Year: 2012

Labor unions, like the United Nations, are all too often judged by what they are envisioned as being — not by what they actually are or what they actually do. Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people […]

You have to hand it to President Obama and his cabal of re-election strategists; they are masters of illusion. Their newly released Web video and its accompanying campaign slogan, “Forward,” are science fiction-level fantastical. We’re all familiar with Obama’s penchant for deflecting responsibility and blaming his policy failures on George W. Bush, but after more […]

Election Day 2012 will not be a presidential election. It will be a plebiscite. Americans will not only be voting for a president (and a House and a third of the Senate). They will be participating in a plebiscite on the definition of America. If Americans re-elect the Democrat, Barack Obama, they will have announced […]

Mitt Romney can’t get past the Seamus story. In 1983, Romney put the family dog in a carrier on the roof of his Chevy as his wife, their five sons and their luggage squeezed in to the station wagon for a vacation. The dog got diarrhea. Romney has not figured out how to put the […]

In the 1993 movie “Dave” the faux president (played by Kevin Kline) calls in his best friend (played by Charles Grodin) and they stay up all night balancing the federal budget, not by raising taxes, but by cutting unnecessary and wasteful spending. If only it were that easy. Most presidents have talked about cutting spending, […]

Some people enter the public consciousness willingly; others accidentally. But how one gets there has little to do with how one handles it once the national spotlight begins to shine. Some step up. Some melt like an ice sculpture on a hot summer day. Because the spotlight doesn’t turn you into something you’re not; it […]

Last week, Barack Obama delivered speeches at universities in Chapel Hill, N.C., Iowa City, Iowa, and Boulder, Colo. The trip was, press secretary Jay Carney assured us, official government business, not political campaigning. It’s part of a pattern. Neil Munro of the Daily Caller has counted 130 appearances by the president, vice president, their spouses, […]

Former San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Brown is appalled. He didn’t vote for Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, and he isn’t his biggest fan. But when he considers the prosecution of Mirkarimi for bruising his wife’s arm during a New Year’s Eve argument, he is appalled. People lose sight of what types of cases should be prosecuted, […]

Around this time of year, I sometimes hear from parents who have been appalled to learn that the child they sent away to college to become educated has instead been indoctrinated with the creed of the left. They often ask if I can suggest something to have their offspring read over the summer, in order […]