Ethan Epstein
The Washington Times
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Past articles by Ethan:
Donald Trump never actually banned flights from China or Europe. Why?
On Saturday, Italy announced that 793 people had died that day from COVID-19, the coronavirus that originated in China that has rapidly spread across the world. That was up from 627 deaths that had occurred on Friday and 427 on Thursday. The death toll is now well over 5,000 in that country alone. → Read More
RIP Todd Bol, Inventor of ‘Little Free Libraries’
He built the first one in 2009. Now there are 75,000 of them. → Read More
Senators Shouldn't Harass Their Constituents on Twitter. Marco Rubio Just Did.
That means you, Marco Rubio. → Read More
Millennials Are Buying Homes
The would-be Dian Fosseys who have built a cottage industry of issuing pronouncements about the Millennials In The Mist have suffered yet another blow. For the better part of a decade, these generational gurus have been prattling on about how those of us born, roughly, between 1980 and 1995, don’t… → Read More
San Jose Mayor Justifies Mob Violence
Thousands of Americans participated in that most benign of civic rituals in San Jose, California, on Thursday night: seeing a presidential candidate speak. Of course, that candidate was Donald Trump, so as these engaged citizens streamed out of the arena, they were subjected to astonishing levels of violence. An angry mob pelted eggs, tomatoes, and bottles at the spectators—as well as the… → Read More
Streetcars Are Greatest Thing Ever, Argues VP of Streetcar Building Company
The Washington, D.C. streetcar – a 2.2.-mile, slower-than-walking form of transportation that took nearly than a decade and $200 million to complete – is not often heralded as an urban planning success story. Even the partisans of new urbanism – the types who loathe cars and venerate all things rail - have been critical of the project. But here comes an op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post arguing… → Read More
Why the Obama-Che Photo Was Even Worse Than It Looked
One of the first places I visited on a government-sanctioned educational tour to Cuba several years back was the Plaza de la Revolucion, a hideous expanse of concrete at the center of Havana that makes, say, Tiananmen Square look positively charming. It was there that President Obama was featured in that now-infamous photo in front of a giant mural of Che Guevara. It was unfortunate that the… → Read More
Why The Obama/Che Photo Was Even Worse Than It Looked
One of the first places I visited on a government-sanctioned educational tour to Cuba several years back was the Plaza de la Revolucion, a hideous expanse of concrete at the center of Havana that makes, say, Tiananmen Square look positively charming. It was there that President Obama was featured in that now-infamous photo in front of a giant mural of Che Guevara. It was unfortunate that the… → Read More
The AP Says Arrests of Tourists In North Korea Are 'Rare.' That Isn't Remotely True.
The Associated Press's story on the 15-year prison sentence that the North Korean government has handed down to American college student Otto Warmbier contains a strange assertion. Arrests of tourists [in North Korea] are rare, the AP says. To even the casual news observer, that would seem like an odd statement: In the past two years alone, at least four American tourists (Jeffrey Fowle, Matthew… → Read More
Doctors Without Freedom
Right after half-heartedly condemning Castro's Cuba for being authoritarian and undemocratic at Wednesday night's debate, Bernie Sanders made a pivot that was predictable to anyone who has ever eavesdropped in a coffee shop in Sanders's adopted state of Vermont: He rhapsodized on the wonders of Cuban health care. Cuba has made some good advances in health care, Sanders said. He then added,… → Read More
America's China Syndrome Helps Explain Trump's Popularity
China may still lag far behind the United States in total gross domestic product, but that's not how most Americans see it. According to a new Gallup survey, fully 50 percent of Americans view China as the world's leading economic power; only 37 percent of respondents think of the United States as number one. Perhaps that's why Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has made such an… → Read More
Did Trump Pivot Too Early?
On a lackluster evening for Donald Trump, one fact stands out as particularly ominous: Trump won a massive victory among people who voted early in Louisiana. But among those who went to the ballot box on election day itself, Trump tied with Ted Cruz. That strongly suggests that Trump's campaign is taking on water. Trump's evidently declining support probably has something to do with the… → Read More
Vapes on a Plane
The war on things that happen to look like smoking has reached 33,000 feet. The Department of Transportation announced on Wednesday that it would ban the use of e-cigarettes on commercial airplanes. (Many airlines had already taken the action, before the government decided to step in.) It's not entirely obvious why the DOT took this step; unlike actual cigarettes, e-cigs contain no tobacco. They… → Read More
Trump Has Won More Votes Than Romney Had At This Point in 2012
Donald Trump has yet to win an outright majority in a primary or caucus – though he's getting closer, pulling in 46 percent of the vote in Nevada. But he's winning massive numbers of gross votes. Mitt Romney won Nevada's caucus in 2012 with about 50 percent of the vote. He did so by pulling in roughly 16,000 total votes – roughly the same number that second-place finisher Marco Rubio pulled in… → Read More
Richardson to the Rescue?
Former United Nations ambassador Bill Richardson has long been boastful of his close relations with the North Korean regime. During his misbegotten 2008 presidential campaign, Richardson bragged often of his tight relations with the Kim dynasty, among sundry other tyrannies, including Cuba and Sudan. Voters were apparently meant to find it a good thing that he was friendly with various murderous… → Read More
Obama Snubs Fellow Nobel Winner
Last week, the United States Senate unanimously passed a bill to rename the street that the Chinese embassy sits on in Washington from International Place to Liu Xiaobo Plaza. Liu, of course, is the dissident Chinese intellectual who has been imprisoned since 2008 for signing the pro-democracy Charter 08 manifesto. This week, President Obama signaled his intention to veto the bill should it… → Read More
Trump's Business Model on Display In New Hampshire
They say that past performances are the best predictors of the future. So far, the 2016 elections are proving the veracity of that point. Hillary Clinton, for example, previously presided over an incompetently managed presidential campaign, which leaked like a sieve. That's happening again. Ted Cruz, meanwhile has a history of over-performing electoral expectations; that, too, is a theme, so… → Read More
Seoul Survivor
Print newspapers remain highly influential in South Korea, none more so than the Chosun Ilbo, the country's leading daily. (To put its dominance in context, consider that the Chosun Ilbo has a print circulation of 1.8 million, while the U.S.'s top-selling newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, sells about a million print copies each day. The United States, by the way, has more than six times the… → Read More
Trump's Unconventionality Finally Fails Him
Why does Donald Trump's respectable finish in the Iowa caucuses look so much like a stinging defeat? After all, for a conventional candidate, Trump's performance could easily be spun as a victory. In profoundly hostile territory – Iowa's GOP voters are deeply religious, while Trump is … Trump – the New York property magnate came in second. Indeed, he won 15,000 more votes than Rick Santorum did… → Read More
Is It Safe to Visit North Korea? Don't Ask the Associated Press.
Is it safe to travel to North Korea? (Let's leave the question of ethics aside; that's more open and shut: No, it is not ethical to travel to North Korea.) The Associated Press delved into the question this week, in light of the ongoing detention of an American college student who has vacationing in the totalitarian country over the New Year. With thousands of westerners now visiting North Korea… → Read More