Category: Column

In commuting the sentences of 22 federal drug offenders Tuesday, President Barack Obama has begun to take the unfettered power of executive clemency embedded in the Constitution to the place where it belongs. “I’ve been a cynic on the Obama administration for a while,” University of St. Thomas School of Law professor Mark Osler told […]

All men sail through life’s rough waters, what shipwrecks some empowers others. Undying perseverance and a devotion to a higher calling belong to those who survive. Heroes they are, though that is not what we call them initially. England’s King George VI, for example, was depicted by the press of his day as a drab […]

Can we stop putting America up for sale to the most politically connected bidders yet? Where is our self-respect? Since 2001, I’ve warned about the systemic and bipartisan corruption of America’s EB-5 immigrant investor visa program. The latest report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general — which outlines the meddling and pandering of […]

They’re doing it again! When the last housing bubble burst, politicians blamed “greedy banks.” They said mortgage companies lent money recklessly, making loans to people with dubious credit, for down payments as low as 3 percent. “It will work out,” said the optimistic bankers. Regulators didn’t disagree. Everyone said, “Home prices will keep going up.” […]

Black politicians, civil rights organizations and others who say they are concerned with the welfare of poor black people often support harmful measures. One of the most effective tools for disadvantaged people is to be able to charge a lower price for what they sell and pay a higher price for what they buy. Let’s […]

Politicians depend on their ability to maneuver as their most basic survival skill. Force them to stand and exchange blows without the ability to shift their ground and they are as helpless as a kitten. Presidents, for example, fail when they get stuck and can no longer maneuver, as with Johnson on Vietnam, Nixon on […]

The Republican majority’s budget plan — enacted in a blitz of votes before lawmakers rushed home for spring break — tells us which GOP presidential hopefuls are serious about halting the nation’s soaring debt. Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rand Paul (Ky.) voted against the GOP plan because it spends too much, while Lindsey Graham […]

There is no lingering doubt which side President Obama is on. Only brazenly oblivious to reality people still rationalize continued support of his inexplicably dangerous and erratic decision-making. Obama’s scandals are overwhelming as one exposure quickly fades into another cover-up. American racial and political divisiveness have not been greater in generations. His foreign policy decisions […]

“I could have handled that better.” I don’t know if the captain of the Titanic ever said that. But Mike Pence did on Tuesday. The Indiana governor has managed to step on an impressive number of parts of his own anatomy recently and in the process gravely injured what was already a long-shot ambition to […]

Last week, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed a law with the same name as one signed on the federal level by President Bill Clinton in 1993, which was co-sponsored by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the presumptive next Senate minority leader. Naturally, Pence found himself on the wrong end of a partisan barrage from ABC News’ […]

The oligarchs who run Chicago don’t want to consider the unthinkable — at least not publicly. Yet as the campaign for mayor of Chicago between Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia and Mayor Rahm Emanuel enters its final week, some oligarchs are worried. They’re probably wondering: What if Rahm really loses this thing? If Rahm […]

An op-ed piece titled “Conservatives, Please Stop Trashing the Liberal Arts” appeared last week in the Wall Street Journal. But it is not conservatives who trashed the liberal arts. Liberal professors have trashed the liberal arts, by converting so many liberal arts courses into indoctrination centers for left-wing causes and fads, instead of courses where […]

Over the past few decades while the economic power of the Chinese has grown exponentially, many observers have been surprised by the relative willingness of China to operate within the financial and economic framework established by the dominant Western order. But it should now be blatantly clear that Beijing prefers to act slowly, deliberately and […]

Recent statements from United Nations officials, that Iran is already blocking their existing efforts to keep track of what is going on in their nuclear program, should tell anyone who does not already know it that any agreement with Iran will be utterly worthless in practice. It doesn’t matter what the terms of the agreement […]

If Hillary Clinton survives her myriad real scandals and becomes the Democratic presidential candidate for 2016, are we going to be bludgeoned with sexism the same way Barack Obama’s supporters have exploited “racism”? If recent rumblings from Clinton supporters are any indication, I’m afraid this could be the case. New York Times reporter Amy Chozick […]

“There’s something very dangerous happening in states across the country,” Apple chief executive Tim Cook warned Monday in a Washington Post opinion piece against Indiana’s newly passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It matters not to the corporate big shot that President Bill Clinton signed a federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993 (which current House […]

It is far easier for an individual to do great evil than to do great good. That the world isn’t fair is known to every human being who thinks. It may be our first insight into life. What child who ever complained, “That’s not fair,” wasn’t told by some adult, “Life isn’t fair”? One sad […]

NEW YORK — This being the 50th anniversary of the film “The Sound of Music,” please permit me a poor adaption of a few of its song lyrics, which fit in nicely with our current political climate. How do you solve a problem like the Clintons? Their incessant vacuuming of cash and skirting (no pun […]

Republicans are the party of hate. I know this because the media tells me so. You didn’t know? Did you miss a meeting or something? ReThuglicans are trying to destroy the country’s economy, oppress minorities, drive gay people into the sea and literally destroy the planet. That is, after all, why Ronald Reagan created crack […]

In 1979, the year before Republicans nominated Ronald Reagan as their presidential candidate, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and conservative activist Paul Weyrich founded the Moral Majority. It was at the Christian university in Lynchburg, Virginia, Liberty University, founded by Rev. Falwell, where Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) just announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. […]

The old grocery store in my neighborhood is closing next month. Boy, does that make me sad. The family-owned store has been a staple in our community for more than 50 years. Its simple, spartan interior is a snapshot into the past, the way grocery stores were in the ’60s and ’70s – like the […]

Senator Barack Obama excited his liberal base by passionately reciting scathing polemics against individualism, soaring verses about some vague oceans calming and undecipherable humblebrag about “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Senator Ted Cruz excites his conservative base by encouraging us to close our eyes and “imagine” millions of courageous conservatives, all across […]

The libertarian-leaning me believes an American employer should be able to hire pretty much anyone he or she wants to hire. But the taxpaying me believes that if the federal government limits immigration yet creates a special visa program for highly skilled foreign workers with the assurance that the program will not cut into the […]

When Ted Cruz officially stepped into the 2016 presidential ring this week the boo-birds attacked immediately. But it wasn’t just the liberals of the mainstream media who threw bottles and chairs at the conservative Texan. It was Cruz’s fellow Republicans. Is he qualified after only three years in the Senate? Where was he born again? […]

A CBS Poll conducted at the end of March shows that Americans accept, for now, Hillary Clinton’s explanation of why she kept all her emails on a non-government server. While 62 percent feel it was “inappropriate” to do so, they largely buy her explanation of why she did so. Forty-nine percent accept that it was […]

Our kids, at least many of them, are not doing very well. The reason, writes Harvard professor Robert Putnam in his just-published “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis,” is the “two-tier pattern of family structure” that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s and continues to prevail today. Starting in the late 1960s, rates of […]

As an atheist, I suppose I should be deeply troubled by Ted Cruz’s God-heavy presidential announcement. Although the Texas senator’s blast of old-fashioned American exceptionalism garnered most of the chortling media’s attention, it’s what troubles me the least about his aspirations. If the politicians treated the ideals of the Enlightenment as if they were handed […]