Author: Debra Saunders

“60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan had to walk back her reporting on the attack that left Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods dead in a Benghazi, Libya, mission Sept. 11, 2012. “We realized we had been misled,” Logan said of discredited source Dylan Davies on Sunday. No lie. CBS News […]

What do Tuesday’s resounding re-election of Republican Chris Christie as governor of Democrat-friendly New Jersey and the excruciating defeat of tea party stalwart and gubernatorial wannabe Ken Cuccinelli in once reliably Republican Virginia say about Republican chances of retaking the White House in 2016? Christie won by 22 points after bad-mouthing the federal government shutdown, […]

The math for the Affordable Care Act in California is stark: Kick 1 million Californians off the private health care plans they already have at the end of the year so that a million Californians can enroll in subsidized Obamacare plans; another million or so can stay on their old plans, and the state will […]

Former New York police Commissioner Bernie Kerik handed “Today” show host Matt Lauer a nickel. Kerik knows a few things about money and crime. After President George W. Bush nominated him to be homeland security chief, the 9/11 hero lied to federal investigators. Instead of joining the Bush Cabinet, Kerik pleaded guilty to two counts […]

Apparently, President Barack Obama was fibbing when he said in 2009 that under his Affordable Care Act, “if you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.” On Wednesday, Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler rated that pledge as a four-Pinocchio whopper. On Monday, Peter Lee, the executive […]

When opinion shifts in modern America, the change can be like a flash flood. Three years ago, 54 percent of California voters rejected Proposition 19, which would have legalized the recreational use of marijuana. Last year, Colorado and Washington voters approved measures to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Last week, Gallup released a poll […]

During the Obama years, a potent mythology has taken root in Democratic circles. In this narrative, Democrats are victims, martyrs even, whereas Republicans are wily tricksters. Last year, there was a hyped-up fable about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. President Barack Obama told “60 Minutes,” “When I first came into office, the head of the […]

It took the awful deaths of Bay Area Rapid Transit engineer Chris Sheppard and contractor Laurence Daniels on Saturday to end a BART strike that never should have happened in the first place. Thank you, BART unions, for putting the public’s best interest last. Winners and losers: –Winners Transit strikes. They work. Before BART workers […]

At an event Monday to boost the Affordable Care Act after its glitch-rich rollout, President Barack Obama asserted that his signature health care plan is a hit because “prices have come down.” That’s the administration’s big lie: that Washington can mandate universal health care with beefed-up benefits and somehow the plan will save everyone money. […]

On Sept. 17, Army veteran Robert Van Tuinen decided to celebrate U.S. Constitution Day by handing out copies of the Constitution at Modesto Junior College, where he is a student. If he were at the University of California, Berkeley or another politically correct campus, some liberal students probably would have picked an argument with him […]

What do you call waiting for the end of a partial government shutdown while waiting to see if Congress raises the debt limit while waiting to see if Bay Area Rapid Transit workers strike and Alameda-Contra Costa Transit workers join them? Waiting for the apocalypses? Or: Bargaining bad. In Washington, a rump group of Republicans […]

The Republican Party is paying a steep price for the House Republicans’ decision to follow Sen. Ted Cruz’s self-destructive crusade to partially shut down the government in a reckless gambit to defund Obamacare. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll completed Oct. 9, 70 percent of respondents disapproved of congressional Republicans, whereas President Barack Obama’s […]

To some outside California, Gov. Jerry Brown always will be kooky Gov. Moonbeam, no matter what he does. To California Democrats, however, Brown is the political mastermind who persuaded voters to approve a ballot measure to increase taxes — no small feat, considering that 65 percent of voters rejected a similar measure by Gov. Arnold […]

The founts of wisdom on the Affordable Care Act spent the past year anguishing over whether “young invincibles” — young adults with low medical costs and no health coverage — would buy policies under the act. If young adults instead chose to pay the $95 fine, experts predicted, Obamacare would falter. Since the Oct. 1 […]

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama sold his signature universal health care plan with the promise that it would “cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.” Now that the Affordable Care Act exchanges are open for business, voters are finding that the biggest problem with Obamacare is […]

The feud between Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and David Vitter, R-La., doesn’t have the import of the federal government shutdown, but it does shine a light on the Beltway’s partisan rancor. If there is a lesson for Washington politicos from this mud fight, then it is this: Don’t try to be clever. There will be […]

When you write a column, you hear from people who think they have a clever magic-wand solution to intractable political issues. Washington has run up $17 trillion of debt? Pass term limits. Throw the bums out. Take away their pensions. Sure, these ideas sound as if they might help, and it must feel good to […]

In Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, reporter Stephanie M. Lee delivered a down-the-middle story about a Bay Area couple, Jennifer Benito-Kowalski and Steve Kowalski, 40 and 41 — who paid an Indian woman to help them attain their goal of making a baby with their own DNA. To many moderns, this arrangement presents a win-win formula. […]

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has been working on a bill to shield reporters from heavy-handed federal officials who seek to use their power to uncover information about whistle-blowers and leakers. Given the Obama Department of Justice’s recent adventures in surveilling reporters’ phone logs, you might think that for her trouble, Feinstein would be the object […]

When House Republicans voted to cut the food stamp program by $39 billion over the next decade, Democrats charged GOP cruelty. Strategist Donna Brazile wrote that the move was a “heartless act,” not “an example of government tightening its belt or making tough choices.” In fact, the proposed cut presents a classic example of government […]

Liz Cheney, political pundit and daughter of a former vice president, might have trouble unseating three-term GOP Sen. Mike Enzi in the Wyoming primary next year. On vacation in Casper last week, I had dinner at Bosco’s, where owner Susan Bosco proudly displays signed photos of local political luminaries — including Enzi, Sen. John Barrasso, […]

In 2012, the federal government paid some $5 billion in direct payments to farmers of wheat, corn, barley, oats, cotton, rice, soybeans, peanuts and other crops — except the recipients cannot all be farmers. According to the Environmental Working Group, 116 of those tillers of the earth reside in San Francisco. For their farming activities, […]

Sen. Barbara Boxer had been appealing to my better instincts as she never had before. The Democrat from California provided a crucial vote in favor of a resolution sought by President Barack Obama to authorize the use of military force in Syria. Boxer voted for military force even though that position was highly unpopular among […]

Will the California Legislature point a giant middle finger at Bay Area commuters by naming the western span of the Bay Bridge after San Francisco Chronicle columnist Willie Brown even though, as San Francisco’s mayor, Brown unconscionably delayed reconstruction of the seismically challenged eastern span and helped drive the project’s cost from $1.5 billion to […]

“Richmond rhymes with enrichment,” Gayle McLaughlin, the mayor of the California city, boasts on the city’s website. In reality, Richmond does not rhyme with enrichment. The slogan, however, is apt for the first American city poised to seize mortgages by eminent domain. City pols claim that the scheme is legal because the city would pay […]

In 2007, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a congressional visit to Damascus, where she met with Syrian President Bashar Assad. “We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace,” Pelosi famously proclaimed. She met with Assad in defiance of then-President George W. Bush and his efforts to […]

Why would someone who opposes draconian federal mandatory minimum sentences oppose efforts to cut California’s prison population by about 9,600 inmates? Because the federal system and the California system are two different animals. U.S. prosecutors have been known to throw the full weight of the federal government toward putting low-level, nonviolent offenders away for decades. […]

As mayor of Oakland, Calif., Jerry Brown wanted an “icon” to replace the seismically challenged eastern span of the Bay Bridge and to highlight the “splendor” of the East Bay. “It’s unfortunate that pencil pushers, bureaucrats and political yahoos don’t understand quality and try to block quality to save a few bucks,” observed the Oracle […]

Here’s how you know the California prison inmate hunger strike is a stunt, if a dangerous stunt: The strike to protest security housing units in California prisons began with 30,000 participants; Jay Leno, Susan Sarandon and other celebrities signed a letter that denounced the SHU as “solitary confinement” and “torture.” As of Thursday, the count […]

Like another erstwhile freshman senator, named Barack Obama, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, blew into Washington and promptly began eyeing the Oval Office. Also like Obama, the Cuban-American Cruz has to suffer the charge that he’s not really American and hence not presidential material. Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, to an American mother and a […]