Would you like to build your own gun? There are plenty of ways to do so, legal and otherwise. Last week, a group called Defense Distributed offered you a new one: It published instructions for creating a plastic firearm using a 3-D printer. One guy even fired a real bullet with it. Not long afterward, the U.S. State Department demanded that the group take the blueprints down, alleging that they may violate export-control laws. Defense Distributed complied, but not before at least 100,000 people

I’m an immigration lawyer by profession. It makes its way into the conversation every month or so, either directly (as when I’m pleading with my conservative friends to realize that branding someone “illegal” is a political death wish) or indirectly (as when I use examples from my own life to point out how hypocritical the left is ― and has always been ― about human rights.) That column I wrote comparing the young Pakistani girl shot through the head by the Taliban to condom crusader Sandra Fluk

President Barack Obama’s suggestion that he may favor greater U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas is a welcome sign. More exports would spur more domestic production and help balance U.S. trade. LNG exports could also help counter the unsettling increase in American exports of coal to Europe. In 2012, the U.S. sent about 66.4 million short tons (60.2 million metric tons) of coal across the Atlantic, 23 percent more than the year before. Exporting coal works against the progress the U.S. has ma

Members of the Class of 2013, I salute you. As everyone keeps telling you, you are graduating at a difficult and even frightening time. I wish it were otherwise ― that my generation was bequeathing you a finer world. We aren’t. The world into which you are entering is rich with challenges. Many are scary. This does not make your generation unique. Through the nation’s history, America’s colleges and universities have sent forth graduates in times of war, of fear, of economic risk. Eighty years a

The booming stock market is of little solace to middle-class Americans, who continue to express concern about their financial security and the overall condition of the U.S. economy. The poor are even more bearish, surveys show. In fact, after falling significantly behind in the Great Recession, less-affluent Americans have continued to lose ground in what has technically been the economic recovery. In the years since the recession officially ended in June 2009, the mean net worth of households i

President Obama’s powerful indictment of the continuing scandal that is the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay is an encouraging sign that he hasn’t forgotten his campaign pledge to close the facility. But to suggest that his hands are tied is misleading.Yes, a politically motivated Congress has thwarted the president’s plan to move detainees to the mainland and otherwise has sought to obstruct his efforts to move them out of Guantanamo by placing onerous restrictions on transfers and prohibiting tri

President Ma Ying-jeou sat at the head of large conference table in his presidential office, and inscribed on the wall behind him was the name of his nation: Republic of China. Beside that, in parentheses and smaller letters, was acknowledgment that he was actually speaking from the island of Taiwan. Ma was participating in a teleconference, addressing an audience at Stanford University and other U.S. locations.Ma, like every Taiwanese leader for the last 60 years, clings to the conviction that

The best way to prevent miscarriages of justice is to let the law be what it is. This is what Shen Deyong, executive vice-president of the Supreme People’s Court, says in a signed article commenting on several verdicts that were overturned recently. In one of them, a villager called Zhao Yanjin in North China’s Hebei province was wrongly sentenced to life imprisonment for hiring someone to kill a child in 2001. She was held in custody for a total of 10 years until she was acquitted early this ye

The People’s Verdict is in. And the people have delivered their mandate to Malaysia’s ruling party Barisan Nasional to run the federal government for another five years.The margin of 133 to 89 signifies the close fight between the Barisan and Pakatan Rakyat. There will have to be serious soul-searching from both sides for the real reasons for the results, especially when they fall short of their own expectations.Be that as it may, the 44-seat majority is a comfortable enough margin for any gover

Almsgiving should be encouraged insofar as it serves its intended purpose, i.e. to help the poor and the needy, and it simply must not be taken for granted. Refusal to give change to someone who asks for it is sometimes justified if the potential giver knows the bum has a rich, big-spender uncle or suspects that the money may eventually go to a “big brother” to finance his bad habits. On the other hand, it must be considered “bad form,” or something worse, if the bum, or his big brother, attacks