Author: Larry Elder

The recent “rash” of police officers killing blacks is prompting “civil rights activists” to describe America — despite the election and re-election of a black president — as still a simmering caldron of racism. Never mind that according to the CDC, in 2012 (the most recent year with available data) 140 blacks were killed by […]

Economist Milton Friedman said the promotion of bad policy requires two types of advocates. “Do-gooders,” he said, act in good faith but out of ignorance in promoting counterproductive policies. The second type are the “special interest” rent-seekers, those who stand to personally profit from the scheme. For economist Jonathan Gruber, the primary architect and intellectual […]

“I don’t want to try to read the tea leaves on election results,” said President Barack Obama following last Tuesday’s historic defeat. Who’s he kidding? A month earlier, the President was honest and accurate when he told a crowd at Northwestern University, “I’m not on the ballot this fall … but make no mistake — […]

Former Obama White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, now a political commentator for CNN, casually admitted that, yes, his party uses race to convince minorities that Republicans seek to oppress them. Before the midterm election, Carney said: “Republicans are going to pick up seats in the Senate and the House, and they may win control […]

PunditFact strikes again. For the second time. PunditFact is a so-called truth-seeking column by the Tampa Bay Times. Its website describes the feature as “dedicated to checking the accuracy of claims by pundits, columnists, bloggers, political analysts, the hosts and guests of talk shows.” President Barack Obama, for example, recently made the following patently wrongheaded […]

The NBA’s Atlanta Hawks owner has discovered that he is, Lord help him, a “racist”! How do we know this? He tells us. Owner Bruce Levenson “outed” himself by producing an email he wrote back in 2012. Now, to the untrained eye, this email might read like a standard analysis of how to attract a […]

It’s one thing to watch race hustlers like the Rev. Al Sharpton bellowing, “No justice, no peace.” But when the attorney general of the United States makes false but racially incendiary claims about today’s alleged “pernicious racism,” we are in uncharted territory. Holder complains about different prison rates, different school expulsion rates and longer prison […]

Why has there been no media interest in the police shooting of an apparently unarmed suspect in Salt Lake City? Just two days after the shooting death of Michael Brown, an officer with the Salt Lake City Police Department shot and killed an unarmed 20-year-old. The Salt Lake City Police Department equips some of its […]

Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson is neither Mark Fuhrman nor Barney Fife. Based on what has been presented so far in the media, not even an O.J. Simpson juror would find Wilson guilty of murder. Many simply have chosen to believe that teenager Michael Brown was “executed” or “shot several times in the back” […]

After our ill-advised complete withdraw from Iraq in 2011, President Barack Obama now sends hundreds of “advisors” and orders airstrikes. Let’s re-visit. When, in 2002, then-Illinois State Sen. Obama gave his famous anti-Iraq War speech, he argued that America had no business in this “dumb” war. Period. Obama considered Iraq a blunder of epic proportions, […]

In 1964, Malcolm X chastised black people for their blind allegiance to the Democratic Party. He said: “You put them first, and they put you last — ’cause you’re a chump. A political chump! … Anytime you throw your weight behind a political party that controls two-thirds of the government, and that Party can’t keep […]

Last week, by 2-1 vote, a Washington, D.C., appellate panel ruled that the Obama administration unlawfully changed Obamacare. Meanwhile, on the same day, on the same question, a panel from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the other way. This issue is headed for the Supreme Court. Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies […]

Secretary of State John Kerry is the latest to think the power of his personal diplomacy can bring “peace to the Middle East.” But, once again, when one side publicly calls for the destruction of the other, what is there to discuss? Hamas, designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S., has governed the Palestinian […]

Attorney General Eric Holder, in a recent interview, reiterates the theme heard from the very beginning of President Barack Obama’s administration: opposition to Obama’s agenda equals racism. “There’s a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that’s directed at me (and) directed at the president.” What is Holder’s proof — to the extent that […]

The stock market reached a record high last week, closing over 17,000 for the first time. Good news, of course. As President John F. Kennedy famously said, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” But it sure helps if you own a boat. In this case, the “boat” would be the dynamic American stock market. But […]

Obama’s poll numbers dropped below those of former President George W. Bush. By the end of Bush’s term, focus groups were telling pollsters they despised the very four-letter word B-U-S-H. When John McCain faced Obama in 2008, Democrats gleefully slammed McCain’s quest as the “third Bush term.” Given Obama’s light resume and see-no-flaws cheerleading by […]

1) In 2011, President Barack Obama pronounced Iraq “self-reliant and democratic,” and “a country in which people from different religious sects and ethnicities can resolve their differences peacefully through the democratic process.” In 2010, Vice President Joe Biden called Iraq “one of the great achievements of this administration.” Obama ignored pleas by top generals who […]

President Barack Obama, on Dec. 12, 2011, called Iraq “self-reliant and democratic.” He praised that country, calling it a “new Iraq that’s determining its own destiny — a country in which people from different religious sects and ethnicities can resolve their differences peacefully through the democratic process.” Obama said, “I have no doubt that Iraq […]

How critical to the passage of Obamacare was the 2010 “score” given the legislation by the Congressional Budget Office? Recall the President’s signature legislation barely passed, and squeaked by along party lines — without a single Republican vote. Before the vote, congressional Democrats waited for the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office to “score” the legislation. How […]

The Washington Times reports that the Pentagon pretty much knew the whereabouts of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in recent years. So why didn’t they rescue him? Quoting a former intelligence official, the Times said: “Military commanders were loath to risk their people to save this guy. They were loath to pick him up and, because of […]

Elliot Rodger’s story is not one of an untreated, mentally ill, white mass-killer who illegally acquired fully automatic “assault weapons.” This mixed white and Asian 22-year-old bought his firearms legally, did not use a long-arm or “high-capacity” weapon and had been in therapy since the age of 8. Half his murder victims were killed by […]

I’m old enough to remember when only black people called black people “Uncle Tom.” Democrats, however, long expanded the category of who can play the race card and on whom. Call them equal opportunity race-card players. As with black race-card hustlers — say the Revs. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or any given host on MSNB-Hee-Haw […]

The Beverly Hills Hotel, owned by the sultan of Brunei, is a ghost town. The sultan recently imposed Sharia on the citizens of this small country in Southeast Asia with a population of less than 500,000. The law includes the punishment of death for any who engages in the “crime” of homosexuality or adultery. Jay […]

In 1996 California voters passed Proposition 209, which prohibited discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity or sex in admissions to public college and universities. But the moment 209 passed, UCLA, according to a new book, set about figuring ways around it. “Cheating: An Insider’s Report on the Use of Race in Admissions at […]

A secretly taped conversation between long-time L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling and his then-girlfriend was released. The NBA has now banned Sterling from the league. The commissioner recommends that Sterling sell his team. Goodness, what happened?   The old guy had a quarrel with his girlfriend, which she apparently — surreptitiously — recorded. The most […]

Rubin “Hurricane” Carter has died. Sympathetic obituaries say things like “wrongfully convicted” or “exonerated.” But the black middleweight-title-contending boxer was neither. Carter, in 1966, murdered three people. But Hollywood later made a movie, “Hurricane,” in which Denzel Washington brilliantly portrayed Carter as a wrongfully convicted near-saint, hounded mercilessly by a determined, racist detective. Excellent moviemaking, […]

If the Rev. Al Sharpton, the bigoted, anti-Semitic, non-tax paying race-hustling poverty pimp, had any credibility left, it just vanished. The beneficiary of a lifetime of passes from our race-conscious mainscream media, Sharpton ran into an outlet not afraid of him — The Smoking Gun. They obtained material that exposed Sharpton as an FBI “informant.” […]

For reasons perhaps only psychiatrists understand, Democratic presidents seek, at last, finally and forever, to “solve” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Maybe it’s something akin to discovering that ultimate, clean-burning, renewable source of energy. Then when the talks collapse, an inevitability as long as one side refuses to accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, […]

A quick way to kill debate is to accuse your political adversary of “lying.” Still, it’s hard to figure out what else propels President Barack Obama to falsely assert, yet again, that employers rip off female employees by paying them 23 cents less per dollar than men –: for doing the same work. In his last […]