Category: Column

Harry Reid is a bigoted Beltway corruptocrat with an interminable case of diarrhea of the mouth. The feeble-minded coot stuck his foot in that mess of a mouth again last week at the Las Vegas Asian Chamber of Commerce. But as mortifying as the Senate Majority Leader is, there’s an even worse spectacle: Asian-American liberals […]

Thanks, Environmental Protection Agency! You’ve required sewage treatment plants, catalytic converters on cars and other things that made the world cleaner than the world in which I grew up. Good work. Today, America’s waterways are so much cleaner that I swim in New York City’s once-filthy Hudson River — right beside skyscrapers in which millions […]

Though racial discrimination exists, it is nowhere near the barrier it once was. The relevant question is: How much of what we see today can be explained by racial discrimination? This is an important question because if we conclude that racial discrimination is the major cause of black problems when it isn’t, then effective solutions […]

It should have been a no-brainer for the U.S. and Russia to cooperate to fight Islamic radicals in the Middle East. But even if you place the high-jump bar on the ground, some people will still manage to trip over it — then insist on going back and tripping over it again. Everything was perfectly […]

The vast majority of Americans have never met Phil Weinberg. But that isn’t because he’s unimportant. It’s because he is: important. Like millions of Americans who toil largely in anonymity, participating daily in acts of courage and generosity, Phil has never been on CNN or Fox News; while he subscribes to The Wall Street Journal, he’s […]

While President Obama dithers, Congress needs to act against ISIS. House and Senate leaders should reconvene Congress this week and take the unprecedented step of authorizing military action against ISIS for Obama’s signature. Customarily, a president takes the first step, presenting a draft Authorization for the Use of Military Force (similar to a declaration of […]

I never liked it when George W. Bush used the term “evildoers” to describe al-Qaeda and other terrorists. A lot of other people objected as well, but for different reasons. I didn’t like the term because it always sounded to me like he was saying “evil Dewar’s,” as in the blended Scotch. (This always made […]

What’s a firewall? It’s an impenetrable barrier meant to stop an undesirable action. In politics, consider the example of the 1988 United States presidential race. After several embarrassing defeats in early primaries, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush’s campaign manager announced to staff and supporters that South Carolina and its influential primary would be the firewall […]

To the Jackie Robinson West All-Stars: Boys, I’m hoping you can forgive us grown-ups for some of the nonsense coming out of our mouths after the Little League World Series. Some of us are gushing sympathy and tenderness at you, and that’s the last thing a good ballplayer wants to hear. You’re champions. You’re the […]

The political left has been campaigning against the use of force since at least the 18th century. So it is not surprising that they are now arguing that heavily armed or aggressive police forces only inflame protesters and thus provoke violence. Statisticians have long warned that correlation is not causation, but they have apparently warned […]

Last week, I built a case for how the Islamic State’s monstrous brutalities include the summary killing of men, women and children, including by crucifixion. That was before the world heard of the beheading of courageous U.S. journalist James Foley, which demonstrated just how psychotic and cruel the Islamic State is. Today I will build […]

One does not need to be Sun Tzu or George Patton to know that a nation must recognize an enemy before it can develop a strategy to defeat it. But one apparently does have to be someone other than President Barack Obama. Since he took office, Obama has spent considerable energy trying to convince us […]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the Asian Chamber of Commerce last week: “The Asian population is so productive. I don’t think you’re smarter than anybody else, but you’ve convinced a lot of us you are.” In remarks videotaped by the GOP group America Rising, Reid also joked that he has trouble keeping his “Wongs […]

My father, Max Prager, died last week. Here are some thoughts on the death of a parent. 1. Longevity Parents who live long are very lucky. Not only for their longevity, and not only because they get to see their children grow into adulthood, and not only because they may see grandchildren, but for all […]

The unsinkable Charles B. Rangel appeared on C-SPAN over the weekend. Why unsinkable? Well, the House of Representatives censured the New York Democrat in 2010 by a vote of 333 to 79 (when the body was still majority Democrat) for violating 11 ethics rules and “bringing discredit to the House.” The New York Times called […]

The Obama administration is reportedly considering airstrikes in Syria against the terrorist group ISIS. The New York Times quotes “a top national security adviser” to the president as saying the U.S. is “‘not going to be restricted by borders’ to protect its interests…” What about American cities? If ISIS attacks one or more U.S. cities, […]

“About half the practice of a decent lawyer consists in telling would-be clients that they are damned fools and should stop.” So supposedly said Elihu Root, New York lawyer and secretary of war and of state, and U.S. senator from 1909 to 1915. Today it seems that many liberal “would-be clients” are in desperate need […]

America’s attention recently turned away from the violence in Iraq and Gaza toward the violence in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of Michael Brown. While all the facts surrounding the shooing have yet to come to light, the shock of seeing police using tear gas (a substance banned in warfare), and other military-style weapons against […]

August 28, 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the mall in Washington, DC. One year later, a half century ago, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. A half-century is a long time. Yet, as events in Ferguson, Missouri attest to, race remains a problem in […]

In every cartoon I’ve seen with an ostrich, there comes a scene where it gets scared and buries its head in the sand. Ostriches don’t do this in real life, but it came to symbolize, in cartoons at least, the concept of thinking something bad will go away if you simply ignore it. It’s foolish […]

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick announced Tuesday that the San Francisco ride-matching company had hired David Plouffe, the campaign manager for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, as a senior vice president/campaign manager. This means war — an epic war — that will pit Uber and the Obama Whisperer against not only what Kalanick calls “the Big […]

Why have the protests and riots lasted so long in Ferguson?: Why have out-of-town agitators and opportunists like the Communist Revolutionary Party and the New Black Panthers flocked to a St. Louis suburb?:  Why, 12 days after Michael Brown was shot to death by a policeman, do the good people of Ferguson who want to see […]

Continued violence in Ferguson, Missouri, brings back memories of the urban riots of the 1960s. As it happens, I had a front-row seat back then, as an intern in the office of Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanagh during the six-day riot in July 1967. At one point I was alone in the so-called command center with […]

The initial outburst of rage, simmering for years in a brick and pavement community draped in poverty was genuine, and for many today is still genuine. It didn’t and will never matter to many in Ferguson what Michael Brown did or did not do. What remains is a white man of authority gunned him down […]

In a bit of dubious cherry-picking, a new Bloomberg article concludes that the Affordable Care Act is losing its effectiveness as a political issue for Republicans and is diminishing as a major issue. How do we know the end is near-ish? Well, so many Americans are “benefiting from the law,” theorizes Heidi Przybyla, that political […]

Wake up America, wake up! This is the resounding call I have often read on social media postings and voiced by very frustrated people. I share their deep agitation at the Obama Administration’s retreat and suicidal weakening of this great United States of America. He is not an inept empty suit, rather a charging force […]

For two bloody months, an armed jihadist serial killer ran loose across the country. At least four innocent men died this spring and summer as acts of “vengeance” on behalf of aggrieved Muslims, the self-confessed murderer has now proclaimed. Have you heard about this horror? Probably not. The usual suspects who decry hate crimes and […]

Does the president think the world is a TV show? One of the things you learn watching television as a kid is that the hero wins. No matter how dire things look, the star is going to be OK. MacGyver always defuses the bomb with some saltwater taffy before the timer reaches zero. There was […]

Many reject the notion that a good segment of our popular culture and of our political class is at war with Christianity. But this is a real war — not a phony one, such as the left’s manufactured “war on women.” This hostility toward Christianity is a global phenomenon. Radical Muslims are targeting, persecuting and, […]