With the current spectacle of the corrupt World Bank trying to rid itself of its president who is trying to de-corrupt the place, based on politicized corruption charges against him, it is time to ask: Should the World Bank (WB), and indeed, its sister organization the International Monetary Fund (IMF), be abolished? Both organizations had their annual spring meetings in Washington this past weekend. It is obvious to everyone that both are in deep trouble. 

Both supporters and opponents of gun control are shoe-horning the tragedy at Virginia Tech into their pre-established templates.  Both have ammunition. On the one hand, Mr. Cho was able to purchase the firearms he used in the murder spree -- Glock 19 and Walther P-22 handguns -- lawfully at a local gun shop. On the other, the Virginia Tech campus is a "gun free zone," where students, faculty and staff are forbidden to have firearms, even if they have concealed carry permits.  Mr. Cho lived in a dorm on campus, where he stored his weapons and ammunition.  The school's policy banning guns wasn't very effective in Mr. Cho's case. A fundamental difference between supporters and opponents of gun control is their attitude toward personal responsibility.  Liberals tend to offer excuses for the perpetrators of violent acts (he was poor; his mother drank; his daddy beat him), and to assume that potential victims have no right to play a role in their own defense. Those who think the law abiding should be permitted to carry firearms argue that if some of the students, faculty, or staff had been armed, they could have cut Mr. Cho's murder spree short.

Danny Dietz understood these words of British philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873): "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.  The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing that is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept free by the exertions of other men better than himself." Linda Cuesta and Emily Fuchs are among the "miserable creatures" to whom Mill was referring.  They're trying to keep the city of Littleton, Colorado from erecting a statue in honor of Danny Dietz, a Navy SEAL who was killed in Afghanistan in 2005. Petty Officer Dietz was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, the second highest decoration for valor, because, though badly wounded, he fought on to permit his team mates to escape from an ambush.  Ms. Cuesta and Ms. Fuchs are among a small group of parents who want to keep his home town from honoring Petty Officer Dietz because the statue depicts him with his weapon.

With evil day of April 15 nigh, it is time to demand of the various presidential candidates to show how they propose to lift the unconscionable burden of the IRS off our oppressed shoulders. As is well known, the current U.S. income tax system and the Internal Revenue Service are a huge and unnecessary drag on both the economy and individual liberty. The IRS code and regulations have become hopelessly complex and grown to about 7 million words. No one can possibly understand the present code, including even those at the IRS. Thus no matter how well-meaning, the taxpayer is always at risk for noncompliance -- such laws are characteristics of totalitarian, not free, societies. Such laws need to be abolished.  There are two serious proposals for doing so:  the "Flat Tax" and the national sales tax, better known as the "Fair Tax." (See Flat Tax Revolution by Steve Forbes, and  The Fair Tax Book by Neil Boortz and Congressman John Linder.)

The 15 British sailors and marines held hostage by Iran, and the members of the Rutgers University women's basketball team both have achieved the highest status contemporary liberalism offers: victimhood. Writing in 1852 about the "emperor" Napoleon III (son of Napoleon's younger brother, who ruled France from 1848 to 1870), Karl Marx said history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.  The British hostage crisis moved seamlessly from the one to the other. Just like the Imus-Rutgers crisis.

I've never understood why people listen to smart-aleck jerks on trash radio like Don Imus and Howard Stern who get paid a lot of money to say nothing of substance but say it in a pseudo-clever, hyper-cynical, juvenilely outrageous way. But I sure am enjoying watching him squirm.  This is great karma.  His public persona, with the phony cowboy hat, the gravel voice, the wrinkled glower, was of a super tough guy, as tough as say, the British Royal Marines.  Turns out he's as much of a surrender pussy as they are. Imus should exchange his cowboy hat for a dhimmi head scarf like that worn by Pelosi Galore or Limey sailorwoman Faye Turney to best signify his submission to the gods of political correctness. Now, if that's all this teapot tempest is, yet another example of bottomless PC hypocrisy and Al Sharpton's unceasing effort to prey on white guilt, it'll soon be replaced by the next media frenzy.  The real question is whether the Imus scandal will wreck the presidential candidacy of Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.