Author: Debra Saunders

Abandon all hope, ye who watch the “fiscal cliff” drama. There has been serious pressure on House Republicans to buckle and pass the extension of the Bush tax cuts for 98 percent of income tax filers demanded by President Barack Obama. I would have cried, “Uncle.” Polls show that voters are predisposed to blame Republicans […]

When terrorists attack Americans, Washington should always follow this simple rule: Blame the terrorists first. Retired Adm. Mike Mullen stuck to that rule when he rolled out an independent review, led by former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, on the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. special mission in Benghazi, Libya, that led to the murder of […]

If there is one virtue voters had every reason to expect from Barack Obama, it is a strong sense of social justice. Yet somehow the one-time community organizer has dropped that ball when it comes to the exercise of his constitutional power to pardon individuals who have committed federal offenses. With only one sentence commutation […]

On Friday, a heavily armed young man walked into a Connecticut elementary school and murdered 20 first-graders and six adults before he killed himself. Even in a country inured to gun violence, this crime is too heinous to contemplate. Now the question is: Does Washington pass a bad law just to do something, anything, even […]

“Mandatory sentences breed injustice,” Judge Roger Vinson told the New York Times. A Ronald Reagan appointee to the federal bench in Florida, Vinson was railing against a federal system that forced him to sentence a 27-year-old single mother to prison life without parole because her dealer ex-boyfriend had stored cocaine in her house. Note to […]

When you think about it, it’s amazing that the high-minded swells at the University of California didn’t unveil a new logo sooner. The old logo, which will continue to appear on diplomas and official letters, features the school motto, “Let there be light.” Ancient. An English translation of a Latin phrase. And a book. Dead-tree […]

It has been a banner year for Bill Clinton. The former president delivered a galvanizing speech, deemed by many on the left to lay out the best argument for re-electing President Obama, at the Democratic National Convention. During the Republican primary, Newt Gingrich and other GOP hopefuls frequently talked up the Clinton-era economy and the […]

President Obama won re-election in part because his crack campaign team understood 2012 voters and put together an impressive ground operation. Out of professional respect, Republicans should refrain from cracking jokes about the president’s erstwhile profession, community organizing. That’s what I took away from recordings of Harvard’s Institute of Politics quadrennial presidential campaign autopsy, which […]

On Nov. 16, 2010, an unlicensed driver named Roberto Galo took a left turn at Harrison and 16th streets and hit motorcyclist Drew Rosenberg. After Galo backed over Rosenberg’s body, the law-school student died. A jury convicted Galo for manslaughter and driving without a license. After serving 43 days in jail, he was released on […]

As the “fiscal cliff” looms, editorial writers and Beltway commentators have turned their sights on their favorite enemy — tax-foe Grover Norquist’s no-new-taxes pledge signed by a weighty majority of GOP members of Congress. If Republicans had not been scared into signing the pledge, the pack laments, D.C. pols would compromise, and all would be […]

President Obama likes to complain about gridlock in Washington and blame Republicans for keeping him from doing his job. As president, he has the unfettered executive power to pardon individuals convicted of federal crimes or commute their sentences. Yet, while his 2008 campaign called for a review of federal mandatory minimum sentences to reduce the […]

I am the opposite of a foodie. My favorite green vegetable is the pea — fresh or frozen. My second favorite is celery. I: like:  iceberg lettuce. At restaurants, I have been known to look longingly at the children’s menu. When President George H. W. Bush admitted he did not like broccoli, I felt as one […]

Drew Rosenberg became a victim of San Francisco’s sanctuary-city policies Nov. 16, 2010. The second-year law student was riding his motorcycle in rush-hour traffic, when a car driven by an unlicensed driver made a left turn and hit him. That evening, Don Rosenberg of Westlake Village, Calif., received the phone call every parent dreads. His […]

President Barack Obama’s re-election puts Republicans on notice. No matter what we do, the media will portray us as extreme, venal, stupid or anti-woman — if not as individuals, then guilty by association. The GOP nominee must bear the burden of admittedly medieval statements on pregnancy and rape — uttered by Senate hopefuls Richard Mourdock […]

The government has the power to seize your assets for a crime you did not commit. That’s essentially the argument being made in a Boston federal court this week as the U.S. Department of Justice and Tewksbury (Mass.) Police Department work to take Motel Caswell away from its owner, Russ Caswell. The libertarian-leaning legal team […]

President Bill Clinton used his presidential pardon power in July 2000 to commute the sentence of Serena Nunn, who was sentenced to 15 years for a first-time nonviolent drug offense when she was 19. The pardon shaved three years off Nunn’s sentence. Nunn told me over the phone, “I thought then that it was a […]

NARAL Pro-Choice America is targeting what it calls “Obama defectors”: female voters who supported Barack Obama in 2008 but now are considering voting for Mitt Romney. Defectors? That’s a term usually reserved for Syrian troops who go AWOL or adults who escaped the yoke of authoritarian regimes. The left’s unabashed use of the word “defector” […]

Is there a mainstream media cover-up of an Obama administration cover-up in the wake of the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, which left four Americans dead? Since Sept. 12, the San Francisco Chronicle, where I work, has run about 67 stories, items, editorials, columns and letters that mention Benghazi. In September, I criticized Susan […]

President Barack Obama is charismatic and inspiring, but he won office too early in his career, and he is a victim of his own success. Sweeping into office with majorities in the Senate and House, Obama quickly passed a Democrats-only stimulus package that didn’t deliver as promised. Then he signed a health care package that […]

The League of Women Voters boasts that it presents “unbiased nonpartisan information about elections, the voting process, and issues.” Phyllis Loya always assumed that meant the organization believed in presenting both sides of issues to its members, but recently she discovered she was wrong. In 2005, Alexander Hamilton, 18, and Andrew Moffett, 17, robbed a […]

President Barack Obama won the final presidential debate because it was on foreign policy, and the president’s foreign policy — unlike his domestic spending — is popular with the American people. Mitt Romney didn’t win the debate, but he did undercut Team Obama. Obamaland spent the day hitting Romney for being too warlike, too much […]

When he ran for governor of California in 2010, Jerry Brown traded on cryptic pledges — most notably, “no new taxes without voter approval” — that, like pronouncements by the oracle at Delphi, could mean whatever listeners wanted to hear. Most insiders figured that Brown wanted to raise taxes but was too cagey to tell […]

My theory as to why President Barack Obama fell flat during the first debate: He looked at the crowd and the cameras and thought: “I’ve been saying this stuff for five years, and I don’t believe myself anymore. I don’t have a strong plan to jump-start the moribund economy. Come on, everyone knows that presidents […]

Do Americans want to make Barack Obama a one-term president so that they can replace him with a one-term governor? My biggest beef with Mitt Romney is that he won his way into the statehouse in Boston in 2002 only to use it as a perch to run for the White House in 2008. He […]

Over the next few days, news media and Republicans will share video snippets of Thursday night’s vice presidential debate. Voters will get an extra helping of Vice President Joe Biden chuckling, interrupting, laughing, mugging, smirking and otherwise behaving completely inappropriately. What Team Obama described as “just Joe being Joe” steadily devolved into Joe just being […]

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee needed nine of 11 supervisors to uphold his bid to fire Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi. He lost. Four supes — John Avalos, David Campos, Jane Kim and Christina Olague — voted Tuesday night to retain Mirkarimi. Mirkarimi lost, as well. I understand that the sheriff does not agree with critics who […]

San Francisco City Hall’s vast machinery went into overdrive after police questioned Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi about a Dec. 31 argument during which he bruised wife Eliana Lopez’s right arm. A neighbor videotaped the bruise and later contacted the police. District Attorney George Gascon filed three misdemeanor charges against Mirkarimi for domestic violence battery of his […]

There are a lot of differences between Obamacare and Romneycare, even though President Barack Obama said that the two plans were based on an “identical model” during the first presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday night. “We’ve seen this model work very well,” Obama said, “in Massachusetts.” Wrong, countered Mitt Romney. As Massachusetts governor, he […]

Arnold Schwarzenegger comes across a lot better in his memoirs, “Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story,” than he did during a “60 Minutes” TV interview broadcast Sunday night. His book chronicles all the amazing things he has done. The “60 Minutes” interview shone a light on what the bodybuilder-turned-actor-turned-politician should not have done. On […]

The University of California has reached a $1 million settlement with UC Davis students who were pepper sprayed at an Occupy-inspired Nov. 18 demonstration to protest rising tuition. UC will pay student plaintiffs $30,000 each, and the American Civil Liberties Union will pocket up to $250,000. Everything that is wrong in California resides in this […]