Category: Column

Reckless disregard. It’s a phrase in legal writing that means “gross negligence without concern for danger to others.” And it’s a phrase that characterizes much of the attitude toward law of an administration headed by a man sometimes described as a constitutional scholar. The most recent case in point is the decision by federal district […]

Proponents of President Obama’s 332-page plan to regulate the Internet insist they oppose content control. They even style themselves defenders of free speech. But there is a very serious risk that changing the Internet from an unregulated free enterprise into a heavily-regulated public utility will lead over time to content control. This risk is dismissed […]

President Barack Obama gave a speech at the White House’s summit on countering violent extremism this week, which was crammed with predictable feel-good ideas for combating the imaginary root causes of Islamic extremism. And in the midst of arguing that radicalism is principally driven by anger over colonialism, illiteracy and unemployment, Obama proposed an idea […]

Think back to how Americans felt in the days after 9/11. We all had a fresh sense of vulnerability. This is how the six million Jewish citizens of Israel feel – every day. The Islamic Republic of Iran, which funds the terrorist group Hezbollah, poses an existential threat to Israel. How do we know? They […]

“Could this argument be any dumber?” That’s how I began a column over a month ago in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. My point was that by making it an ideological priority to deny the Islamic nature of Islamic terrorism, the White House was in fact encouraging people to talk more about terrorism […]

President Obama seems more interested in defending the religion of Islam than in defending the United States against the threat of Islamic jihad, but Islam isn’t under attack; we are. Obama has created a straw man — or fattened one up that others created. The United States isn’t at war with Islam — or even […]

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has emerged as a serious contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. In response, the Washington Post researched and published a lengthy article on the “mystery” of why Walker dropped out of college. The decision to attack Walker for failing to graduate tells us more about the worldview of the Washington […]

World War II was the most destructive war in history. What caused it? The panic from the ongoing and worldwide Depression in the 1930s had empowered extremist movements the world over. Like-minded, violent dictators of otherwise quite different Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan and Communist Soviet Union all wanted to attack their neighbors. Yet […]

I once asked my late father if he had any experiences with anti-Semitism. There weren’t many. Although that was probably in part because of his scoring methodology. The Irish kids who beat up the Jewish kids in his Bronx neighborhood didn’t do so because they were anti-Semitic, but because “they had to fight somebody,” as […]

A shocking new poll shows Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., ahead of Hillary Clinton in Iowa, the first caucus state, and in New Hampshire, the first primary state. The YouGov poll, paid for by Moveon.org, found Warren ahead of Clinton in Iowa, 31 percent to 24 percent, among likely Democratic primary and caucus voters. In New […]

“…the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” (John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961) It isn’t often that a member of the media reveals the philosophy behind his political ideology, but last week, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo outed himself. In an exchange with […]

President Obama’s scolding of Western civilization at the National Prayer Breakfast (“Lest we get on our high horse…”) may go down in history as the emblematic moment of his presidency. It was atrociously ill timed and characteristically sophomoric. My colleague Jay Nordlinger observed that Obama sounded just like the students in the 1980s who, when […]

At the White House Summit on Extremism That Shall Remain Unspecified Because Violent Followers Belonging To Unnamed Extremist Movement Might Take Extreme Offense And Act Extremely, the feds are touting a groundbreaking new strategy to fight terrorists. Just kidding. It’s actually the same old futile strategy that big-government liberals use to cure everything: mo’ money, […]

It would be foolish — not to mention downright stupid — to stand between tens of millions of lusty American women and their favorite Hollywood S&M fantasy: “Fifty Shades of Grey.” And I don’t want get trampled, or worse. But for those who aren’t into the bondage-as-romance thing, I’ve decided to help with The John […]

For years, people assumed encyclopedias had to be created by professionals. Then Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales attempted to create an encyclopedia without central planners. That sounded like a terrible idea to the old gatekeepers — people who hired experts to carefully fact-check and edit every encyclopedia entry. When they heard that Wales would crowdsource an […]

Today’s liberals are not racists, but they often behave that way. They would benefit immensely from considering some of the arguments in award-winning scholar Dr. Shelby Steele’s forthcoming book, “Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country.” Steele, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, explains that in matters of race, there is an […]

When Alfred E. Neuman said “What me worry?” on the cover of Mad magazine, it was funny. But this message was not nearly as funny coming from President Barack Obama and his National Security Advisor, Susan Rice. In a musical comedy, it would be hilarious to have the president send out his “happy talk” message […]

The 3.8 percent point margin by which Obama defeated Romney in 2012 clouds the challenge the Republicans face in 2016. Unless they are able to improve their standing by 5-6 points in the key electoral states, they cannot win. Romney got 206 electoral votes (carrying his closest state, North Carolina, by only 2.2 points). To […]

In the aftermath of the killing of a man at a Copenhagen synagogue by a member of the Religion of Peace, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “This wave of attacks is expected to continue. Jews deserve security in every country, but we say to our Jewish brothers and sisters, Israel is your home.” Russian […]

President Obama and the Veterans Administration bureaucracy are already sabotaging the VA reform law passed in August. The ink is barely dry on the 8.6 million Choice Cards that supposedly allow vets to see a doctor outside the delay-plagued system. But Obama’s budget tries to snatch the $10 billion allocated for choice and allow it […]

One hundred million women have read “Fifty Shades of Grey.” I am not one of them. I condemn the book – and the upcoming movie – and suggest others avoid it. I don’t need to see the film to know it’s wrong. I don’t need to read porn (yes, porn) to know we as women […]

Do Republicans have a realistic chance to win the next presidential election? Some analysts suggest the answer is no. They argue that there is a 240-electoral-vote “blue wall” of 18 states and D.C. that have gone Democratic in the last six presidential elections. A Democratic nominee needs only 30 more electoral votes to win the […]

Opponents of charter schools have claimed that these schools are “cherry-picking” the students they admit, and that this explains why many charter schools get better educational results with less money than public schools do. Many controversies about how students should be admitted to educational institutions, especially those supported by the taxpayers, betray a fundamental confusion […]

On the happily few occasions when callers to my radio show make a particularly foolish comment, I ask them what graduate school they attended. When they ask why I assume they attended graduate school, I respond, “Only someone who went to graduate school would say something that foolish.” Because it is never my intention to […]