Author: David Harsanyi

Pope Francis’ first apostolic exhortation, “Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”), is a beautiful document and a joy to read. I’ll leave its theological implications to those who live in the Roman Catholic Church. What’s got many people praising the pope today, though, is not his plea for good works but rather his critique […]

Common Core, the initiative that claims to more accurately measure K-12 student knowledge in English and math, also encourages children to step up their “critical thinking.” That didn’t stop Education Secretary Arne Duncan, one of Common Core’s salesmen, from telling a group of school superintendents last week that it is “fascinating” to see opposition to […]

We learned a few interesting things from President Barack Obama’s rambling, analogy-filled news conference Thursday. We learned that there was a fumble. We learned that technology is hard. In fact, the president went on for an extended period of time explaining government’s historical struggles with IT issues. Considering that the entire backbone of the law […]

Forget the acceptance speech. If you want an example of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s imposing political IQ, watch the nine-minute impromptu speech he delivered in Sea Bright a few days before the election. The impeccable populist instincts that make Christie such a formidable politician were all in play — authenticity, empathy, combativeness. It’s the […]

You can’t keep your insurance if you like it under Obamacare, because you’re too ignorant to understand what’s good for you. That’s the argument we’ve been hearing from a lot of folks on the left — an argument that pivots from “common good” to soft authoritarianism. President Barack Obama is all in, as well, claiming […]

In a news conference expected to feature a mea culpa for the Obamacare website fiasco, President Barack Obama turned the tables on his political opponents, scolding them for using their supernatural ability to transform the mere hope of failure into a reality. “It’s time,” he implored, “for folks to stop rooting for its failure, because […]

A recent Rasmussen poll found that 1 in 3 Americans would rather win a Nobel Prize than an Oscar, Emmy or Grammy. Though there’s no way to disprove this peculiar finding, I’m rather confident that it’s complete baloney. The average American probably can’t name more than one Nobel Prize winner — if that. Even if […]

Liberal pundits and politicians like to refer to them as “hostage takers,” “anarchists,” “political terrorists,” “lemmings with suicide vests” and so on. Grass-roots conservatives think they’re a bunch of weak-kneed RINO defeatists. They have no charismatic stars, few compelling ideas, no one leading a Gingrich-like grand ideological charge against liberal institutions. There is no cohesive […]

When Sen. Ted Cruz rolled out an epic 21-hour anti-Obamacare “filibuster,” his efforts were ridiculed by journalists across the Twitterverse as a useless exercise in would-be obstructionism. No surprise there. The New York Times editorial board joined in, spitting out an angry editorial accusing Cruz of employing an “aimless and self-destructive Tea Party strategy” — […]

According to reports, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has been urging his colleagues to back off on the budget fight and focus on a debt ceiling showdown. In exchange for an increase in the legal limit on federal government borrowing, Ryan believes that the GOP can demand a series of items, starting with a […]

Being neither a Catholic nor a religious scholar, I’m in no position to offer opinions on the Roman Catholic Church or its doctrine. Yet it seems to me that conservatives might learn a thing or two from Pope Francis when it comes to messaging and tone. The pope, it is widely reported, has “recast the […]

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank recently poked some fun at the GOP and its tenacious — and, evidently, hopeless — insistence on voting to roll back provisions of Obamacare. Surely, you’ve heard about Albert Einstein’s apocryphal quote defining insanity as doing something over and over again and expecting different results. The left, you may notice, […]

You know what would make life a lot easier? A direct democracy. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the man who once argued that weakening the Senate filibuster would “destroy the very checks and balances our Founding Fathers put in place to prevent absolute power by any one branch of government,” is supposedly ready to use […]

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently informed us that a national movement is afoot “to punish the unemployed.” Remarkably, he went on to write, conservatives think the world is far too easy on those who can’t find work, so they’re on a mission to make it worse. The right, you see, is not just […]

Here’s what we know about the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban most abortions after 20 weeks: The Associated Press tells us that the “GOP-led House on Tuesday passed a far-reaching anti-abortion bill.” But don’t worry, Politico adds. It is “largely symbolic: The bill will be dead on arrival in the Senate.” All […]

There are many idealistic progressives who’ve remained opposed to the National Security Agency’s data mining programs regardless of who is in the White House. (We can’t surrender our freedom for safety, you know!) It’s only a shame that these same people have such little reverence for constitutional liberties in other areas of public life. Really, […]

Perhaps these Obama administration scandals (popularly referred to as “so-called scandals” in liberal media circles) lack the explosive drama of a Watergate and the entertainment value of Bill Clinton’s peccadilloes, but for those who are less obsessed with the political consequences and more troubled by constitutional fallout, there’s plenty to see. To begin with, the […]

For all the complaining the left has done about those shadowy outside political groups subverting the democratic process, we recently learned that no one has the means to undercut freedom of expression quite like an enthusiastic government agency. Appropriately, nearly everyone in Washington is professing and/or pretending to be outraged that the Internal Revenue Service […]

So, the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups (or, more precisely, groups displaying a bit too much gusto for limited government) was far more widespread than its initial apology would have led Americans to imagine. Yes, it is disturbing — a dangerous abuse of power, no doubt. What’s more disturbing — or should be, […]

One of the most seductive parts of President Barack Obama’s political message (and the message of progressive Democrats in general) is sympathy for the poor and a willingness to talk about the disparities of capitalism — about the rich being too rich and the poor being screwed. In some ways, it’s the predominant message of […]

So, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg believes that the public’s interpretation of the Constitution must evolve in the face of terror attacks such as the one in Boston. “You’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days,” the man explained, “and our laws and our […]

President Barack Obama has been struggling to wrap his head around the “unimaginable” idea that Congress may “defy” the American people and stop a vote on a gun control package compromise. The notion, he says, resists the “overwhelming instinct of the American people” after the massacre in Newtown, Conn., to pass gun control legislation. Well, […]

Barack Obama’s quest for a “balanced approach” is the lifeblood of his political success — and also its biggest myth. Witness the coverage of the purportedly centrist president’s 2014 budget proposal. “Obama sends Congress $3.77T spending plan, riles both sides,” says one prominent headline; “President Obama’s risky ‘goodwill’ gambit,” begins another fairy tale. “Obama Budget […]

All that money. All that effort. All the sermonizing and bloodcurdling imagery and still, Americans don’t seem to be evolving quickly enough on the environment. A new poll by Pew Research Center, for instance, finds that a wide majority of Americans support building the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport Canadian oil to refineries in […]

P.J. O’Rourke once remarked, “Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.” With all the doom and gloom free-market advocates must be feeling these days, there’s one truth that should bolster their resolve about the future: […]

Republicans now have a comprehensive “autopsy” report detailing some of the perceived and some of the real shortcomings of the 2012 presidential election. And the rather optimistically named Growth and Opportunity Project’s report is jampacked with so many painfully obvious observations that one wonders why it had to be written in the first place. You […]

No worries, America. Debt is a preoccupation of the fringe, a mere distraction for anyone interested in progress. And anyway, as President Barack Obama explained this week, “we don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt. In fact, for the next 10 years, it’s going to be in a sustainable place.” That’s a pretty […]

America is fed up with GOP obstructionism. So undoubtedly, everyone is hopeful that Republicans will allow President Barack Obama’s sequestration plans to proceed unhindered. It’s only right. The GOP, in fact, should quit while it’s ahead. Rather than penning editorials and appearing on Sunday morning talk shows to try to pin the blame on others, […]

Does it bother anyone else that the president of the United States seems to believe that our collective future entails assembling battery parts in a government-subsidized factory for $9 an hour? Is that really what Americans envision for their kids — an assembly line? Because when you look past Barack Obama’s mesmerizingly hollow rhetoric, what […]