Category: Column

This is not the first time a U.S. President has worked to defeat a foreign leader. But it is extremely unusual that President Obama worked so hard to unseat the leader of a strong alley. While Obama railed against the Republicans inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak on behalf of his country’s desire to […]

San Francisco’s board of supervisors is considering a proposal to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in some city elections, showing how desperate the left wing of the city’s left wing is to retain their ebbing power in City Hall. Clearly Supervisor John Avalos and ally Supervisor Eric Mar fear they need to register minors […]

“What about the children?” Politicians of both parties often stoop to using our children as props whenever they’re fighting for a new law or pet government program. They argue we need to cut the $18 trillion debt, regulate the Internet or pay teachers more “for our children.” “Think of the children” is almost always an […]

“Firing up America” is the cover line on the March 20 issue of The Economist, heralding a 16-page special report on America’s Latinos. Its tone is resolutely upbeat — perhaps a bit too much so. “America is lucky to have millions of energetic young people filling its schools with kids who will eventually pay taxes […]

Last week a political bloodbath unfolded on Capitol Hill. Forty-seven U.S. senators, all Republicans and including four potential presidential candidates, sent an “open letter” to Iran explaining that a nuclear deal between the U.S. and Iran (with five other signatories) would not be binding if Congress did not approve it. The political reaction was fierce. […]

Starbucks is easy to make fun of on its best days, what with the pretentious names for everyday items, never mind the ridiculously high prices for those same everyday items. Even the cashiers have fancy monikers — “barista.” The snootiness is by design, of course. And you can make fun of it all you want; […]

Starbucks is hoping to lead a national conversation about race. According to a video released by founder Howard Schultz, Starbucks baristas are encouraged to scrawl “race together” on coffee cups before placing them in the hands of customers. This hollow bit of moral exhibitionism is supposed to encourage “compassion,” “honesty,” “empathy” and “love.” Does Starbucks […]

Why is The New York Times lamenting the souring of the personal relationship between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instead of assuming Obama will subordinate his personal feelings to America’s national interest? Well, probably because they know he won’t. He’s a man scorned — and he’s getting more and more dangerous. Scorned? […]

In the closing months of 2014, Germany faced a difficult dilemma. Although its own economy was holding up well, incoming data showed that the rest of the Eurozone was rapidly slipping into recession. As a result, the calls for the European Central Bank (ECB) to unleash its own quantitative easing campaign grew louder. However, the […]

The Republican Party, says former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell, suffers from a “dark vein of intolerance.” We salute Powell’s service. He is a heavily decorated vet who served two tours of duty in Vietnam when things were hot and heavy over there. But General, care to name names? Who are these “intolerant” Republicans? […]

This week is “Sunshine Week,” a nonprofit, nonpartisan national initiative launched by the American Society of News Editors to “promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information.” What better time to focus on a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act that allows the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to designate companies […]

Back when political polls were reporting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was likely to lose power in Tuesday’s election, I figured that Bibi must have overplayed his hand when he spoke before Congress at the invitation of House Speaker John Boehner and against the wishes of President Obama. I assumed he had miscalculated, and […]

You’ve heard it from Big Government lobbyists. You’ve heard it from Big Business lackeys in both political parties. And you’ve heard it from journalists, pundits and think-tankers ad nauseam: The H-1B foreign guest worker program, they claim, requires American employers to first show that they searched for and tried to recruit American workers before tapping […]

Rahm Emanuel, current mayor of my old hometown, Chicago, is not a gentle soul. But he’s smarter than his big-spending predecessor, Richard M. Daley, and the union pawn, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, who becomes the new mayor if he beats Emanuel in a run-off election April 7. Emanuel was the tough Obama chief of staff who […]

March 7th was the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the first attempt by black protesters to march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery to demand voting rights. Their march was brutally halted by Alabama state troopers acting under the orders of Gov. George Wallace. The protesters weren’t deterred. On March 25, 1965, the Rev. Martin Luther […]

Bill and Hillary Clinton have carefully cloaked the foreign money they’ve accepted in the garb of charitable fundraising. But alongside the hundreds of millions donated to their Foundation were tens of millions of personal income from foreign sources, devoid of disguise, a naked example of using political power for personal enrichment. Nowhere has this transaction […]

It is fascinating to see brilliant people belatedly discover the obvious — and to see an even larger number of brilliant people never discover the obvious. A recent story in a San Francisco newspaper says that some restaurants and grocery stores in Oakland’s Chinatown have closed after the city’s minimum wage was raised. Other small […]

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after their deadly fumbling on Ebola and measles, new data show the agency vastly underestimated the threat of a superbug raging through our hospitals and nursing homes. Data from a leading medical journal show that 29,000 people in the […]

Hillary Clinton is not a pleasant human being, by all available evidence. She does not convince; she browbeats. She does not discuss; she lectures. Her laugh issues mechanically from her mouth, resonating with a close-but-not-quite verisimilitude that occupies the space known as the uncanny valley. If anyone were to kidnap Hillary Clinton and replace her […]

PARIS — American radio host Howard Stern conducted a lengthy interview with Madonna last week. Although the world-famous singer might not share my conservative political views, I found myself hard-pressed to think of another woman whose story I connected with more (except perhaps that of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as portrayed by Meryl […]

It has been an Iranian tradition since 1979 to end Friday prayers with chants of “Death to America!” In a purely rational world, that would be all one needed to know that Iran is not a reliable negotiating partner. Alas, we do not live in such a world. But there’s more evidence. Iran, according to […]

When Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress on March 3rd, it was the third time he had done so. The only other person to address a joint session of Congress three times was the legendary British prime minister Winston Churchill. The parallels between the two leaders do not end there. […]

Two weeks ago, a group of students at the University of California at Irvine removed a U.S. flag from a common area of the student government suite. Shortly afterwards, six undergraduate members of the Associated Students Council of UCI passed a resolution banning the display of the flags of any nation in the office lobby. […]

Last year, Congress passed an amendment that barred the Department of Justice from using federal dollars to prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries in states that have legalized them. Last week, three senators proposed a measure to clean up the federal-state medical marijuana mess once and for all. Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Rand […]

In her brief press conference at the United Nations, Hillary Clinton led off with a denunciation of the letter to Iranian leaders signed by 47 of the 54 Republican senators. This was in line with Democratic talking points — a sign that the former secretary of state was, perhaps a bit nervously, taking care to […]

Turn on the news and you expect to see people of different races and politics denouncing each other. That’s why what happened last week on “The Kelly File,” Megyn Kelly’s Fox News program, was so remarkable. Following the expulsion of Parker Rice and Levi Pettit, two Sigma Alpha Epsilon members at the University of Oklahoma, […]