Year: 2013

I’m annoyed that so many Hollywood celebrities hate the system that made them rich. Actor/comedian Russell Brand told the BBC he wants “a socialist, egalitarian system based on the massive redistribution of wealth.” Director George Lucas got rich not just from movies but also by selling Star Wars merchandise. Yet he says he believes in […]

Let’s examine a few statements reflecting a vision thought to be beyond question. “The world that we live in is beautiful but fragile.” “The 3rd rock from the sun is a fragile oasis.” Here are a couple of Earth Day quotes: “Remember that Earth needs to be saved every single day.” “Remember the importance of […]

As he has done before, whenever President Obama is in political trouble, he seeks to rally his base by a particular brand of populism designed to appeal to those who have an impaired memory of his previous diatribes. But as he rails against income inequality, seeks a raise in the minimum wage and tries to […]

Tell Santa to bring President Barack Obama a stocking stuffer: a copy of the U.S. Constitution with the words “Laws be faithfully executed” underlined in red. Those words define the president’s most important duty. But Obama, himself a constitutional lawyer, is ignoring the Constitution and governing like a dictator. His latest ploy exempts unions from […]

The death of iconic South African leader Nelson Mandela prompted torrents of gushing praise from world leaders and media this week. Mandela was widely depicted as a near-flawless human being. BBC presenter Evan Davis said Mandela ranked near Jesus in the “pantheon of virtue”; Bono said Mandela was “stubborn ’til the end for all the […]

PARIS — When U.S. President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, it marked the first time that a local “community organizer” had risen to the highest office on the planet. I wasn’t entirely optimistic. Granted, the geopolitical competition (Russia) is also led by a community organizer of sorts, Vladimir Putin, except that the community he […]

Newspapers are among the last places in America that have close to zero tolerance for [expletive deleted]. I could give you a hint about what word is between the brackets, but I’d best not for fear of arousing the ire of the editing Comstocks. About twice a year, I quote a profanity from a public […]

The Center for Disease Control is the national public health institute of the United States, a Federal Agency — who is wrong about urging Americans to pursue vaccination for colds. One of America’s leading doctors,: Dr. Chauncey Crandall: says “the cold vaccine is only moderately effective and gives a false sense of security, particularly to the elderly. […]

As Christmas approaches, the shopping mall can become a shopping maul. One of the ways of buying gifts for family and friends, without becoming part of a mob scene in the stores, is to shop on the Internet. However, for many kinds of gifts, you want to be able to see it directly, and perhaps […]

Advocates of Common Core State Standards love to point out how 45 states and the District of Columbia have voluntarily adopted this new national public school regimen. What they’re not telling you, however, is how federal and state funds were used to muscle its adoption or how expert reviews and efficacy shortfalls have prompted political […]

I have long contended that President Obama is in charge on his big-ticket agenda items but disengaged as to policy and implementation details. Recent news reports vindicate my position. A Government Accountability Institute report found that Obama has not had a one-on-one meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius since the passage of […]

Lately, I’ve been hearing from readers who are among the million Californians who had private health care plans, received cancellation notices and now have to buy new coverage. Some figured that if they signed up with their old providers — Blue Shield or Anthem — they’d have access to the same doctors and hospitals. Not […]

President Barack Obama spoke about income inequality in a recent address but failed to mention one of the most significant contributors to rising inequality in America: the marriage gap. Jobs are changing, international competition has driven down wages, top executives are pulling down enormous salaries, but it is cultural patterns — specifically personal decisions about […]

The only way to understand what is happening to America in our time — and for that matter, in Europe since World War II — is to understand the left. And one way to understand the left — and its enormous appeal to many decent people — is to understand what it learned from World […]

Watching the twists and turns of American foreign policy while reading Christopher Clark’s “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914” is an unnerving experience. Clark’s history, unlike many on the outbreak of World War I, starts not with the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914, but a dozen […]