Year: 2012

There is a reflexive desire among a certain species of moderate Republicans to be perceived as “civil” by liberal opponents who believe that the mere: existence: of free-market, limited-government conservatism is an indecent affront to humankind. All aboard the U.S.S. Lost Cause. This disastrous, bend-over bipartisanship is a hard habit to break. In 2008, Arizona Sen. John […]

It’s going to be bait and switch for as far as the eye can see. That’s how it looks now that the smoke has cleared after the recent “Mommy War” skirmish over Democratic operative Hilary Rosen’s comment that mother of five Ann Romney had “never worked a day in her life.” There’s no need to […]

Ten years ago, perky actress Jennifer Love Hewitt tried to jump-start a music career with a song titled “Bare Naked.” Now she’s trying that attention-grabbing tactic again with a sleazy new Lifetime series called “The Client List.” She plays a massage therapist who turns tricks. That network has adopted a new slogan: “This is not […]

Dick Clark, who died Wednesday at 82, was called “America’s oldest teenager.” That’s not only because he looked so good late into life, but also because he carried with him the teen memories of those of us who grew up watching “American Bandstand” on glorious black-and-white, small-screen television sets. Every weekday afternoon, I would arrive […]

Liberals have leapt on the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida to push for the repeal of “stand your ground” laws and to demand tighter gun control. (MSNBC’S Karen Finney blamed “the same people who stymied gun regulation at every point.”) This would be like demanding more funding for the General Services Administration after […]

Administration meltdowns are hardly novel. In almost every presidency there comes a moment when sheer chaos takes hold, whether self-induced or as a result of an outside crisis. Vietnam had effectively destroyed Lyndon Johnson by 1967. Watergate unraveled the Richard Nixon administration, as the disgraced president resigned in the face of certain impeachment. Gerald Ford […]

Calling America’s criminal justice system “racist” is not confined to “civil rights leaders” like the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Then-Sen. Barack Obama, during the 2008 presidential campaign, said it, too. Blacks and whites, said Obama, “are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates (and) receive very different sentences … […]

The loudest rhetoric coming from President Obama lately has been about the Buffett Rule, which states that millionaires should pay 30% of their income in taxes. But now it comes out that he and Michelle only pay 20.2% of their income of about $800,000 in taxes! They flunk their own standard by ten points! How […]

There’s a scene in the movie “Pretty Woman” where the kindhearted hooker played by Julia Roberts asks her client, portrayed by Richard Gere: “Who do you want me to be?” Regardless of who she might really be, she realizes that it’s far less attractive than a tabula rasa onto which her client can project his […]

In the 1962 Howard Lindsay-Russel Crouse-Irving Berlin Broadway musical, “Mr. President,” one of the songs in the production is titled “The Secret Service,” which begins, “the Secret Service makes me nervous…” If allegations are true that at least 11 Secret Service agents and several members of the U.S. military consorted with prostitutes prior to President […]

President Barack Obama’s drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, doesn’t like the term “drug war.” He argues that none of the smart guys in law enforcement uses it. Instead, the smart guys talk about middle-of-the-road strategies that emphasize treatment over incarceration — as did both Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush — while they also advocate […]

Some 20 million Americans in primaries and caucuses will take part in selecting the Republican presidential nominee. One person will choose the vice presidential nominee. This has long struck me as absurd: One person choosing someone who, as a result, might become president for as long as 10 years. But just about everyone in politics […]