Category: Column

U.S. President Barack Obama, the premature Nobel Peace Prize winner, appears to have finally pried himself away from the gaming console and gone outside for some fresh air. Hopefully he’ll stay there so Europe can recover from its hangover — and from some of the most egregious, pointless and destructive interventionism in recent times. Obama […]

Jeb Bush is starting the new year with a smile. Former Arkansas governor and, until last weekend, Fox News host Mike Huckabee announced he would “explore” running for president. By the way, these “exploration” announcements are yet another example of the government encouraging politicians to lie. Exploratory committees disguise the fact that a candidate is […]

Some time ago, burglars in England scrawled a message on the wall of a home they had looted: “RICH BASTARDS.” Those two words captured the spirit of the politicized vision of equality — that it was a grievance when someone was better off than themselves. That, of course, is not the only meaning of equality, […]

My wife, Gena, and I discovered this past week that in her small mountain hometown in Plumas County, California, our pastor’s church was kicked out of the county building it had been renting for Sunday church services. What’s disgusting is that the eviction is engulfed in political moves to stop the church from meeting there. […]

My daughter asked me my opinion on an article she read in Vanity Fair attempting to debunk the presidential record of Ronald Reagan. I happily responded. The writer of the piece is veteran liberal commentator Michael Kinsley, who used to be a regular on William F. Buckley Jr.’s “Firing Line” and CNN’s “Crossfire.” It’s not […]

One of the rarest and most important things a pope does is issue encyclicals. In the eight years of Pope Benedict’s papacy, he issued three encyclicals. In the 27 years of Pope John Paul II’s papacy, he issued 14 encyclicals. Since his ascendancy to the papacy in March 2013, Pope Francis has issued one. But […]

The sudden fall in the price of oil provides a unique opportunity to examine the widely held belief that deflation is economic poison. As many governments and central banks have vowed to fight deflation at all costs in 2015, the question could hardly be more significant. While falling prices may strike the layman as cause for celebration, economists believe that […]

How big a problem is family fragmentation? “Immense,” says Mitch Pearlstein, head of the Minnesota think tank Center of the American Experiment. “The biggest domestic problem facing this country.” So big he went out and interviewed 40 experts of varying ideology across the nation and relayed their answers in his book “Broken Bonds: What Family […]

Since New Year’s is traditionally a time for resolutions, and since the new Congress convenes this week, I thought I would suggest some New Year’s resolutions for Congress: 1) Bring the troops home – Congress should take the first, and most important, step toward ending our hyper-interventionist foreign policy by bringing our troops home and […]

How precious in the sight of progressives was one of their saints, Mario Cuomo, the three-term governor of New York who died last week at age 82. He was a model of progressivism and a gifted rhetorician. In most media accounts, references were made to two speeches Cuomo delivered in 1984, one at the Democratic […]

If you want to identify a serious potential leader, someone committed to getting America back on track as a free and prosperous nation under God, just check the intensity of efforts of those on the left to try and destroy the reputation and career of that individual. The more time and energy liberals invest to […]

In watching the anti-police protests over the last month you may have found yourself wondering what it is, if anything, these people blocking traffic want. Chants of “No justice, no peace,” are meaningless platitudes progressives have been chanting since the 60s, and drum circles don’t exactly convey a coherent message of any sort. But underneath […]

Thank you, North Korea. Your alleged cyber attack on Sony has, I hope, awakened the American people. America is not doing so well, you see. Sure, we are No. 1 in self-esteem – we are No. 1 at being indignant about a variety of perceived slights – but we’re not much good at understanding the […]

It sounds like one of those only-in-San-Francisco tales: San Francisco’s sheriff cannot carry a gun because he is on probation. “That doesn’t handicap me from being a sheriff,” Ross Mirkarimi told me. On New Year’s Eve 2011, Mirkarimi and his wife, Eliana Lopez, a telenovela actress from Venezuela, got in a heated argument after the […]

The Obama Boom is finally here. Gross domestic product grew by a healthy 5 percent in the third quarter, the strongest growth we’ve seen since 2003. Consumer spending looks as if it’s going to be strong in 2015. Unemployment numbers have looked good. Buying power is up. And the stock market closed at 18,000 for […]

Jonathan Gruber, sage of MIT and proud champion of the Affordable Care Act, may well have had the worst year in American public life. His repeated demonstrations of arrogance, contempt for the American people and smug self-satisfaction brought mortification to his party and president. His glib references to the redistributionist aspects of the Affordable Care […]

Establishment Republicans gave Democrats a generous Christmas gift this year while at the same time stuffing conservatives’ stockings with coal in the passage of the omnibus spending bill. These Republicans obviously forgot that it was the hard work of grassroots conservatives that gave them the majority, winning the largest number of Congressional seats since the […]

There is a widespread assumption that President Obama has expanded the electorate and inspired booming voter turnout. One could make a case for that based on the 2008 election. But since then, not so much. Looking back over the past 15 years, the biggest surge in voter turnout came during George W. Bush’s presidency. In […]

For decades, American presidents urged the American people to reduce our reliance on foreign oil imports by conserving energy. Nothing worked. In defiance of the prevailing political wisdom, individual Americans insisted that the answer was not cutting back on the use of energy but finding new sources of energy. When politicians tried to force people […]

Gasoline prices are on the verge of crashing down to below $2 a gallon. The price of oil may dip below $50 a barrel. Even with renewed demand from a global economic resurgence, energy prices continue to fall. The U.S. has suddenly become the world’s largest combined producer of oil and natural gas. That fact […]

What to say about “activists” pushing the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” “movement,” even as police shootings of blacks are actually down 75 percent over the last 45 years? Some protestors, many old enough to know better, say ridiculous things about race relations, like “things have gone backward.” Time for perspective. Booker T. Washington was born […]

The commander of American Special Operations in the Middle East, Major Gen. Michael K. Nagata, is reported to be seeking help in learning why the Islamic State is so dangerous. If he doesn’t know, what does that say about the prospect for victory over these radical terrorists who seek to destroy everyone who disagrees with […]

There’s no candy coating the truth: Obamacare has had a very terrible, horrible, crappy, none-too-happy year. What it really means is that the victims of Obamacare — taxpayers, health care consumers, health care providers, employers and employees — have had a hellish, nightmarish 2014. Let’s start with premiums. President Candy Land promised that he’d “lower […]

No wonder Cuba wallows in poverty. Last week, the New York Times reported that the Castro brothers opened a special business zone where foreign companies “would be given greater control over setting wages at factories. … (P)roposals would be approved or rejected within 60 days.” What? If I want to give someone a raise, I […]

Back in the day, when hunting was the major source of food, hunters often used stalking horses as a means of sneaking up on their quarry. They would walk on the opposite side of the horse until they were close enough to place a good shot on whatever they were hunting. A stalking horse not […]

Many conservatives finished the year angry about the same thing they were angry about at the beginning of the year: liberal double standards. As I write this, GOP House Whip Steve Scalise is in hot water over reports that he spoke to a group of racist poltroons in Louisiana 12 years ago. Whether it was […]

The U.S. Census Bureau announced last week that New York slipped to fourth place in population among the 50 states. Though babies still are born every day in my home state and immigrants still flock here, overall population growth lags because New Yorkers are abandoning the state. Don’t blame the weather. Blustery Montana and North […]