Category: Column

Republican presidential contenders have staked out different positions on tax reform. Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas and neurosurgeon Ben Carson favor a flat tax. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker supports lower marginal tax rates. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee would like a 30 percent tax on consumption. Sen. Marco Rubio of […]

Attorney General Loretta Lynch has announced a Justice Department investigation to determine whether the Baltimore Police Department’s practices are unconstitutional and violate civil rights; in short, whether or not the police force there is racist. It will come as no surprise if the investigation concludes that it is, because accusing the department of racism diverts […]

I’m not much of a Tom Brady hater or a New England Patriots detester, but it’s clear the haters have lined up to vent their spleens. It’s all about Deflategate, a rather ridiculous name for a cheating scandal involving the credibility of the multibillion-dollar NFL, the iconic pretty-boy star quarterback and those deflated balls. Some […]

She’s baaaaaaaack. And she’s maaaaaad. First lady Michelle Obama delivered the commencement address at Tuskegee University last weekend. She’ll do it again at Ohio’s Oberlin College — the UC Berkeley of the Midwest, Ground Zero for racial grievance-mongering and fake hate crimes — next week. Commencement FLOTUS is not the same first lady who shows […]

Charles Murray, already controversial for writing books on how welfare hurts the poor, on ethnic differences in IQ and on (less controversial, but my favorite) happiness and good government, has written a new book that argues that it’s time for civil disobedience. Government has become so oppressive, constantly restricting us with new regulations, that our […]

Occasionally, I wonder whether I’m alone in some of my wonderings. Look at the claim that conservatives or Republicans have launched a war on women as a part of their overall mean-spirited agenda. In the case of mistreatment of women — or of anyone else — assault, rape and murder are about as horrible as […]

Being outside of Washington, D.C., is usually an advantage for a presidential aspirant as he confronts the crowded field of potential Republican candidates. Away from the taint and dealmaking of Washington, governors and former governors generally can run against Washington like Presidents Bush-43, Clinton and Reagan. But this year is different. Serving in the Senate […]

Last week, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly announced that Pamela Geller, the woman who sponsored a draw Muhammad event in Texas, threatened America’s national security. Geller, said O’Reilly, “spurred a violent attack.” He continued, “Insulting the entire Muslim world is stupid. … It does not advance the cause of liberty or get us any closer to […]

Imagine it’s 2007 and a prominent journalist is interviewing then-Sen. Barack Obama. “Senator, people are really interested in you and your identity. I just wanted to ask you as a historical matter, when you filled out your application to Columbia, to Harvard Law School, did you list yourself as an African-American?” Imagine he pressed further. […]

I handed my debit card to the owner of a barbecue restaurant. He saw my name on the card. “Is your mother’s name Elizabeth?” he asked. When I nodded, he burst out laughing. And then proceeded to confess to a prank, motivated by my mother, that he’d pulled on my family 30 years ago. My […]

When an event was held in Garland, Texas, last week that included a $10,000 prize for the best drawing of the Muslim prophet Mohammad, it was no surprise that many Muslims, particularly radical ones, would be upset. Considering that radical Muslims have spent a lifetime being upset, and in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo […]

I didn’t know it when I was young, but I was one of the luckiest young men on the planet. I had a father who loved me and imposed his will on me. Fathers were not considered buffoons when I was a young boy in the 1970s. They were not portrayed as they are now […]

Carly Fiorina may be the most important presidential candidate who will not win the nomination. Hillary Clinton’s supportive national media is prepared to deflect serious criticism of her pay-to-play foreign policy scheme, Benghazi gun-running and sordid past offenses as mere chauvinism. Carly Fiorina takes that away from them, so they’ll have to “protect” their candidate […]

In March, President Barack Obama teased the notion of making voting mandatory. “It would be transformative if everybody voted,” he said during a Cleveland event. “That would counteract money more than anything.” Spokesman Josh Earnest walked back the idea the next day, after whetting the appetites of liberal activists. Too often, partisans talk about tinkering […]

Liberals have been the biggest losers in the Baltimore Blame Game. For a week they’ve been saying a lot of stupid things about the cause of the riots in Baltimore. — They said the wild night of rioting, looting and burning by young black men was caused by Freddie Gray’s death, which was supposedly yet […]

Skeptics about democracy in the 18th and 19th centuries argued that the enfranchised masses would use their votes to seize the property of the relatively few rich. What could be more natural? But it hasn’t happened, in this country or abroad, to anything like the extent that those would-be Cassandras feared. Nonetheless, we continue to […]

Federal taxpayers spent a shocking total of $5.4 billion – with a B – on grants to establish what ended up being just 13 state Obamacare exchanges. In some states the failures have been spectacular enough to embarrass officials and imperil political careers, and in far too many places, Republicans who should have known better […]

Sometimes, probably because he’s such an affable media presence, I forget why I dislike the political version of Mike Huckabee so much. Maybe it’s the aw-shucks populism, which isn’t substantively very different from the class conflict rhetoric we hear from so many on the left these days. Or maybe it’s that Everyman Huckabee has been […]

A Canadian judge ruled this week that Omar Khadr poses no public safety threat. Tell that to the children of Sergeant First Class Christopher J. Speer and the surviving American soldiers who valiantly fought Khadr on the battlefield. In 2012, Khadr pleaded guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty and guilty to five charges related to the killing […]

American government — at all levels — is losing the legitimacy it needs to function. Or, perhaps, some segments of the government have already lost it. New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow made this point recently in a commentary on the relations between minority communities and our system of justice. He said that we […]

On Monday, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina announced her entry into the 2016 GOP presidential primary. Fiorina skipped the standard ballroom announcement and went straight to people’s computer screens to announce her decision, and then she followed up with interviews on TV news and comedy shows. It was a smart move, as she is a […]

Why did Rome and Byzantium fall apart after centuries of success? What causes civilizations to collapse, from a dysfunctional fourth-century-B.C. Athens to contemporary bankrupt Greece? The answer is usually not enemies at the gates, but the pathologies inside them. What ruins societies is well known: too much consumption and not enough production, a debased currency, […]