - 11/13/2009

  One of the many television commercials exhorting viewers to buy gold says solemnly that it is an asset whose value "has never dropped to zero," a boast that surely sets a record for minimalism.

• Despite alarm, no climate for a change treaty - 11/8/2009

  Intelligent people agree that, absent immediate radical action regarding global warming, the human race is sunk. That is a tautology because those who do not agree are, definitionally, unintelligent.

• Hamid Karzai: relying on our stranger in Kabul - 11/4/2009

  Actress Cate Blanchett, who has played Queen Elizabeth I, is performing here, portraying someone less than regal — flurried, anxious Blanche DuBois, in Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named...

• When public disclosure becomes liberal coercion - 11/1/2009

  SEATTLE — Conservatives here, a droll minority, say that under this city's quota system, when a conservative enters the city, one already here is required to leave.

• Kerlikowske could inject a dose of realism into drug war - 10/29/2009

  During his immersion in his new job, Gil Kerlikowske attended a focus group of 7-year-old girls and was mystified by their talk about "farm parties."

• Michele Bachmann: the GOP's new lightning rod - 10/25/2009

  When Marcus Bachmann came home that Saturday evening in 2000 he checked the telephone answering machine and was mystified by the many messages congratulating his wife for something.

• An entitlement to which seniors are not entitled - 10/22/2009

  Three years before Rep.

• Democrats work overtime to stimulate incumbency - 10/18/2009

  As Harvard's president, Larry Summers, economist and former Treasury secretary, was a lion in a den of Daniels.

• Life, liberty and the pursuit of the last parking space - 10/11/2009

  Consider nature. Not the placid nature that Constable painted, but nature as Tennyson saw it, "red in tooth and claw."

• Olympic golds for narcissism should go to the president and first lady - 10/8/2009

  In the Niagara of words spoken and written about the Obamas' trip to Copenhagen, too few have been devoted to the words they spoke there.

• Enter the White Queen, drawing a long breath - 10/4/2009

  Last Thursday, the president's "engagement" with Iran began. This Wednesday, the U.S. war in Afghanistan will enter its ninth year. And U.S. foreign policy is entering a White Queen phase.

• On climate change, rest assured bad news will resume - 10/1/2009

  Plateau in temperatures adds difficulty to task of reaching a solution — New York Times, Sept. 23.

• 'Principled conservative' could win Florida Senate race - 9/27/2009

  Florida, a geological afterthought, was the last portion of what are now the lower 48 states to emerge from the ocean, and it emerged halfheartedly: Its highest point is just 345 feet above sea level.

• Bosnia holds lessons for Obama in Afghanistan - 9/20/2009

  For 11 days in late August and early September in 1995, U.S. and NATO air power defended Bosnian Muslims, who were being attacked by Bosnian Serbs, who were supported by Serbian Serbs.

• When everything is art, everyone wants a subsidy - 9/17/2009

  "This is just the beginning," said Yosi Sergant to participants in an Aug.

• Take us up from McCain-Feingold — to Madison - 9/13/2009

  Last March, during the Supreme Court argument concerning the Federal Election Commission's banning of a political movie, several justices were aghast.

• Candidate Steve Poizner learned his way in San Jose - 9/10/2009

  SAN DIEGO — Becoming governor next year will be a daunting challenge for California's Republican insurance commissioner, but Steve Poizner has surmounted other obstacles, as when he volunteered...

• Reduce troops and revamp our Afghanistan strategy - 9/1/2009

  "Yesterday," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a (mine's) pressure plate and lost both legs."

• California dreamin' — one long shot to watch - 8/30/2009

  SAN DIEGO — The most ominous domestic event of the 1970s was the collapse of self-government in New York City, which before being put into receivership by the state was liberalism's laboratory.

• Ledger of Kennedy's life shows a positive balance - 8/27/2009

  At the Democrats' 1960 convention in Los Angeles that nominated John Kennedy, his 28-year-old brother Ted was standing with the Wyoming delegation when it sealed the victory.

• Government ownership: a doctrine of no retreat - 8/23/2009

  As memories of the Cold War fade, like photographs bleached by sunlight, few remember the Brezhnev Doctrine.

• High court opened a Pandora's box on free speech - 8/20/2009

  It began with the proliferation of campus "speech codes" ostensibly designed to promote civility but frequently used to enforce political conformity.

• Professional poker players raise the stakes on Congress - 8/16/2009

  Howard Lederer, aka "the Professor," is a professional poker player, not a gambler. If Congress will acknowledge this distinction, it will rectify one of its recent mistakes.