Author: Jonah Goldberg

Hey, Jeb, Ted, Rand, Marco, Bobby, Chris and the dozen or more others I’m forgetting, here’s something to write on your bathroom mirror in 2015 and beyond: The “P” in POTUS stands for “President,” not “Pundit.” I understand that the Seinfeldian faux-holiday Festivus is behind us, but I want to get at least this one […]

Going by objective standards of reason and fairness, Al Sharpton is not to blame for the assassination of two New York City cops over the weekend. Nor are New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, President Obama or any of the protesters and activists they supported, encouraged and allied themselves with. […]

The first issue of Captain America came out on December 20, 1940. It shows Cap slugging Adolph Hitler in the mouth. Good stuff, but note the date. America wouldn’t enter World War II for about another year. At the time, many Americans wanted to stay out of another European war. And here was an American […]

For a long time I resisted the word “torture” when discussing the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used against high-value captives in the war on terror. I don’t think I can do that anymore. The report put out by Dianne Feinstein and her fellow Democrats may be partisan, one-sided, tendentious and “full of crap,” as Dick Cheney put […]

At a time when Ferguson, Missouri, has been under siege, the president unilaterally brought millions of illegal immigrants “out of the shadows,” the so-called Islamic State beheaded another American, an architect of Obamacare admitted the law was conceived and birthed in deception, and the secretary of defense was unceremoniously dumped, it’s no wonder that a […]

Reasonable people can disagree on whether racism was involved in the tragic death of Eric Garner. My own suspicion is that this misfortune could have transpired just as easily with a white man resisting arrest and/or a black cop choking him. And even though lots of people don’t want to hear it, reasonable people can […]

Rolling Stone has published an incredible story about a rape at the University of Virginia, sending shock waves around the country. But when I say the story is incredible, I mean that in the literal, largely abandoned sense of the word. It is not credible — I don’t believe it. I’m not saying that the […]

On Tuesday, the day after it was announced that Officer Darren Wilson would not be charged in the slaying of Michael Brown, the president for a second time called for calm. His statement was measured, careful and responsible. He condemned violence and looting while acknowledging the legitimate concerns animating the protestors. He wasn’t all that […]

I understand we’ve turned the page to the next controversy — Obama’s unconstitutional immigration pander — but I’d like to dwell a little longer on the previous travesty. Obama administration health-care consultant Jonathan Gruber was discovered to have boasted that Obamacare was designed to exploit the “stupidity” of American voters and elude honest accounting by […]

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta project accomplished one of the most impressive scientific feats in our lifetime. They essentially moved a clunky machine from one speeding bullet onto another, by remote control, from 310 million miles away. It’s hoped this achievement will help usher in a new era of space exploration by teaching us how […]

In the old Soviet Union, Kremlinologists would read the state party newspaper Pravda not so much for the news it contained, but to glean what the commissars wanted readers to believe the commissars were thinking. The closest we have to that in America is the New York Times. Obviously, it’s not a state organ and […]

We know Barack Obama is good at least one thing — getting Barack Obama elected president of the United States. How good he is at being president of the United States is a subject of considerable debate. A less debatable proposition: He is just plain awful at running a political party. People often forget that […]

          “To everyone who voted,” President Obama said in his press conference on Wednesday, “I hear you. To the two-thirds of voters who chose not to participate yesterday, I hear you, too.” Let me begin with a bit of a rant. In a sense, this is the last piece of the […]

“You’re the butcher, or you’re the cattle.” That appears to be the theme of the fifth season of AMC’s “The Walking Dead, the most successful TV series about zombies since C-SPAN covered the Reform Party convention in 2000. It’s a grim yet compelling drama that at times prides itself less in creative writing than in […]

What day is it?” “It’s today,” squeaked Piglet. “My favorite day,” said Pooh. As a proud member of the “don’t just do something, sit there” school of politics, I don’t fret much about partisanship and gridlock. Partisanship and gridlock aren’t bugs of our constitutional system, they’re features. And while everyone likes to see their preferred […]

Never let it be said that Mother Nature doesn’t appreciate irony. A new study led by researchers at Occidental College and the University of California at Santa Barbara has found that the oil platforms dotting the California coast are fantastic for sea life. In a 15-year study, researchers found that the ecosystems that build up […]

Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes is running for U.S. Senate in the great state of Kentucky. She is a woman of conviction, of substance, of principle. “I’m not an empty dress,” she insists, “I’m not a rubber stamp, and I am not a cheerleader! I am a Clinton Democrat.” I’m old enough to remember when “Clinton […]

While disposing of a body in a mass grave, one man in a hazmat suit turns to another and asks, “When did we run out of body bags?” “Two days ago.” Fortunately, the scene is only from the movie “Contagion,” though it’s probably close enough to what is going on in parts of West Africa […]

In news that must have left my friends at the New York Post — never mind the gang at “The Daily Show” — with a renewed confidence that ours is a just and beneficent God, the White House has been caught covering up a scandal involving a Cartagena hooker. The phrase “Cartagena hooker” alone is […]

Barack Obama had a choice between liberalism and the Democratic Party. He chose the latter and it cost him dearly. Liberalism, as an ideology, insists that government can do good and great things for the people and the world, if the people running the government are smart liberals. The Democratic Party says the exact same […]

It’s funny how President Obama is always talking about “I” and “me” whenever it makes him look good, but suddenly it’s “they” and “we” when mistakes are made.. For instance, for years Obama boasted about how he ended the Iraq war and how he withdrew American troops. “You know I say what I mean and […]

Last Friday, the White House announced its “It’s On Us” initiative aimed at combating sexual assaults on college campuses. I’m all in favor of combating sexual assault, but the first priority in combating a problem is understanding it. That’s not the White House’s first priority. Roughly six weeks before Election Day, its chief concern is […]

On Thursday, Australian authorities claimed they thwarted a plot by supporters of the Islamic State to grab random people off the street and then behead the captured citizens on videotape. Australia’s attorney general said that the massive raid, the largest counterterrorism operation in the nation’s history, involving more than 800 police officers and raids of […]

By all means, let’s destroy Islamic State, but let’s talk about it first. We are in a very strange place right now. President Obama is rushing into a war he doesn’t want to fight. He can barely bring himself to call it a war. Obama didn’t merely ignore the threat of Islamic State for the […]