Year: 2015

New York Times, Monday, Nov. 16, 2015: “BRUSSELS — The French authorities have concluded that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 27-year-old Belgian man who has fought in Syria for the Islamic State, was the mastermind of the Paris terrorist attacks.” Franco-Belgian yet cosmopolitan in culture, Abaaoud’s great-grandfather, Anselmus Aaster, opened the first chocolate shop on the Rue […]

Many people naturally assume that since I work in political journalism, I must breathe, drink and eat politics 24/7/365 — including on the Thanksgiving holiday. The thought of it gives me indigestion. Self-absorbed creatures who have no life outside the Beltway world are the most tiresome ogres. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest advised Americans […]

What might have happened if a few of the 1,500 concert attendees in Paris’ Bataclan theater had guns? The terrorists had time to kill, reload and kill again. The police unit didn’t come for more than a half hour. If a few people in the theater were armed, might they have killed the killers? We’ll […]

Recent events at the University of Missouri, Yale University and some other colleges demonstrate an ongoing ignorance and/or contempt for the principles of free speech. So let’s examine some of those principles by asking: What is the true test of one’s commitment to free speech? Contrary to the widespread belief of tyrants among college students, […]

If you’re at risk of prostate cancer — in other words, if you’re male — the best place to be is the United States, where survival rates are highest in the world. But not for long, if the Obama administration gets its way by curtailing a test that flags prostate cancer before it spreads. The […]

Four in 10 young Americans have no idea what America is. That’s the takeaway from a new Pew Research poll showing that 40 percent of Americans aged 18-34 say that the government should be able to prevent people from making “statements that are offensive to minority groups.” This same group of young people has granted […]

I liked Spike Lee’s new movie “Chi-Raq,” the story about the gang wars and all the lives lost in the war zone that is Chicago. The politicians and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel won’t like it. But that’s OK. After it was over, I thought there was one more thing Lee could do for Chicago. He […]

PARIS — The U.S. State Department has issued a blunt worldwide travel alert for Americans. Nothing cuts through murky rhetorical waters and diplomatic platitudes like a terrorist’s bomb. Suddenly, reasonable people are faced with a stark choice between keeping safe and taking the sort of laissez-faire approach to security that the Paris attackers were able […]

Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin have a couple things in common. Both are domestic authoritarians and both believe themselves to be dictators of their respective countries. Beyond that, they are pretty much polar opposites.   Putin, the ex-KGB agent fancies himself a tough guy, a man’s man, spending a great amount of time shirtless and […]