Category: Column

Some of you are probably done with ABC News over the George Stephanopoulos embarrassment. Of course, you wouldn’t be wrong to boycott ABC News. You might be a fool not to. If you have any pretension to intellectual honesty, you either boycott ABC News over this Stephanopoulos mess, or you take a pair of hairy […]

Last week, President Obama held a summit on poverty at Georgetown University. There, he explained that unrest in major American cities could be traced not to lack of values, but to simple lack of cash — and that lack of cash, he suggested, could be attributed to simple lack of luck. “The top 25 hedge […]

PARIS — Pentagon officials are touting the success of a Delta Force special operations commando raid in Syria last weekend that resulted in the dispatch of about a dozen Islamic State riffraff. Not to take anything away from Delta Force, which is comprised of America’s most elite warriors, but this kind of straightforward, direct-action job […]

By now everyone has had their say about Jeb Bush’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. The consensus is that Bush misheard Megyn Kelly’s “knowing what we know now” question about the Iraq war. I’m not convinced. Politicians routinely answer the question they wish they were asked rather than the question they were actually […]

In a recent panel discussion on poverty at Georgetown University, President Barack Obama gave another demonstration of his mastery of rhetoric — and disregard of reality. One of the ways of fighting poverty, he proposed, was to “ask from society’s lottery winners” that they make a “modest investment” in government programs to help the poor. […]

I think Hillary Clinton has learned (or believes she has learned) a great deal from Barack Obama over the years, though none of it has to do with statesmanship. It has to do with how a presidential candidate positions herself with the electorate. From all indications and a recent Washington Post article on the subject, […]

Pamela Geller — the woman whose group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, organized the Muhammad cartoon drawing contest in Garland, Texas — may be the most hated person in America right now. She is certainly the left’s chief villain. And, sad to say, though few conservatives hate her, more than a few have condemned her. […]

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., isn’t worried that, absent a Senate vote, key provisions of the Patriot Act are slated to sunset May 31. The GOP presidential hopeful told “Meet the Press” Sunday that a federal appeals court found the data-gathering authorized under the Patriot Act’s Section 215 is unconstitutional, “so really, it ought to stop.” […]

My first job in journalism was as a copyboy at the NBC News Bureau in Washington, D.C. In my early 20s, I asked Bill Corrigan, the newsroom manager, “What must I do to get on the air?” He replied, “Get a college degree and a minimum of five years writing experience with a newspaper or […]

his spring it seems as if there have been two-point-something Republican presidential candidacy announcements per week. And, since she made her own announcement April 12, Hillary Clinton has answered an average of about two-point-something questions from the press each week. Those (imprecise) statistics illustrate the asymmetrical nature of the presidential race. One party has so […]

On Friday, the House passed a massive National Defense Authorization for 2016 that will guarantee U.S. involvement in more wars and overseas interventions for years to come. The Republican majority resorted to trickery to evade the meager spending limitations imposed by the 2011 budget control act – limitations that did not, as often reported, cut […]

Proms sure have gotten expensive these days. Sure, prom spending is down 6 percent over last year, according to a nationwide Visa survey, but the average American household will still spend $919 on the prom this year. That got me thinking about my own prom in 1980. I didn’t know my date very well. She […]

It wasn’t exactly a “stop the presses!” moment, but it was still a little surprising. George Stephanopoulos, former White House communications director under President Bill Clinton and ABC News “chief news anchor,” donated one and one half times the average American income to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The $75,000 Stephanopoulos ponied up […]

Welcome to class, American millennials. Sit down and take notes – because you are in for a rude awakening. According to a report by the Educational Testing Service, you have “weak skills in literacy, numeracy, and problem solving in technology-rich environments” when compared to your international peers. Based on data from the Programme for the […]

President Obama is “personally” offended his own party refuses to allow him to “fast track” the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement. Considering the details are hidden from everyone except select international insiders negotiating the fate of American workers, the American public should be “personally” offended by Obama and the Republicans willing to go […]

Dianne Feinstein of California arguably used to be the CIA’s best friend on the Democratic side of the Senate. I think it’s fair to say that San Francisco voters were not enthusiastic about her pro-intelligence posture during the George W. Bush presidency. One thing DiFi has going for her, though, is that it’s hard even […]

Books and pencils, not money. That’s how you truly escape poverty. American liberals still don’t understand that simple concept, but millions of poor people living in the sprawling slums of Nairobi do. They know it’s much better to be given an education instead of a handout. I’ve seen how the urban poor think in Kenya. […]

What is it about those who abandon American ideals that they would otherwise hold dear the moment terrorist groups make threats or when a particular point of view stands against theirs in opposition? Is it fear? A lack of moral grounding? Both? Those who only stand for freedom for likeminded individuals or just up until […]

“The world may have a polling problem.” That’s the headline on a blogpost by Nate Silver, the wunderkind founder of FiveThirthyEight. It was posted on 9:54 ET the night of May 7, as the counting in the British election was continuing in the small hours of May 8 UK Time. That was an hour after […]

You can’t be more straightforward: “Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?” Fox News host Megyn Kelly asked presumptive GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush about the Iraq War. Without hesitation, Bush replied: “I would have.” Bush went on to qualify his answer, adding that “so would have Hillary Clinton, just to […]

These are not good times for the Republic (and if you laughed or scratched your head at me calling America a republic, I rest my case). But they are amusing times, at least for those of us capable of extracting some measure of mirth and schadenfreude from the president’s predicament. With the sand running out […]

I watched President Obama’s remarks on poverty at Georgetown University, and several things stood out to me, apart from his umpteenth swipe at Fox News. Obama sometimes makes statements that sound reasonable and moderate, but he either doesn’t believe the things he’s saying or has an ideological blind spot about what they really mean. But […]

Like cult members awaking to find their leader swigging gin and squirreling money into a Swiss bank account, liberals are rubbing their eyes in disbelief at President Obama’s behavior. The figure they worshiped so fervently and for so long is now revealed to be a “sexist” — at least according to National Organization for Women […]

The Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., would announce Thursday she would be running for retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat. At last, it seemed as if California Attorney General Kamala Harris, the only name Democrat in the race, might face some competition. Then Sanchez claimed that the […]

Cities and counties across the U.S. are banning advertising about religion, politics, abortion, environmental causes — any topic that risks offending people. For example, Lackawanna County, Pa., is barring bus ads that promote atheism and claims it will reject ads that promote religion, too. New York, Philadelphia and Chicago are cracking down on political ads […]

After the recent Baltimore riots, left-wing critics accused President Barack Obama of lacking an “urban agenda.” Critics like PBS’s hard lefty Tavis Smiley said: “What do we see in Baltimore and Ferguson and beyond? Racism, poverty and militarism. And so poverty is clearly connected to this. My sense is that this is going to become […]

We live in an age where bad economic news is not only unwelcome, but it is routinely overlooked or excused. On the other hand, good news is spotted and trumpeted even when it doesn’t exist. An ideal illustration of this dangerous tendency towards collective selectivity came last week when the markets and the media somehow […]