Author: David Harsanyi

Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was finally asked a tough question during NBC’s commander-in-chief forum, so naturally the establishment media immediately coagulated around the notion that NBC’s Matt Lauer was the worst moderator ever. An Air Force and Navy veteran, who said he held “the top secret sensitive compartmentalized information clearance,” said to Clinton regarding her […]

San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick won’t stand for the national anthem, because, well, we’re not exactly sure why. Sorry, but if you’re going to wear a shirt praising Fidel Castro and then protest the lack of “freedom, liberty and justice for all” in America, then thinking people have no cause to take your arguments […]

The problem with environmentalists isn’t merely that they have destructive ideas about the economy, but that so many of them embrace repulsive ideas about human beings. Take a recent NPR piece that asks, “Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?” If you want to learn about how environmentalism has already affected […]

So a giant, rent-seeking insurance company is accused of having threatened to leave Obamacare’s health insurance “marketplace” if the government didn’t approve its giant merger. If true, this would be the least surprising development in the past six years of Obamacare fiascos. Any giant regulatory scheme bringing together big business and big government inevitably leads […]

The real political tragedy of Donald Trump isn’t only that he’s annihilating the Republican Party — which, let’s face it, was the stated point of his campaign when it started — or that he says odious and dangerous things all the time. It’s that his presence allows most of the media to ignore the corruption, […]

When David Duke announced last week that he would be running for Senate in Louisiana, GOP Chairman Reince Priebus swiftly sent out a tweet assuring America that the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard’s “hateful bigotry [has] no place in the Republican Party & the RNC will never support his candidacy under any circumstance.” No […]

Say what you will about Ted Cruz’s politics or personality, but it takes a special kind of chutzpah to stand up at a convention — in front of millions of viewers — and unfurl a comprehensive attack on the party’s nominee. It’s also unprecedented. On Wednesday night, Cruz gave a commanding and inclusive speech about […]

At the funeral service for five slain Dallas cops, President Barack Obama delivered another one of his needlessly politicized lectures. As is customary these days, those who were critical of his rhetoric were branded racists and unthinking haters. That’s one theory. Another one is that people may be put off by Obama’s grating habit of […]

Believe it or not, you can simultaneously believe a number of things about the Iraq war and its aftermath. You can believe Saddam Hussein wasn’t merely a “bad guy,” but that he harbored terrorists and offered them safe haven and material support. You can believe that the Bush administration genuinely believed Saddam possessed weapons of […]

Attorney General Loretta Lynch tells us that her meeting with Bill Clinton aboard a private jet on the Phoenix airport tarmac was “primarily social” — you know, just two Democrats swapping stories about their grandkids and whatnot. The nation’s top law enforcement official and the former president and husband of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee […]

Nothing stirs the passions of Democrats these days quite like the prospect of gutting the Constitution. In an unprecedented act of pretend political bravery, House members held a catered sit-in, demanding that Republicans allow a vote to strip away protections of Second, Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the Constitution. It was quite the scene. There […]

After a meeting with the National Security Council to discuss the Orlando massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in American history, President Obama was angry. He’s more impassioned than we’ve ever seen him. He’s lashing out. Because you know what really grinds his gears? Republicans. “‘That’s the key,’ they tell us,” Obama said, eviscerating the GOP. […]

We recently discovered that Peter Thiel, the libertarian billionaire co-founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook, bankrolled wrestler Hulk Hogan’s lawsuits against the blog network Gawker Media. Now, as someone who considers himself a near-absolutist on free speech, I’m open to hearing arguments for why we need tort reform in these sorts of cases […]

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, one of the few openly authoritarian organizations functioning in the United States, once sued the Food and Drug Administration for refusing to regulate Americans’ salt intake. No worries. This week, the Obama administration finally embraced CSPI’s junk science and allowed the FDA to set new “guidelines” to […]

Don’t think of the 2016 presidential election as a popularity contest. Think of it as a race to see which candidate the American electorate detests slightly less. These days, there’s a lot of excitement in Trumpland. Since March, the billionaire has picked up 11 points in The Washington Post/ABC News national poll, nudging him slightly […]

  “How Much It Sucks to Be a Sri Lankan Worker Making Beyonce’s New Clothing Line,” reads a recent headline on VICE’s “Broadly” channel. Well, it probably sucks, a lot. But for many Sri Lankans, the only thing suckier than working at a “sweatshop” is not being able to work at one. This, after all, […]

Some of us care little about the debate over public bathrooms. We do, however, care about the ongoing destruction of federalism, individual choice and good-faith debate in America. One reliable way to quash dissent and force moral codes on others is to liken a cause to that of the 1960s civil rights fight, because every […]

When your choice is two reprehensible, corrupt and immoral demagogues, you can always pick the ethical way out and choose none of the above. The Republic will survive an election cycle. The Republican Party is a different story, however. For those who are idealists about the Constitution — and there are probably far fewer than […]

Republicans, I’m told, were elected to Congress by the people, and yet they’ve done absolutely (SET ITAL) nothing. (END ITAL) This indictment has now mutated into “Republicans gave President Obama everything he wanted,” i.e., the GOP and Obama were basically colluding against the American voter this whole time. Republicans have been dreadful on plenty of […]

Humans have been using euphemisms ever since Adam first “knew” Eve. In politics especially, obfuscating and twisting the meaning of words has been going on forever. But today’s debates aren’t only littered with rhetorical distortions; in some ways, many of Democrats’ most potent arguments are built on corrupt language. One word that’s really getting a […]

Secretary of State John Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum in Japan this week, a month before he and President Obama will meet foreign ministers at the G-7 Summit. Reuters reported that he witnessed “haunting displays [of] photographs of badly burned victims, the tattered and stained clothes they wore and statues depicting them […]

Whether you believe House Speaker Paul Ryan is a squishy Republican unworthy of the nomination, or you think he’s the sort of rational conservative voice that could save the GOP from doom, there’s one thing he most certainly isn’t: Donald Trump. Then again, the idea that “Donald Trump is just Paul Ryan on steroids,” as […]

For now, we live in a nation with a well-assimilated, diverse and patriotic Muslim population, but the situation could always change. Like Europe, we could embrace immigrants from places teeming with radicalism. We could disincentivize assimilation. We could dismiss anyone who has legitimate concerns about these threats as bigots. After every terrorist attack, much of […]

Donald Trump booster and radio talk show host Laura Ingraham recently urged the GOP’s remaining candidates to avoid a “bloodbath” at the Republican National Convention. “I don’t see what the point of all this is,” she explained. Well that is a great point, actually: taking the nomination away from Trump. Sen. Ted Cruz could still […]

As I was listening to Donald Trump’s performance art/news conference the other night, I wondered whether it was even worth writing another column about the assorted lies and myths he peddles on trade. I don’t think so. Trump promises to bring Third World jobs back to an advanced economy, and millions of voters — left […]

There’s still time to turn it around, of course. But now that many conservatives are moving from the bargaining phase to the depression phase of the Kubler-Ross model, we can begin to grapple with the prospective reality of a Trump-vs-Hillary general election. Whether you’re an ideological conservative, a proponent of limited government or someone who […]