Year: 2014

The CIA reported this past Thursday that the number of Islamic State fighters is actually three times what previous government estimates were, according to Fox News. A spokesperson for the intelligence agency explained that the radical Islamic group boasts between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters across Iraq and Syria. Those numbers fly in the face of […]

Iraq, immigration, inversion. On all three of the issues referred to, President Obama finds himself forced by events to do something he dislikes — and he’s in trouble with much of his Democratic Party base for doing so. Obama seemed ill at ease before the camera and teleprompter on the evening of Sept. 10. Sending […]

Can President Barack Obama lead a coalition to degrade or destroy the terrorists of the Islamic State? He stared resolutely into the camera from the White House last week, talking of war and threats. He’s a good talker. He enunciated. But the ideas weren’t clear. And that lack of clarity is frightening. And after the […]

On November 30th, voters in Switzerland will head to the polls to vote in a referendum on gold. On the ballot is a measure to prohibit the Swiss National Bank (SNB) from further gold sales, to repatriate Swiss-owned gold to Switzerland, and to mandate that gold make up at least 20 percent of the SNB’s […]

Prior to his annual steak fry, retiring Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said this about Hillary Clinton to Dan Balz of The Washington Post: “…she is much more progressive in her thoughts and her inclination than most people may think.” Liberals have embraced the word “progressive” because it sounds more forward-looking than “liberal,” which has a […]

This is my third consecutive column about the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black youth, by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. I have focused on this because the circumstances that led to this tragedy point to more than narrow, parochial concerns of low-income minority communities. They point to things fundamentally wrong in […]

Remember the Terminator movies and the evil electronic overlords of Skynet – the computer system that became self-aware and launched the war against humans? We aren’t there…yet. But we are fast approaching the point where people simply aren’t necessary to conduct a significant amount of business and life. There won’t be a single day – […]