Year: 2013

Hey, pallie, what the heck happened to romance? I use the word “pallie” in deference to the great Dean Martin. A few summers ago, just before the annual Dean Martin Festival in Dino’s home town of Steubenville, Ohio, I decided to compare today’s hits with his. I started with the No. 1 song on Billboard […]

There were two extraordinary disclosures in Thursday’s testimony of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey before the Senate Armed Services Committee. One is that there was no communication between them and Barack Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the seven hours of Sept. 11, 2012, when Ambassador to Libya […]

Infighting continued amongst conservatives and Republicans this week. Karl Rove angered Tea Partiers by implying they don’t know how to pick candidates. Majority Leader Eric Cantor told anyone who would listen Republicans need to learn to craft their message better for a broader audience. Every conservative group and politician is scrambling to find a way […]

The bosses of the Boy Scouts of America surprised everyone this week by postponing their decision on whether to allow gay leaders and gay Scouts to join their ranks. If the BSA’s long-standing ban on gays is lifted by national officials in May, the choice to admit gays may be left to local Boy Scout […]

What was it about the Dodge’ commercial, “God Made a Farmer,” that stirred the souls of so many Americans during the Superbowl? Maybe it was the imagery of the dirt and grit of real America, not the white-washed concrete meccas many of us call home. Maybe for just a moment we were unplugged from our […]

Are you government-approved in every area of your life? As radio host Mark Levin recently pointed out, we all operate within the strangling decrees of oppressive federal regulations: government-approved light bulbs, government-approved washers and dryers, government-approved refrigerators, government-approved automobiles, etc. The list goes on and on. We can’t even go to the bathroom in our […]

Maybe he’s just what America needs. Then again, maybe not. I speak of Vice President Joe Biden – who, according to Politico, is “intoxicated” by thoughts of being inaugurated as president in 2017. He’d be delighted to “finish what Barack Obama started.” Well, who better to finish what President Obama started than Uncle Joe? I’ll […]

“I do skeet shooting.” Of course you do, Mr. President. “I do skeet shooting all the time.” Which is why skeet shooters (not “doers” of skeet or “skeeters” as you call them) took a quick look at your photo and noted your aim is straight ahead, not upward where the clay target would be. They […]

San Francisco passed America’s first ban on plastic bags in chain groceries and drugstores in 2007. In a research paper for the Institute for Law and Economics, law professors Jonathan Klick and Joshua Wright crunched state and federal data on emergency room admissions and food-borne illness deaths and figured that the San Francisco ban “led […]

Buried in Barack Obama’s budget (last year’s, of course, because this year’s is still late) is a common sense idea for health care savings that is worthy of broad bipartisan support and immediate action: an end to the so-called “bed taxes” Medicaid scam. It goes like this: states tax hospitals (who happen to be begging […]

Not a shred of tangible evidence exists to support the widely made claim that if the GOP supports a broad amnesty, they’ll gain Hispanic voters. Nevertheless, the mainstream media, Congress and the ethnic identity lobby insist that the Republican Party is doomed if it doesn’t immediately jump on the amnesty bandwagon. The reverse is true. […]

It is a significant story. One that certainly has national security implications. There’s new fallout from intelligence leaks that occurred last summer – the unauthorized release of sensitive information from what is likely to be the highest level of our government. There are reports now that the FBI and the Department of Justice are looking […]

With the announcement this week of its massive $5 billion lawsuit against ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, the Federal Government took a bold step to squelch any remaining independence of thought or action in the financial services industry. Given the circumstances and timing of the suit, can there be any doubt that S&P is paying […]