Category: Column

The politics of the crude exports issue are confused by a lot of irresponsible reporting. Almost every story on the issue asserts that allowing exports would be politically dangerous because it would supposedly raise prices at the pump, but the claim is never credibly sourced. In fact, every single serious study has found precisely the […]

We heathens can leave the theological debate to others. But Pope Francis, the bishop of Rome and world leader of the Roman Catholic Church, has some ideas about laws governing the secular world. We expect Francis to defend the dignity of faith, to bring clarity to the Catholic position. Yet instead, the pope, while en […]

Mitt Romney is thinking of running for president in 2016. According to The New York Times, that’s what Romney told a group of big donors last week. Earlier, the former Massachusetts governor was thinking of running because the only other hefty Republican who could spare the party from a nutty primary — former Florida Gov. […]

All the focus is on the three major center-right candidates: Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney and Chris Christie. By jumping out early, each is laying his particular claim to portions of their common base of donors, consultants, party leaders and voters. But from Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker and Rick Santorum, we hear […]

I received an unexpected postcard in the mail the other day from an old friend. It made my day. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten a handwritten letter from a friend — it has to be 10 or 15 years. What’s worse, I can’t remember the last time I wrote one. The reasons […]

I stand with the Santa Barbara News-Press. How about you? The newspaper is under fire for refusing to kowtow to left-wing word police and militant propagandists who demand unfettered illegal immigration. Last week, in the wake of angry protests against the publication, vandals threw paint bombs and spray-painted graffiti on its offices. So, what exactly […]

Could this argument be any dumber? The Obama administration has forced America and much of the world into a debate no one wanted or needed. Namely, does Islamic terrorism have anything to do with Islam? This debate is different than the much-coveted “national conversation on race” that politicians so often call for (usually as a […]

I am guessing you don’t know one of the major things President Obama was doing while snubbing France and world leaders who convened in Paris to express solidarity in the civilized world’s war against radical Islamic terrorism. I assure you it was something close to his heart — as opposed to fighting Islamic jihad. It […]

How far should a tolerant society tolerate intolerance? It’s a difficult issue, one without any entirely satisfactory answer. And it’s a current issue in the days after 40 world leaders and the U.S. ambassador to France marched together in Paris against the jihadist Muslim murderers who targeted the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. English-speaking peoples, […]

Charlie Cook, a veteran inside-the-beltway political analyst, recently wrote of a focus group discussing the 2016 presidential election. He observed that the conversation among 12 Colorado voters “would be jarring to anyone who assumed that the nominations of Bush and Clinton are inevitable.” Cook added that, “When half a dozen voters in a conversation say […]

Hillary, Bush and Romney — the three frontrunners — each find their candidacies greeted with a widespread response of “not again!” Voters wonder if we don’t have someone better than a retread Romney, yet another Bush or Hillary Clinton. But don’t sell Mitt Romney short. Republicans like losers and retreads. In fact, six of the […]

Western civilization’s creed is free thought and expression, the lubricant of everything from democracy to human rights. Even a simpleton in the West accepts that protecting free expression is not the easy task of ensuring the right to read Homer’s “Iliad” or do the New York Times crossword puzzle. It entails instead the unpleasant duty […]

Islamic terrorists slaughtered 17 innocents in Paris in an attack described as “France’s 9/11.” The two terrorist suspects at the satirical newspaper massacre are brothers, born and raised in France, children of parents who emigrated from Algeria. Some blame France’s failure to “assimilate” Muslim youth on their attraction to violent jihad. While almost 25 percent […]

Social media is agog over George Clooney’s tribute to his wife, Amal, at last weekend’s Golden Globe Awards in Hollywood. Women, especially, are swooning in their tweets and Facebook postings. Said Clooney, “Listen, it’s humbling to find somebody to love, especially when you’ve been waiting your whole life, especially when your whole life is 53 […]

With flu raging through 46 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is taking center stage, advising the public and physicians. How much can you believe? Until last year, polls showed the CDC was the most trusted federal agency. But then the CDC bungled its response to Ebola. That was a wake-up call, because […]

With vengeance-seeking global jihadists on the loose here and around the world, now is a good time to ask (again): Are we ready for a nefarious terrorist attack on our train and transit lines? Smoke and fire plagued two of the nation’s major metro rail stations this week, raising justified questions about safety and preparedness. […]

In 2007, when President Obama announced that he was running for president, he did it in Springfield, Ill., to highlight his supposed connection to Abraham Lincoln. He brought in his biggest fans to cheer him on. When George W. Bush announced in 1999, he did it in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Bush campaign, likewise, brought […]

As member of the French media, and as a French resident and immigrant, last week’s terrorist attack in Paris targeting the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo hit home literally and figuratively. Hopefully the political climate in the aftermath of the deadly attack can be leveraged to enact change on several fronts — change that, up […]

It’s easy to “fire” a business that rips you off. Just go to a different one. It’s a lot easier to patronize another business than to get government to fix the problem. But bad businesses and the politicians they own, I mean influence, often don’t want you to have that choice. I’ve written about how […]

John Wrana, the 95-year-old World War II veteran killed by police, wasn’t killed for selling illegal “loosie” cigarettes on the streets of New York. And he wasn’t killed by an officer on the street in a small town outside St. Louis, just after wrestling for the cop’s gun and punching the cop in the face. […]

The minute that she heard about the march against terrorism in Paris, Hillary Clinton should have hopped on one of her Wall Street friend’s private jets and rushed to France. Think of the photo op and its political meaning. The former secretary of state and, perhaps, future president of the United States marching arm in […]

The West has the capacity to win a war on radical Islam. But it won’t. It won’t because the West is too busy soul-searching to defend its core values. Western leaders mouth slogans about #JeSuisCharlie in the aftermath of the murder of 12 at the Charlie Hebdo headquarters, but they don’t mean it; they suggest […]

President Barack Obama’s absence from the great gathering in Paris of national leaders from other countries, to show their solidarity with France in its opposition to Islamic terrorists, was another sign of the Obama administration’s continuing irresolution in the face of terror. Even the recent courageous message of Egypt’s president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, calling on his […]

With the 114th U.S. Congress having launched Jan. 3, it’s time we the people step up and hold our representatives’ political feet to the fire in order to see real, demonstrable change that will heal and improve our country, especially during these last two critical years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Here are my top 10 […]

In the wake of President Obama’s pathetic disengagement over the Islamic jihadist attacks on Paris, people are once again decrying his lack of leadership, but the problem is something more fundamental than leadership. Even if Obama were a gifted leader, when it comes to many issues, especially confronting radical Islam, he wouldn’t know where to […]

By savagely attacking and murdering writers and cartoonists as well as Jewish shoppers, French Islamists clarified something that many in the West have deceived themselves about: that the war we are engaged in is a war of ideas. Islamists have once again reminded us that freedom itself is their target. This discomfits the left. They […]

Since 9/11, the Western world’s academic, media, political elites have done their best to portray Islam in a favorable light, treating it very differently from all other religions. Criticism of every doctrine, religious or secular, is permitted, often encouraged. But not of Islam. Only positive depictions are allowed. We’ll start with an example of pro-Islamic […]

There are likely to be many surprises in a race for the Republican presidential nomination that has something like 20 plausible potential candidates. The first of those surprises came in the last hours before New Year’s when Jeb Bush announced he was setting up an exploratory committee to consider running for president. The website of […]

Q: What use is a pile of vetoes? A: Enough to win the next election.   The seminal moment President Clinton’s move to the center came on April 7, 1995 in a speech to the Newspaper Editors and Publishers in Dallas where he proclaimed that he was not elected president to amass a “pile of […]