Category: Column

A giant Manhattan penthouse and a summer home in the Hamptons. That was all. There was nothing Sabrina could do but plop onto her designer couch and cry. Christmas was a week away, but Sabrina didn’t have enough money to buy the one gift her husband, Beckett, had dreamed of: hair transplants. Beckett, meanwhile, had […]

Would police have harassed Eric Garner or his wife if the government had no financial interest in the selling of taxed cigarettes? Eric Garner posed no direct threat to police, and if Staten Island police were engaged in actual community policing instead of Officer Pantaleo’s style of aggression-policing, Garner might be alive today. Here are […]

President Barack Obama recently spoke of the “simmering distrust” between many police departments and minority communities. The president is correct in his assessment, but dramatically understates the problem. Rather than being just a feature of the minority communities in our nation, distrust of law enforcement is widespread. Whether it’s the IRS targeting Tea Party groups, […]

Remember Kelly Thomas? Didn’t think so, but it’s understandable. Thomas was an unarmed mentally ill homeless man from Southern California who was tasered, clubbed and beaten to death in Fullerton by three cops in July of 2011. Thomas’ face was pounded to a pulp and, after losing the ability to breathe normally, he died later […]

The defeat of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu by Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy in last weekend’s Louisiana runoff ends an election year that has been very successful for Republicans — and has implications for 2016. Some observations: (1) Democrats relied heavily on legacy candidates — and lost nevertheless. Mary Landrieu’s father, Moon Landrieu, was elected to […]

Although the specifics are still hazy, The New York Times reports that a group of deep-pocketed Republican donors and bundlers has hatched a plan to clear the GOP field of all insurgents to make room for a favored “establishment” candidate — preferably Jeb Bush, Chris Christie or Mitt Romney. But there can only be one. […]

On Tuesday December 9, disgraced Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber will face the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  He has a lot to answer for. Perhaps the most significant issue is Gruber’s videotaped confession that Obamacare “was written in a tortured way to make sure that the CBO did not score the mandate as […]

President Barack Obama has launched a new initiative to get American schools to teach computer science. Appearing at a Newark, New Jersey, middle school, the president suggested that students, especially girls and minorities, should learn “not just how to use a smartphone but to create the apps for a smartphone.” If we lived in a […]

In Manhattan’s Union Square last week, a protester wielded a menacing sign. It didn’t make the front page of any newspaper. You didn’t see it on cable news. An appalled bystander sent me a photo of the marcher and his inciteful placard, but didn’t want to be identified in any way. You’ll know why in […]

For a long time I resisted the word “torture” when discussing the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used against high-value captives in the war on terror. I don’t think I can do that anymore. The report put out by Dianne Feinstein and her fellow Democrats may be partisan, one-sided, tendentious and “full of crap,” as Dick Cheney put […]

Instead of using this space to pretend the newly released CIA “torture” report confirms that the United States is the most evil nation in the history of the universe, I’m going to address Jonathan Gruber’s confirmation that he believes we’re all stupid. Assuming you are not under any rocks or haven’t been in an underground […]

President Obama recently spoke of the “simmering distrust” between many police departments and minority communities. The president is correct in his assessment, but dramatically understates the problem. Rather than being just a feature of the minority communities in our nation, distrust of law enforcement is widespread. Whether it’s the IRS targeting Tea Party groups, regulators […]

The wheels on the bus go ’round and ’round, just like the endless cycles of big, bad government programs to federalize preschool and daycare. On Wednesday, the White House Summit on Early Education will unveil nearly $1 billion in new “investments” to “expand access to high-quality early childhood education to every child in America” from […]

What good purpose is served by releasing a report on CIA enhanced interrogation techniques while we are still at war with an enemy whose techniques include beheading Americans? Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and her Democratic colleagues say that the CIA lied about their tactics and exceeded their authority while seeking to obtain […]

Germany’s first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, supposedly once said that there was “a special providence for drunkards, fools and the United States of America.” Apparently, late 19th century observers could not quite explain how the U.S. thrived when by logic it should not. That paradox has never been more true than today. The U.S. government […]

The Islamic State doesn’t appear ready to follow our lead, so don’t expect it to release its report on the morality of severing American heads any time soon. Though they call themselves a state, they’re actually a mob of terrorists in Iraq and Syria. And when they’re not severing the heads of Westerners and Syrian […]

The recent “rash” of police officers killing blacks is prompting “civil rights activists” to describe America — despite the election and re-election of a black president — as still a simmering caldron of racism. Never mind that according to the CDC, in 2012 (the most recent year with available data) 140 blacks were killed by […]

Hey, did you see U.S. President Barack Obama yukking it up on “The Colbert Report” this week, reminding Americans how much fun he’d be to have a beer with to help forget all the challenges being fumbled by his administration? Sorry to be such a killjoy, but according to the International Monetary Fund, China just […]

Today, Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist caught repeatedly on video calling the American public “stupid” and saying deception was essential to pass Obamacare, was dragged before the House Oversight Committee for a grilling. But he was a stand-in for the real culprit: President Obama. Lying about the health law originated at the top. In 2008, […]

Anyone skeptical about entrusting ambitious tasks to the government was not stunned by the dismal rollout of the Affordable Care Act. It featured technical snafus, cost overruns and false advertising (“If you like your plan, you’ll be able to keep it.”). Things got so bad that President Barack Obama apologized and Health and Human Services […]

This year, Christmas shopping may be an especially welcome respite from the ugly events going on across the country, as mobs take to the streets because grand juries that examined evidence reached different conclusions from those reached by mobs who made up their minds without examining that evidence. Perhaps more than in other years, shopping […]

People argue about whether the “consensus” of scientists is that we face disaster because of global warming. Instead of debating whether man’s greenhouse gasses will raise temperatures, we should argue about how we gauge disasters. If you take most environmentalists and climate scientists at their word, the Earth heated up about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over […]

President Barack Obama said just before the recent Ferguson, Missouri, riots, “First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law.” Most Americans have little or no inkling of what “rule of law” means. Many think it means obedience to whatever laws legislatures enact. That’s a vision that has led to human […]

This week, Rolling Stone printed an editor’s note retracting one of the most highly praised pieces of investigative journalism in its history. That piece, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, alleged that several members of the University of Virginia fraternity Phi Kappa Psi, had raped a 19-year-old student named Jackie, including with foreign objects, as she […]

There can be little doubt that data releases rather than experience or intuition are driving the economic conversation. This is perhaps a function of the disconnection that many people feel about an economy that they no longer understand. Rather than trusting their own eyes or their own gut to form an opinion, it’s much easier […]

Time is money. And the Millennial generation, which is now making headlines for its low savings rate, seems to have missed that lesson completely. Astoundingly, a new study by Moody’s Analytics says most adults under age 35 have a savings rate of negative 2 percent! In fact, Millennials are taking on so much debt, and […]