Author: Jonah Goldberg

Todd Akin’s idiocy appears to be infectious. The evil genius of the Missouri congressman’s comments is that they lend themselves to such broad interpretations — and misinterpretations. By now his remarks are familiar, but just in case … Akin told a local TV interviewer: “First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from […]

If it hasn’t completely vanished down the memory hole, you might recall that last week a man walked into the headquarters of the conservative Family Research Council with a backpack full of Chick-fil-A sandwiches and bullets, said something like “I don’t like your politics” and then shot the building manager. The suspect, Floyd Lee Corkins […]

In 1995, Barack Obama released “Dreams From My Father,” a compelling memoir full of stories about his life that — though often not exactly true — persuaded many people that this young man had a great political future ahead of him. Nearly a decade later, Obama introduced himself to the country with a stirring speech […]

One of the few things Americans on both sides of the partisan divide can agree on is that this election is shaping up to be vexingly petty. The hunt for gaffes — some real, many imagined — has taken over. Romney’s recent overseas tour, we are told, produced three: an impolitic, if defensible, statement about […]

“A friend of mine, a Hispanic entrepreneur, asked me a question some time ago. He said, ‘When is the last time you saw a Hispanic panhandler?’ I think it’s a great question. I’ll tell you, in my life I never once have seen a Hispanic panhandler, because in our community it would be viewed as […]

This is shaping up to be the second election in a row that’s about someone who isn’t on the ballot: George W. Bush. In 2008, Barack Obama won in no small part by turning the election into a referendum on President Bush and by claiming that a John McCain presidency would amount to a third […]

What drives Barack Obama’s “doubters and haters”? So asks Obama biographer David Maraniss in a recent op-ed article for the Washington Post. By doubters and haters he means the people who think Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., that he’s a secret Muslim or that he’s a closet socialist. He has an answer: “Some of […]

In the aftermath of the Aurora, Colo., slaughter, the question went forth on all of the political chatter shows: “Will this reopen the debate over gun control?” That’s the script. When heinous monsters kill people with guns, we tend to talk about the problem of guns. Or rather, people in Washington, New York and other […]

If ABC News does fire Brian Ross, he could always find a job working for Aaron Sorkin. Ross, a veteran investigative reporter for ABC News, blew it Friday morning when he suggested that the Aurora, Colo., shooting suspect, James Holmes, might be connected with the Tea Party. “There is a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, […]

“If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. … If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. […]

It was one of Barack Obama’s best lines — and best moments — in the 2008 presidential campaign. He had said we could save as much oil as we could get from domestic drilling if everybody properly maintained their cars and got their tires inflated. Now, that was hyperbole. But when conservatives, including his opponent, […]

Those of us who believe the United States would be best served by pulling out of the United Nations and starting up a more morally and politically serious clubhouse for morally and politically serious nations are often accused of tilting at windmills. The phrase “tilting at windmills” was inspired by Cervantes’ novel “Don Quixote,” and […]

Why aren’t more people furious about the Libor scandal? That’s a question mostly being asked on the political left these days, and they’re right to ask it. Here are the basics: Barclays is the second-largest bank in Britain and one of the largest in the world. It has admitted to U.S. and British regulators that […]

The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously remarked that, “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.” I’ve always liked that quote, but I think it misleads. That two […]

In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”), NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” held a seminar of sorts at the Aspen Institute’s legendarily pretentious Ideas Festival. Someone in the audience asked NPR health policy correspondent Julie Rovner this question: “Today’s decision is a positive decision for the estimated […]

Why not just cut open a goat and be done with it? In ancient Rome, a special kind of priest called a haruspex would “read” the entrails of sheep to divine the will of the gods, the health of the growing season, or whatever else was weighing on the minds of men. Because animal guts […]

It’s a sure sign someone is losing when he demands that the rules be changed. That might explain the renewed interest in forcing people to vote against their will. Peter Orszag, President Obama’s former budget director and now a vice chairman at Citigroup, recently wrote a column for Bloomberg View arguing for making voting mandatory. […]

It’s becoming increasingly clear that President Obama is not burdened with too heavy a commitment to honesty. This is hardly a shock about any politician, but revelations of dishonesty hurt some more than others. Announce that Bill Clinton has been speaking falsely, and it hits the ears with as much force as the news that […]

Is it time to start talking about the inevitable demise of the Democratic Party? Since the 1990s there’s been a thriving cottage industry of doomsaying about the Republican Party. The gold standard of the genre is undoubtedly 2002’s “The Emerging Democratic Majority” by Ruy Teixeira and John Judis, which argued that the Democrats were destined […]

My daughter learned a neat rhetorical trick to avoid eating things she doesn’t like. “Daddy, I actually really like spinach, it’s just that this spinach tastes different.” Democrats and the journalists who love them play a similar game with Republicans and conservatives. “Oh, I have lots of respect for conservatives,” goes the typical line, “but […]

The 1990 Italian film “Everybody’s Fine” is one of the most depressing films I’ve ever seen. Starring the late Marcello Mastroianni, it’s the story of an old man who tells his wife he’s going to visit their grown kids. According to their letters the kids are doing great, but he’d like to see for himself. […]

Watching Bill Clinton act as Barack Obama’s “No. 1 surrogate,” in the words of National Public Radio, is as exquisitely painful as watching a runaway monkey with a paintball gun at a museum. Most of the pundits have focused on Clinton’s motivations for refusing to read his lines from the White House script. That’s understandable […]

Compromise has always been a holy word for the Washington establishment. But against the backdrop of ever-increasing anxiety over our fiscal dysfunction, most particularly the next budget showdown, the word has taken on a tone of anger, desperation and even panic. But in all its usages these days, “compromise” remains a word for bludgeoning Republicans. […]

One of my heroes, Irving Kristol, used to say that there’s nothing wrong with the country a bad recession couldn’t fix. Kristol (father of the more famous Bill, by the way) wasn’t hoping for a recession, he was merely making the point that so many of the problems with our culture, both popular and political, […]

It was interesting while it lasted. But it looks like the “green revolution” has entered the long slide into “What was all that about?” In January, the Spanish government removed absurdly lavish subsidies for its renewable energy industry, and the renewable energy industry all but imploded. You could say it was never a renewable energy […]

Here’s a simple suggestion for Mitt Romney: Admit that the Democrats have a point. Right before the Memorial Day weekend, Washington was consumed by a debate over how much Barack Obama has spent as president, and it looks like it’s picking up again. Romney says that he’ll “lead us out of this debt and spending […]

Jack Andraka, a 15-year-old kid from Maryland, just won the world’s largest high school science competition by creating a new test for pancreatic cancer, one of the nastiest and most lethal forms of the disease. According to various news reports, the winning submission at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair is “28 times cheaper” […]

“This is not a distraction, this is what this campaign is going to be about,” President Obama said Monday at the NATO summit. The “this” in question is Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital and what it says about Romney’s economic vision for the country. Team Romney should have seen this coming. If Newt Gingrich […]

This is the season of generational twaddle. At graduation ceremonies across the country, politicians, authors, actors and businessmen take to the stage to tell young people they are fantastic simply because they are young. This year, the ritual is more pathetic than usual because there’s a presidential election in the offing. And because the current […]

Perhaps Mitt Romney played it right when he was meek and contrite in response to the Washington Post’s front-page allegations that he bullied a kid half a century ago in high school. Romney no doubt feels embarrassed by the charges, even if most of us struggle to understand their relevance or gauge their veracity. But […]