Category: Column

This Christmas Eve, if you see a fat man in a sleigh distributing presents, tell him he is in violation of several government regulations. The Federal Aviation Administration is upset about his secret flight path, and his gift bag violates charity tax rules. In real life, government barely lets people give each other rides in […]

For all the children who should be loved always, but especially on this wondrous night, with our arms around them and a long good-night kiss on the temple, a kiss more precious than anything wrapped in a box. For the parents who linger in the doorways of the bedrooms, watching the sleeping shapes. And for […]

There is no question, though it’s not acknowledged enough, that black Americans have made greater gains, over some of the highest hurdles and in a very short span of time, than any other racial group in mankind’s history. What’s the evidence? If black Americans were thought of as a nation with their own gross domestic […]

Until now there were two types of peaceful American change. One was a president, like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, working with Congress to alter American life from the top down by passing a new agenda. The other was popular reform pressure, as happened in the 1890s or 1960s, to change public opinion and […]

The quarterfinals of the 2016 race for the White House now pit Jeb Bush against Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry and John Kasich for the establishment wing of the party. And Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, Rick Santorum and Ben Caron are battling for the tea party nod. Until both contests […]

Last week, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush announced his intention to “actively explore” a run for president. That announcement spurred spasms of joy in some segments of the Republican Party who have been itching for an effective counter to the enthusiasm of the grassroots right. Those Republicans — largely coastal donors who scorn social conservatives […]

Is it possible to hold two seemingly contradictory thoughts about the president’s decision to partially end the half-century embargo against Cuba? Can one agree with conservative critics, from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), to Rush Limbaugh about how the Castro brothers are, apparently, getting everything they want and how the U.S. gets nothing but promises from […]

You need to know how much more coercive “health reform” could be if Hillary Clinton were to be elected president. A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that 61 percent of Democratic voters support Clinton for president in 2016, which is far more support than other possible contenders have. Obamacare’s future is uncertain, with the […]

The cold-blooded murder of two New York City policemen as they sat in their car is not only an outrage but also a wake-up call. It shows, in the most painful way, the high cost of having demagogues, politicians, mobs and the media constantly taking cheap shots at the police. Those cheap shots are in […]

On Dec. 25, the unforgettable story about Louis Zamperini, an Olympian turned World War II prisoner of war hero, opens in theaters nationwide. As astoundingly resilient as Zamperini was, however, his real power was found in a fact underplayed in the movie; namely, he whose birth we celebrate Dec. 25 is the one responsible for […]

God became a man to save us from our sins, which he did finally and completely on the Cross. We commemorate his death and resurrection on Easter, but his suffering on our behalf began much earlier than that. We would do well to remember that at Christmastime, when we celebrate our savior’s birth. Seminary professor […]

The Ten Commandments is the most morally influential piece of legislation ever written. To give a good idea of how relevant each of the ten is, take the third commandment, one of the two most misunderstood commandments (the other is “Do not Murder,” which I explained previously). Is there such a thing as “the worst […]

The total discrediting of Rolling Stone’s story on rape at the University of Virginia has shined a light on one of the least palatable features of American life: the so-called epidemic of rape on campus. Authorities from Barack Obama on down have cited the phony statistic that one in five college women is raped. Phony […]

In a normal economic times falling energy costs would be considered unadulterated good news. The facts are simple. No one buys a barrel of oil to display above the mantle. No one derives happiness from a lump of coal. Energy is simply a means to do or get the things that we want. We use […]

I wanted to like the movie because I love the book. Laura Hillenbrand’s bestseller, “Unbroken,” is a classic. While I had heard reports that the turning point in the book never made it to film, I attended a pre-release screening with an open mind. Audiences are told “Unbroken” is a “true story.” It is true, […]

The snow started coming down hard a few hours after we’d arrived. It was Christmas Eve 1976. We were 20 miles from home, visiting my mother’s sister at her home in the country. Earlier that evening, my mother, father, grandmother and sisters had piled into the station wagon to begin our trek. I was 14 […]

The needle already was in the haystack. That essentially is the message embedded in the Democrats’ Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on CIA interrogations and detentions, approved with one lonely Republican vote, that of former Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, and released by committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein of California. Three former CIA directors contend that enhanced interrogation techniques, […]

As if we needed more reminders of just how despotic and power mad some world leaders can be, we’ve been confronted lately by a number of examples of liberty under assault and reminders we must be vigilant in its defense. Some so-called leaders simply will do anything to impose their will on others. No lie […]

Restoring America: A Matter of Faith After spending much of 2014 traveling the country, living out of suitcases and in hotel rooms campaigning for a GOP takeover of the U.S Senate, my wife Mary and I are finally flying home for Christmas. Mary can’t wait to hug her willful and annoying cat, Marilyn. I am […]

The number of Americans who choose to live alone continues to grow. So finds a recent Current Population Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau. According to The Washington Post, the survey found that “the proportion of Americans who live alone has grown steadily since the 1920s, increasing from roughly 5 percent then to 27 percent […]

Elizabeth Warren and plenty of media liberals are in a panic that the Omnibus bill, nicknamed “CRomnibus,” is some sort of horrible right-wing Trojan Horse that will grind us all into domination by investment banks. Nope. While the Dodd-Frank bill allows Democrats and Republicans to repay big investment banks’ campaign contributions by “unwinding” their exposure […]

I have a theory as to why Americans don’t worry all that much about global warming: High-profile purveyors of climate change don’t push for reductions in greenhouse gases so much as focus on berating people who do not agree with their opinions. They call themselves champions of “the science” yet focus on ideology more than […]

A poll released this week found 51 percent of Americans approve of the harsh interrogation tactics the CIA used immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Imagine what those numbers would have been on Sept. 12, 2001. The NBC/Wall Street Journal survey is in synch with the results of similar opinion polls that show a majority […]

The ongoing leaks of confidential business data from Sony Pictures Entertainment and the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques by the Central Intelligence Agency have something in common. Call it the “Snowden Privacy Paradox.” The Sony leaks and the so-called torture report are being celebrated by transparency cheerleaders who […]

When Sen. Elizabeth Warren rallied beleaguered House liberals to push back against a bank-coddling omnibus bill and the spineless White House that enabled it, she showed us some of her dynamic appeal. Passing trillion-dollar pieces of legislation should never be easy, and disrupting the current cozy, bipartisan environment surely can’t be a bad thing. As […]

One of the most perverse consequences of the feverish backroom deals used to get Obamacare past the finish line was the funding formula for the law’s Medicaid expansion, which started with the infamous Cornhusker Kickback, a sweetheart deal for Nebraska alone to get 100 percent federal funding for Medicaid expansion that was used to get […]