Author: Debra Saunders

In March, President Barack Obama teased the notion of making voting mandatory. “It would be transformative if everybody voted,” he said during a Cleveland event. “That would counteract money more than anything.” Spokesman Josh Earnest walked back the idea the next day, after whetting the appetites of liberal activists. Too often, partisans talk about tinkering […]

On Monday, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina announced her entry into the 2016 GOP presidential primary. Fiorina skipped the standard ballroom announcement and went straight to people’s computer screens to announce her decision, and then she followed up with interviews on TV news and comedy shows. It was a smart move, as she is a […]

“Peaceful protest turns violent,” read the San Francisco Chronicle headline about the May 1 protest in Oakland that ended badly. Police arrested about a dozen people after activists trashed new cars and smashed bank windows. I love that headline. It makes it seem as if it’s an anomaly when an Oakland protest ends with errant […]

“It’s time to end the era of mass incarceration,” Hillary Clinton proclaimed in a scheduled criminal-justice speech Wednesday that gave her the opportunity to address sentencing reform in the context of the troubles in Baltimore. It was a lukewarm effort in keeping with Hillaryland rules. Say as little as possible. Offend no interest group. Let […]

San Francisco is foodie heaven. If you want to eat out, you will never lack for options. That’s the plus side. On the downside, Ess Eff menus are getting so precious they take the fun out of eating. You practically need a doctorate to read a menu in this town. I studied Latin and speak […]

“We must change the decisions we are making by changing the people who are making them,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., proclaimed in his presidential campaign kickoff Monday. It was impossible not to think of when Barack Obama in 2008 — a freshman senator with an impressive personal story — chose to challenge presumptive nominee Hillary […]

My friend Julia died as we knew she would. Cancer had ravaged her body for a decade. She no longer could breathe. She was at home, under hospice care, when she asked for a dose of morphine that she knew would kill her but also keep her final moments free of pain. I mention Julia’s […]

The assisted-suicide movement is the rare self-proclaimed civil rights movement that exists to cater to the wishes of affluent Americans. On Tuesday, the California Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on SB 128, a bill to legalize assisted suicide in the state. (Proponents don’t like the word suicide, so they call the measure the “End […]

Rand Paul’s entry into the 2016 Republican presidential primary is good for the GOP. I won’t proclaim that Paul, 52, has the gravitas or character to occupy the Oval Office — that remains to be seen — but I do believe that all the other Republican hopefuls should watch and learn from Kentucky’s junior senator. […]

Just last month, Apple chief executive Tim Cook made headlines when he wrote a piece in The Washington Post, panning Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act as “very dangerous.” Apple, Cook wrote, does not believe in discrimination and strives to “do business in a way that is just and fair.” This month, the San Francisco Chronicle’s […]

Imagine a government energy program that is such a disaster that the Environmental Working Group and the American Petroleum Institute both oppose it. The anti-poverty group ActionAid USA wants to get rid of it, as does the pro-business Competitive Enterprise Institute. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., wants to end it. So does Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. […]

In commuting the sentences of 22 federal drug offenders Tuesday, President Barack Obama has begun to take the unfettered power of executive clemency embedded in the Constitution to the place where it belongs. “I’ve been a cynic on the Obama administration for a while,” University of St. Thomas School of Law professor Mark Osler told […]

“There’s something very dangerous happening in states across the country,” Apple chief executive Tim Cook warned Monday in a Washington Post opinion piece against Indiana’s newly passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It matters not to the corporate big shot that President Bill Clinton signed a federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993 (which current House […]

The libertarian-leaning me believes an American employer should be able to hire pretty much anyone he or she wants to hire. But the taxpaying me believes that if the federal government limits immigration yet creates a special visa program for highly skilled foreign workers with the assurance that the program will not cut into the […]

San Francisco’s board of supervisors is considering a proposal to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in some city elections, showing how desperate the left wing of the city’s left wing is to retain their ebbing power in City Hall. Clearly Supervisor John Avalos and ally Supervisor Eric Mar fear they need to register minors […]

Back when political polls were reporting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was likely to lose power in Tuesday’s election, I figured that Bibi must have overplayed his hand when he spoke before Congress at the invitation of House Speaker John Boehner and against the wishes of President Obama. I assumed he had miscalculated, and […]

Last year, Congress passed an amendment that barred the Department of Justice from using federal dollars to prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries in states that have legalized them. Last week, three senators proposed a measure to clean up the federal-state medical marijuana mess once and for all. Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Rand […]

As Hillary Clinton took questions from the media about the personal email account she used as secretary of state, I felt a flashback coming on. She said she simply chose to use a personal account with a personal server “for convenience.” I felt I had traveled back in time to 1998. Washington was screaming across […]

Orinda, California, Mayor Steve Glazer says that he is running for a state Senate seat vacated by now-Rep. Mark DeSaulnier “as a pragmatic problem-solver rather than a partisan.” In my line of work, I hear that sort of stock phrase all the time; I take it with a grain of salt. In Glazer’s case, however, […]

Former four-star general and CIA chief David Petraeus pleaded guilty to one count of retaining classified information for handing over information in personal notebooks to his biographer girlfriend in 2011. He agreed to pay a $40,000 fine; prosecutors said they would recommend two years’ probation instead of prison, although a judge could decide otherwise. It’s […]

Nancy Pelosi was near tears. After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress on Tuesday, the House minority leader sent out a press release informing the media, “I was near tears throughout the Prime Minister’s speech — saddened by the insult to the intelligence of the United States” and “saddened by the condescension toward […]

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie gave his first-date speech at the California Republican Party’s spring convention in Sacramento on Saturday. Like a big man on campus, Christie essentially was telling the party faithful: I know you’ve heard some bad stuff about me, but here’s why you should go out with me. Three years ago, Christie […]

“I am under ‘investigation,’” professor Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado Boulder posted on his blog Wednesday. The top Democrat on the House Committee on Natural Resources, Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, sent a letter to university President Bruce Benson that asked the school to provide its financial disclosure policies and information on […]

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had out-of-towners tell me they think San Francisco is a breathtakingly beautiful city — so why is it that City Hall hasn’t done more about baseball pitchers chewing tobacco at city ballparks? No, wait. I can tell you. I’ve never heard that. I have heard countless complaints from […]

On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton addresses the Watermark Silicon Valley Conference for Women. The former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state comes to the Bay Area at a time when I hear more people, on the left and the right, cringing at the prospect of Clinton’s heading the Democratic ticket next year — and, […]

When Republicans challenged Obamacare in the courts, they sought to overcome the hurdle of persuading the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a program passed by Congress and enacted by a president. The legal challenge by Texas and 25 other states to the Obama administration’s executive actions on immigration is different. Congress never passed a Deferred […]

The times they are a-changin’. This week, a Republican congressman from Orange County, California, joined Oakland medical marijuana dispenser Steve DeAngelo to urge President Barack Obama, a Democrat who started out as a critic of the war on drugs, to curb his Department of Justice. They want Obama to make his prosecutors stop trying to […]

The University of California Student Association has approved a resolution to direct UC regents to divest financially of the governments of Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Israel, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, Sri Lanka and the United States. “UC students did not give consent to invest in governments engaged in violence against others,” proclaimed the Resolution Toward Socially Responsible […]

I work on a treadmill of shameless self-promotion. Most mornings, I’ve tweeted before 6 a.m. When I’m not working on my column, I’m often blogging, posting on Facebook, jabbering on the radio (less often on TV) or speaking at a venue such as the Commonwealth Club of California. I don’t want to bore anyone. I […]