Category: Column

There are no sure things in politics, but Hillary Clinton is the closest thing to a sure thing to become the Democrats’ candidate for president in 2016. This is one of the painful but inescapable signs of our time. There is nothing in her history that would qualify her for the presidency, and much that […]

Of all the annoying things President Obama does, one of the worst is his hectoring Republicans and conservatives for their partisanship when he is the quintessential divisive partisan. The Washington Post reports that the day after the shootings in Charleston, South Carolina, Obama began the day angry and frustrated and ended it admitting that he […]

It is fitting, if late, that South Carolina’s political leaders seem ready to evict the Confederate flag from the grounds of their state Capitol in response to the vile shooting that left nine African-Americans dead in Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church last week. In a Monday news conference while flanked by Democrats and fellow Republicans, Gov. […]

In an expression of extraordinary magnanimity, relatives of the black church members murdered in Charleston, S.C., arose one after the other to tell Dylann Roof, the murderer of their loved ones, that they forgive him. That I do not agree with what they did in no way diminishes my ability to be moved by their […]

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” — Martin Luther King Jr. It is such a rare act that most do not know how to respond, except in stunned silence. Relatives of the nine people murdered while attending a Bible study and […]

Hillary Clinton has relaunched her campaign on Roosevelt Island with a 4,687-word speech. But it’s not clear whether she and her husband, Bill Clinton, can win four presidential elections as Franklin D. Roosevelt did. Negative news for Clinton’s prospects comes in the latest Quinnipiac polls in the key mega-states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In […]

Dear Everyone, I say this in the most sincere way possible: Get over yourselves. Not everything is about everything, or everyone. In fact, most things are about the very few people involved in them and no one else. From the tragic to the political, we saw a wave of people inserting their pet projects and […]

Boy, was I dumb to pay back my college loans. That is the conclusion of writer Lee Siegel, who explained in a New York Times op-ed why he never paid back his. Siegel’s parents had limited means, you see, so, at 17, he borrowed to go to a pricey private school for two years. When […]

Everyone has a story: The time an unlicensed driver rear-ended me. The time an unlicensed driver ran a red light and killed a co-worker’s dog as her husband was walking the dog in a crosswalk. It seems as if there are so many unlicensed drivers in California that authorities are not capable of deterring the […]

I was swapping dad stories with a friend and laughing hard. Then my friend got quiet and said something that hit me hard. “God, I wish my father was still alive.” I’m one of the luckiest sons on earth because my dad is healthy, and I pray he stays so for a good long while. […]

There are some very stupid ideas emanating from powerful people and political wannabes. From the powerful, President Obama wants to put welfare housing in wealthy neighborhoods as a tactic to “end poverty.” He obviously wants to emulate the societal “success” of forced busing. Let’s apply common sense to the President’s plan. Obama wants to diversify […]

Pope Francis is releasing an encyclical Thursday on climate change — a draft of which was leaked to the Italian magazine l’Espresso on Monday. The New York Times reports that the encyclical is “eagerly awaited, especially by scientists and environmentalists” — because the pope agrees with most of them. On the right, it’s not all […]

Poor Jeb. He’s Donald Trump’s first Republican victim, but he won’t be his last. On Monday Bush officially declared he was a Republican candidate for president, something everyone knew was coming. Jeb gave a serious, by-the-book announcement speech, explaining his many qualifications, making his claim that he’s a true conservative and promising to make America […]

PARIS — Two years ago, former NSA contractor and CIA employee Edward Snowden bailed to Hong Kong with a stash of digitized top-secret documents, some of which have since dribbled out into the public domain. According to a newly declassified report by the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General, systemic vulnerabilities in the intelligence community […]

American presidents have greater leeway on foreign policy than on domestic issues. Just see how President Obama is forging ahead to an agreement with Iran opposed by large majorities in Congress and among voters. A president’s personal predilections and core assumptions can have much more of an effect on his foreign policy than on domestic […]

What if a team of Chinese agents had broken into the Pentagon or — less box office but just as bad — the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and carted out classified documents? The next day, the newspapers and morning TV shows would show pictures of the broken locks and rummaged filing cabinets. And if […]

There is a big problem with the prevailing liberal narrative that the phrase describing subsidy eligibility in Obamacare, “established by the state,” could not possibly mean what it says. The problem is named Jonathan Gruber. For years Gruber understood Obamacare precisely the same way the challengers in King v. Burwell do. When the bill passed […]

The Food and Drug Administration issued a final decision this week, giving the food industry three years to phase out bad trans fats, still used in a wide variety of products, such as Pillsbury’s Ready To Bake cookies and cake frosting. Now, if you’re ingesting large quantities of either, perhaps partially hydrogenated oils aren’t your […]

Political correctness is a contradiction of reality and distortion of morality that necessitates relentless government intervention devised by those who seek to control our lives. These self-appointed “Speech Sheriffs” warn us that words spoken outside the imaginary perimeters they’ve set are judgmental, negative, racist or intolerant. The goal of these elitists is to subtly subvert […]

Why was America so shocked by homegirl hoaxer Rachel Dolezal? The spray-tanned con artist, who resigned this week as head of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of (Artificially) Colored People, is the inevitable outcome of academia’s cult of manufactured victimhood. College campuses have been grooming a cadre of professional minority […]

“God,” Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared, “is dead.” God, it has been noted, made a similar yet more lasting pronouncement about Nietzsche. But before the German philosopher departed this mortal coil, he had some interesting things to say. Nietzsche argued that one of the most powerful forces in society was “ressentiment.” Similar to the everyday word […]

Listening to the political junkies discuss the 2016 presidential election more than a year ahead of time is enough to depress just about anyone who has a life outside the political bubble. It will get even worse next year with the avalanche of civic pollution known as campaign commercials. That’s why the Bloomberg Technology Conference […]

They’re coming for our money. OK, that’s nothing new, but this time, the Obama administration is coming for our $10 bills — the notes graced by the image of Alexander Hamilton. True to the identity politics of the Democratic Party, the Obama Treasury Department has announced that some worthy female will replace Hamilton on the […]

On June 30, the Export-Import Bank of the United States — an agency that mostly extends loans and loan guarantees to large foreign companies to buy U.S. products — will most likely see its charter expire for the first time in 81 years. This state of affairs is nothing short of remarkable, considering that for […]

Adolf Hitler started World War II by attacking Poland on September 1, 1939. Nazi Germany moved only after it had already remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria and dismantled Czechoslovakia. Before the outbreak of the war, Hitler’s new Third Reich had created the largest German-speaking nation in European history. Well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, […]

Based on the continued failure of the negotiating parties to make any substantive progress in the talks over Greek debt payments, the financial world is tied up in knots over a possible Greek exit from the European Union. The uncertainty has manifested in both high and low finance, with a sharp sell-off in bonds, particularly […]

You didn’t have to be in Chicago with the Blackhawks winning the Stanley Cup to understand the power of public memory. Sharing memories like this one with the people we love bolts us to the ground. It fixes us in a time and a place and we cling to it, that moment of joy that’s […]

I wrote my latest book, “Dear Father, Dear Son: Two Lives, Eight Hours,” to personalize the biggest issue facing the country — the growing number of fatherless homes, particularly in the black community, where over 70 percent of children are born to unwed mothers. Being raised without a father is hard. One is more likely […]

In her reintroduction speech on Roosevelt Island in New York last Saturday, Hillary Clinton hit all the boilerplate liberal Democrat notes: The New Deal, big government, soak the rich, evil Wall Street … you know the song because the music is from a familiar score. Speaking of songs, Hillary Clinton made reference to The Beatles’ […]