Year: 2011

Bored with the Penn State scandal because it didn’t implicate any prominent Republicans, the mainstream media have suddenly become obsessed with Grover Norquist’s “Taxpayer Protection Pledge.” They are monomaniacally fixated on luring Republicans into raising taxes. If Democrats could balance the budget tomorrow and quadruple government spending, they’d refuse the deal unless they could also […]

Nominating Mitt Romney is sort of like taking grandma’s castor oil. Republicans are dreading the thought of downing their unpleasant-tasting medicine but worry that sooner or later they will have to. By any logical political calculus, the former Massachusetts governor is an ideal presidential candidate. Ramrod straight, fit and well-educated, he knows all sorts of […]

There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Everything demanded by the Occupy Wall Streeters — whether “free” health care, a “world-class education” or a “guaranteed living-wage income regardless of employment” status — costs money. When a CEO makes a lot of money in the private sector, it is because his company — rightly […]

For more than half my life I was a 99-percenter. I kept my first pay stubs in the news business to remind me where I came from and what was necessary in order to get where I am today. In 1975, while working at a TV station in Houston, I wrote a letter to a […]

We are in the midst of the 11th presidential nominating cycle since party commissions and state laws made primaries the predominant method of choosing national convention delegates in 1972. Over the years, politicians and journalists develop rules of thumb to describe how these things work. In this cycle, some of those rules seem to be […]

Thomas Edison invented the incandescent bulb, the phonograph, the DC motor and other items in everyday use and became wealthy by doing so. Thomas Watson founded IBM and became rich through his company’s contribution to the computation revolution. Lloyd Conover, while in the employ of Pfizer, created the antibiotic tetracycline. Though Edison, Watson, Conover and […]

On March 5, my 18-year-old cousin disappeared from her University of Washington campus in Seattle. Marizela Perez — 5-foot-5, 110 pounds, short black hair with brown/red highlights and bangs cut into an asymmetrical bob, wearing a dark hooded jacket, jeans and light brown suede boots — was last seen at a Safeway grocery that fateful […]

We’re proud that America is the land of free speech. That right is recognized in the First Amendment, and we usually take it seriously. It wasn’t always the case. In John Adams’ administration, the Sedition Act made it a crime, punishable by fine and imprisonment, “to write, print, utter or publish … any false, scandalous, […]

Our government has the time to worry about school lunch menus in Boise, Idaho, but the Senate hasn’t found the time to pass a budget in Washington, D.C., in nearly three years. H.L. Mencken famously wrote that every decent man is ashamed of his government. This one gives you little choice. Gridlock is ordinarily the […]

As we approach the festive season — the elongated, enchanting month from Thanksgiving through Christmas to New Years — my mind has been drifting through various memorable past holidays. Some have been personal — the last one with my father before he died. But one that stands out for historic reasons was Christmas 1991. It […]

Do not share this column with your friends, unless you really must. And, please, no Twitter or Facebook. It’s quite embarrassing. Nevertheless, I no longer in good conscience can withhold this information. In the grand tradition of the father of our country, I cannot tell a lie. I have been — and still am on […]

After the national media spent the month of October chronicling the “historic” Occupy Wall Street protesters in what Diane Sawyer bizarrely blurted out as happening in “more than 1,000 countries,” the myth began to melt. Democratic mayors (and even liberal New York mayor Michael Bloomberg) tired of the nonsense and decided to clear the dirty […]

In advance of Tinseltown’s parade of Christmas insensitivities — they’ve already unloaded the marijuana movie “A Very Harold and Kumar 3-D Christmas” — let us stipulate that it’s not just seasonal. The manufacturers of pop culture thrive on offending every traditional value. Start with Pamela Anderson, the ridiculously surgically enhanced former Playboy Playmate, home-movie porn […]

Many people are lamenting the failure of the Congressional “Super Committee” to come up with an agreement on ways to reduce the runaway federal deficits. But you cannot judge success or failure without knowing what the goal was. If you think the goal was to solve the country’s fiscal crisis, then obviously the Super Committee […]

Snorting Hope I’ve been with my boyfriend for three years. The first year was rocky. He was selling drugs, got addicted, and went to prison. Three months after getting out, he relapsed. I persuaded his mother to send him to rehab, and afterward I found us an apartment, where we’ve been for six months. He […]

It’s been a rough month for Canada. America’s biggest trading partner and overall non-jerk country just wants to sell some oil to its friends. Canada is sitting on a black-gold mine, but its oil sales are unable to keep pace with production — a problem that will only increase as the nation further taps the […]

We live in a stressful world, and stress has been identified as a prime health culprit. It reduces productivity and often brings illnesses — including high blood pressure and palpitations of the heart. The experts tell us we should relax, but the question is: how? You might not be able to relax where you are […]

Whether the matchup between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney is the final bout on the GOP primary card is impossible to know. The whole season has been more like professional wrestling than boxing, with weird characters sporting implausible hair appearing out of nowhere to talk smack and explain why they are the greatest in the […]