Author: Debra Saunders

President Barack Obama emerged from his ideological closet last week when he said, “Same-sex couples should be able to get married.” Obama supported same-sex marriage in 1996. He opposed same-sex marriage, however, in 2004 and 2008 and right up until Vice President Joe Biden announced that he is “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex nuptials on “Meet […]

Walid bin Attash used to frequent online dating sites. “Loves to travel — sometimes at a moment’s notice,” bin Attash described himself before his 2003 capture. So writes former CIA veteran Jose Rodriguez in his new book, “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives.” On Saturday, bin Attash was one of […]

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” President John F. Kennedy famously said in his inaugural address. In his bid for re-election, the hope-and-change president, Barack Obama, clearly has decided to ditch JFK’s country-first approach. The Obama-Biden campaign is all about what this country can […]

President Barack Obama was entitled to a victory lap. In August 2007, then-Sen. Obama stuck out his neck when he said that there were terrorists holed up in the mountains of Pakistan and that he was willing to do something about it. “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and (Pakistani) President (Pervez) […]

Mitt Romney can’t get past the Seamus story. In 1983, Romney put the family dog in a carrier on the roof of his Chevy as his wife, their five sons and their luggage squeezed in to the station wagon for a vacation. The dog got diarrhea. Romney has not figured out how to put the […]

Former San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Brown is appalled. He didn’t vote for Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, and he isn’t his biggest fan. But when he considers the prosecution of Mirkarimi for bruising his wife’s arm during a New Year’s Eve argument, he is appalled. People lose sight of what types of cases should be prosecuted, […]

This week, President Barack Obama has been warning students that without his intervention, interest rates for a federal student loan program will double to 6.8 percent July 1. In the process, he’s been misquoting a Republican congresswoman. On Tuesday, he told students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that she has “very […]

The smart thinking among savvy election lawyers and political insiders is that federal prosecutors will have a hard time proving that John Edwards broke campaign finance laws when he ran for president in 2008. Edwards has pleaded not guilty. Election lawyer Jerry Goldfeder captured this view when he said: “With the government having to prove […]

The American Cancer Society, American Heart Association and American Lung Association wrote Proposition 29, the measure on the June 5 ballot in California to increase the state’s cigarette tax by $1, to $1.87 per pack. Lung Association President Jane Warner likes to emphasize the demarcation at play: She’s with the good guys, while the bad […]

President Barack Obama’s drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, doesn’t like the term “drug war.” He argues that none of the smart guys in law enforcement uses it. Instead, the smart guys talk about middle-of-the-road strategies that emphasize treatment over incarceration — as did both Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush — while they also advocate […]

President Barack Obama calls his proposed tax on millionaires the “Buffett rule,” based on financier Warren Buffett’s claim that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Obama claims that the “Buffett rule” asks millionaires to “do their fair share” by paying the same income tax rate that middle-class families pay. Despite a sluggish […]

You have to really work at it to get arrested at a University of California campus protest. University administrators look at protest as part of the education process — and they frequently issue memos stating how much they agree with left-wing causes. Administrators don’t want campus police to arrest students — especially students who attend […]

“Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola is a big shot — and not just in the film world. As a vintner and restaurateur, Coppola apparently sees himself as the: capo di tutti capi: — the boss of all bosses — who owns the Italian dictionary. Last year, Coppola won a U.S. trademark for the phrase “a tavola” — […]

President Barack Obama chastised the media last week. “I think that there is oftentimes the impulse to suggest that if the two parties are disagreeing, then they’re equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle,” the president chided those attending the American Society of Newspaper Editors luncheon. Obama also claimed that he […]

Why is the federal government under President Barack Obama arguably tougher on medical marijuana operations than it was under George W. Bush? That’s the question that anti-drug-war groups have been asking themselves for months. In 2008, antiprohibitionists thought an Obama administration would not tread on medical marijuana dispensaries in states where they are legal. Obama’s […]

It’s not until the final book of “The Hunger Games” trilogy that Katniss Everdeen learns that Panem, the name of her country in the dystopian world, comes from the Latin phrase “Panem et Circenses.” The phrase “bread and circuses,” her mentor tells her, comes from a Roman writer who lamented that “in return for full […]

“Who killed the debt deal?” read The New York Times Magazine as it hyped its Sunday cover story as a “Washington whodunit.” Author Matt Bai explained that “some of Washington’s most connected Democrats and Republicans” didn’t know whose story to believe or what had been on the table after last summer’s “grand bargain” deficit reduction […]

Political activism has drawn the University of California into an academic death spiral. Too many professors believe their job is to “advance social justice” rather than teach the subject they were hired to teach. Groupthink has replaced lively debate. Institutions that were designed to stir intellectual curiosity aren’t challenging young minds. They’re churning out “ignorance.” […]

I hate to sound like a lawyer, but: There’s a big hole in San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee’s suspension of Ross Mirkarimi as sheriff. In written charges that launched an investigation by the city’s Ethics Commission on “official misconduct,” Lee asserted that during a New Year’s Eve argument, Mirkarimi grabbed his wife, Eliana Lopez, “with […]

President Barack Obama keeps trying to give former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney credit for the Affordable Care Act, which tells you how unpopular Obamacare is. Romney, Obama told the public radio show “Marketplace,” “is now pretending like he came up with something different” from Obamacare, which celebrated its second anniversary last week. Like Obama, Romney’s […]

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan introduced a hard-core GOP budget last week. His committee passed the package in a 19-18 vote. Two Republicans voted against it. No Democrats voted for it. Partisanship lives. Last year, the Ryan budget passed the House in a 235-193 vote. No Democrats voted for the GOP plan. Only Republicans […]

“If the history of combating drugs on our streets has shown us anything, it’s that we need to address emerging drug epidemics head-on, before they destroy our communities,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Daily News on Wednesday. Schumer’s new target: synthetic marijuana. Schumer has introduced federal legislation […]

Everything is political in San Francisco. In January, police arrested Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi on domestic violence charges after an argument in which he apparently bruised the right arm of his wife, Eliana Lopez. Mirkarimi’s supporters tried to frame the prosecution as an effort by the city’s political establishment to pick on a rebellious progressive. That […]

California Gov. Jerry Brown likes to talk about “loyalty to California.” For Brown, that means that public people should put aside their partisan interests to do what is best for the Golden State. Last week, Brown failed his own loyalty test. He agreed to a deal to put a tax increase measure on the November […]

In the heat of the Democrats’ “We Love Women” campaign, the White House took a detour to testosterone land Tuesday. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron left their wives behind in Washington as they took a road trip — well, on Air Force One — to catch a men’s tournament basketball game […]

San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi agreed to a plea bargain on a misdemeanor domestic violence charge and two related charges that began with a New Year’s Day argument during which Mirkarimi allegedly bruised his wife’s arm. The district attorney dropped the three original charges; Mirkarimi pleaded guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment. His sentence includes three […]

Rick Santorum has become the alternative to Mitt Romney because the former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania comes across as, to use his words, “the conviction conservative” in the GOP presidential primary. While Romney burned through millions in big-donor contributions, Santorum ran a bare-bones campaign. In December, The New York Times ran a graphic on the […]

While running for governor of California in 2010, Jerry Brown admitted he would “rather have a society where we didn’t have to use death as a punishment.” But because the Legislature and California voters approved capital punishment, “we’ve got to make it work.” Seeing as there are 725 condemned inmates living on San Quentin’s death […]

Though the Obama administration’s decision to force church-based institutions to provide “access” to contraception as part of their health plans was intolerant and unconstitutional and gratuitously divisive, events have proved the move to be brilliant politics. The White House later came up with a phony compromise — one that allows church-affiliated employers to opt out […]

California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom began a San Francisco Chronicle editorial board meeting last week by complaining about his job. In states such as Texas and Maryland, gubernatorial nominees choose their lieutenant governors. Those officers, Newsom argued, are “empowered,” as each is “truly a lieutenant.” Under the status quo with Gov. Jerry Brown, Newsom said, […]