Category: Column

SCOTUS Ignites New Level of Resistance My sofa felt pretty comfortable. Ninety percent of the time, I’m on the road as chairman of the Conservative Campaign Committee. This was a rare occasion to be in town for the Volusia 9/12 Project monthly meeting. I saw the email reminder about the meeting earlier that day and […]

The Fourth of July is a time to remember Americans who have contributed much to their country, and this Fourth weekend is a good time to remember two such Americans who died in recent weeks — and whom I’d had the good fortune to know and joust with intellectually since the 1970s — Allen Weinstein […]

My fellow Americans: If you see something, say something — even if it means CAIR will threaten to sue you. Multiple federal agencies and the Department of Defense are on high alert for a possible Islamic terrorist attack on U.S. soil this Independence Day weekend. They’ve increased security at military bases and sent bulletins to […]

Ben Wattenberg died this week at the age of 81. He gave me my first job in Washington, as his research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. (I returned to AEI as a fellow a few years ago, my office just a few doors down from where Ben used to work.) […]

As I’ve said, I was very alarmed, though not particularly surprised, by the two Supreme Court decisions last week in which the court’s majority blithely bastardized the English language, the Constitution, the rule of law and the very idea of truth in order to further advance the progressive agenda in this nation. But what troubles […]

The Fourth of July we celebrate this weekend heralds a document proclaiming both our nation’s independence and our unwavering commitment to freedom. It’s true, of course, that our nation was far from perfect in pursuit of this ideal. The continuation of slavery in a land proclaiming that all men are created equal is a lasting […]

Downtown San Francisco feels like a large public toilet without enough janitors. More than once this year, I’ve seen men drop their pants in public places — including at Fifth and Market — to leave a smelly mess on the sidewalk. You can walk for blocks and never escape the stench of stale urine. At […]

Now that the Export-Import Bank’s charter has expired, it’s time to examine other programs that should follow in Ex-Im’s footsteps. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a federal agency that subsidizes U.S.-owned overseas businesses with taxpayer-backed financing, is ripe for termination when its charter expires on September 30. Immediately focusing on a new target on […]

For the second time, Chief Justice John Roberts breathed life into Obamacare and rescued it from the Constitution. In the first big Obamacare ruling, Roberts called Obamacare a “tax,” and therefore lawfully enacted as consistent with the powers of Congress — and not a violation of the Commerce Clause. Never mind the Obama administration sold […]

Am I allowed to repeat myself when it comes to the negotiations over the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal? Why not, since that is what Iran’s leaders are doing. They are repeating themselves by refusing inspections of some of their facilities where only a fool would believe nuclear weapons are not under construction. They are repeating themselves […]

California keeps reminding us what has gone astray with America in recent years. The state is in the midst of a crippling four-year-old drought. Yet California has built almost no major northern or central mountain reservoirs since the New Melones Dam of 1979. That added nearly 3 million acre-feet to the state’s storage reserves — […]

WASHINGTON, DC, July 1, 2015 — The U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage decision last week puts America’s religious liberty at risk, say 11 groups who will defend that liberty in front of the Court’s steps today. In a press conference scheduled for 10:00 this morning, international news agency LifeSiteNews and 10 leading marriage, family, and traditional […]

America is still reeling from the horrific Charleston, S.C., massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that claimed the lives of nine innocent people. The last thing the community and our country need are hysterical journalists compounding the pain with inflammatory reporting on an unsubstantiated “epidemic” of black church arsons. On Monday, a Baltimore Sun […]

Have you seen the new Jurassic Park movie, “Jurassic World?” It had the biggest opening of any movie in history. The movie tells how a reckless biotech company releases dinosaurs that kill its customers. Its tale of heroes vs. villains made me think about how America has changed since our independence, the anniversary of which […]

The nation’s demagogues and constitutionally ignorant are using the Charleston, South Carolina, AME church shooting to attack the Second Amendment’s “right of the people to keep and bear Arms.” A couple of years ago, President Barack Obama said, “I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for […]

You can almost hear the sighs of relief coming from the liberal and establishment media after the Court ruled for Obama in the King v. Burwell case. “Thank God that’s over,” they seem to say. “Now the Obamacare issue has run its course. We won’t have to face it in 2016.” The media has proclaimed […]

Consumers and businesses won big on Monday, when the Supreme Court struck down an Environmental Protection Agency regulation on coal plant emissions because the EPA failed to consider whether the costs outweighed the benefits. Not the cost to government, mind you. The cost to us, as consumers and business owners, to comply. The Court’s 5-4 […]

The four dissenters in Obergefell v. Hodges lucidly expressed the profound offense against constitutional law and representative democracy the ruling represents. In short, five lawyers, accountable to no one, chose to legislate on a profoundly consequential matter that the people were just beginning to address through democratic means. As Chief Justice Roberts wrote: “Who do […]

Late last week, after the Supreme Court of the United States declared without any Constitutional basis that the Constitution mandates same-sex marriages be state legitimized across the nation, a disquieting level of triumphalism broke out from coast to coast. The president shined lights representing the gay pride rainbow flag on the White House — a […]

PARIS — French police arrested the chief executive of Uber France and the general manager of Uber Europe this week for “inciting illegal employment.” Translation: Uber is disrupting a system in which a cartel deprives the free market of alternatives while imposing widespread consumer misery. But, hey, at least the distribution of such misery is […]

Many people are looking at the recent Supreme Court decisions about ObamaCare and same-sex marriage in terms of whether they think these are good or bad policies. That is certainly a legitimate concern, for both those who favor those policies and those who oppose them. But there is a deeper and more long-lasting impact of […]

Last week’s Supreme Court rulings on Obamacare (Burwell) and same-sex marriage (Obergefell) were enormously dispiriting for reasons beyond the substantive issues of socialized medicine and same-sex marriage. I couldn’t be more opposed to socialized medicine, which I believe is the endgame of Obamacare, and I am opposed to the societal sanctioning of same-sex marriage, but […]

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the redefinition of marriage seals the end of America as the Founders envisioned it. From well before 1776 until the second half of the 20th century, the moral values of the United States were rooted in the Bible and its God. Unlike Europe, which defined itself as exclusively Christian, […]