Author: Mona Charen

The mother of the 16-year-old pro-life demonstrator who suffered a rough confrontation with a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has shown a rare civility — the spirit liberals are forever bemoaning the lack of but rarely demonstrating themselves. The event: A small group of pro-life activists visited UCSB to demonstrate against abortion. […]

In the Netherlands this week, President Barack Obama confessed a fear: “I continue to be much more concerned, when it comes to our security, with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan.” It would be reassuring to think that the president worries about this (when he’s not busy filling out his NCAA […]

The defamation of Paul Ryan as a racist for noting the multigenerational persistence of joblessness in troubled neighborhoods is more than just another episode of hysterical name-calling by the left. The episode represents, in microcosm, the left’s intellectual bankruptcy. Ryan’s comments were not just true and well-intentioned; they were obviously so. Even if Ryan were […]

The most febrile of George W. Bush haters liked to claim during his tenure that the former president “scared” them. There is far more reason to be frightened by President Barack Obama, because fecklessness and inconstancy trigger wars. The outstanding example of weakness inviting aggression was the conduct of the democracies toward Adolf Hitler in […]

Most Americans who are dissatisfied with President Barack Obama’s leadership are thinking about the poor economy and the misbegotten health care law. That disillusionment is justified — if not tardy. But the foreign policy failures of this administration are likely to be far more consequential, lasting and possibly catastrophic. What we are seeing is the […]

Amy Chua, the “Tiger Mother” who launched a thousand panic attacks among ambitious but lenient parents, is back with an almost-great book about why some groups achieve spectacular success in America while others languish. Written with her husband Jed Rubenfeld (both are law professors at Yale), “The Triple Package” examines a number of groups who’ve […]

Just try to envision the scene: A newly elected Republican mayor of a large American city takes steps to close down some of the best schools serving an almost exclusively minority population. You know how it would go. We’d be hearing that Republicans “hate” the poor. The words “cruel,” “vicious” and “racist” would circle the […]

When seven Democratic senators voted with all of the Republicans to reject Debo Adegbile’s nomination to serve as head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, Harry Reid cried racism. It’s as if Reid was on autopilot, and the aide who usually touches his elbow to correct him wasn’t available. If the aide had been […]

Among the academic set from which President Barack Obama springs, everyone agrees that wars are the result of “arrogance” and bullying by the United States. So concerned was then-Sen. Obama about the potential for U.S. aggression that he declined to vote for 2007 legislation that would have designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist […]

The traditional family is dead, so we’ve been informed. It’s been replaced by blended families, cohabitation, single-parent families, and, if the latest scientific controversy regarding mitochondrial DNA pans out, multiple biological parents for a single child. It’s not wrong to declare that the face of the American family is changing (even if most of the […]

Though you wouldn’t necessarily know it based on news coverage, the United States in the reign of President Barack Obama is enduring the most prolonged period of slow growth and high unemployment since World War II. The president asserts that he saved us from another Great Depression, which, like his claim that the stimulus would […]

There are many reasons President Barack Obama’s presidency has proven so ineffectual even by its own standards — boosting economic growth, improving health care, preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, enhancing America’s world reputation. One reason is that Obama is the most ideologically rigid president in American history. He believes in all the […]

Few have ever heard the name Debo Adegbile. He’s President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the civil rights division of the Justice Department. A few months ago, his nomination would have been a non-starter — there is more than a whiff of radicalism in his past. But we are in a new world. Sen. Harry […]

Remember the IRS scandal? It’s gone. Poof. So flaccid has press interest in the story become that President Barack Obama made bold in an interview with Fox News to say there was not a “smidgen of corruption” in the IRS’s conduct. It requires terrific confidence in the passivity of the press to float the discredited […]

The Obama administration’s response to the Congressional Budget Office’s prediction that Obamacare will cause 2.5 million fewer Americans to work in the coming years is an opportunity for Republicans to seize the moral high ground on the issue of work. Rather than dispute the CBO’s analysis — which would have been awkward, as the White […]

From one point of view, President Barack Obama’s invocation of the hoary “77 cents” myth regarding the relative earnings of women and men was a shallow and cheap political pander. Democrats, eager to maintain their advantage with women voters, stoke grievance. It’s the same playbook they’ve used to solidify their standing with black voters — […]

An administration as image-conscious as this one should have been more careful in its choice of antagonists. The Little Sisters of the Poor is a Catholic charity providing care to the poorest elderly in a hospice-like setting. They serve 13,000 people in 31 countries, and operate 30 homes in the United States. Their faith calls […]

Only 28 percent of respondents to a recent Harris Poll say they plan to watch the State of the Union address. Some of those are lying. It’s clear the Obama charm has worn extremely thin. The rapturous excitement President Barack Obama once elicited was based, at least in part, on the idea that he had […]

“I came from a place of struggle,” insisted Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis after The Dallas Morning News revealed that key details of the life story she had successfully shopped to the mainstream media were false. She wasn’t a 19-year-old mom when she was first divorced, but 21. She lived with her second husband in […]

Everyone knows by now that the governor (and possible presidential contender) can be a hothead. Some have called him a bully. Even if you think that’s too strong, it’s undeniable that a trace of bellicosity has been important to what the professionals like to call his “brand.” Still, he shouldn’t have said what he did […]

The Departments of Education and Justice have teamed up to make the lives of students in tough neighborhoods even tougher. Framed as a measure to combat discrimination against black and Hispanic children, the guidelines issued by the Obama administration about school discipline will actually encourage racial discrimination, undermine the learning environments of classrooms and contribute […]

The New York Times brings us the “next frontier in fertility treatment.” It’s about dissolving the prejudice against transgender people having children. “Andy Inkster, a transgender man, had always wanted biological children. So when he embarked on the transition from female to male at age 18 — changing his name, taking testosterone and eventually undergoing […]

John F. Kennedy broke some sort of record for stating the obvious when he noted that “life isn’t fair.” More evidence for the unfairness of the nation’s evaluations of presidents emerged in a recent Washington Post poll showing that, five years after he returned to Texas, George W. Bush is still blamed by 50 percent […]

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein has found what he thinks is a bright spot amid the gloomy Obamacare news. When you hear what he’s enthusiastic about, you’ll perhaps understand why I wonder if there is any common ground at all between liberals and conservatives. Klein reports that Obamacare’s “biggest success” is that 4 million new […]

“We will restore science to its rightful place … ” So intoned a “dismissive and derisive” President Barack Obama in his first inaugural. It’s been oft quoted in the five years since (frequently by me, I’ll confess) for its arrogance and condescension, which has continuing relevance, but before turning to the left’s latest departure from […]

2013 will be remembered as the year President Barack Obama’s halo went askew. It deserves to be remembered for some other things. It was the year Democrats killed the United States Senate. If you missed the story, it’s not surprising. When Sen. Harry Reid eliminated the filibuster, it was billed as the Democrats’ last-ditch response […]

The wheels began to come off Obamacare in 2011 when the administration announced that the “CLASS Act,” a provision to provide long-term disability care, was, in the words of Kathleen Sebelius, “totally unsustainable,” and would be discontinued. What was the problem? The White House website had boasted: “No taxpayer funds will be used to pay […]

I wouldn’t volunteer to be Phil Robertson’s speechwriter. He chooses his words too carelessly. But with Christmas arriving, it’s worth pausing a moment to consider two other faces of Christianity today. Many who are hostile to religion are eager to portray the “Duck Dynasty” star’s comments about homosexuality as the essence of Christianity. Because the […]

The Black Guerilla Family prison gang controlled the Baltimore City jail. According to a federal indictment, 27 correctional officers, along with 17 others, “were in bed with BGF inmates.” That would be literally and figuratively. Gang leader Tavon White impregnated no fewer than four female guards. One had “Tavon” tattooed on her wrist. Guards smuggled […]

“Our house is as quiet as a tomb.” So said a friend who’s at the same stage of life — that is, a mother of three with only one child still living at home. Her youngest, unlike mine, is an introvert, but like my Ben, he is exceedingly busy in his last years of high […]