Category: Column

With Congress mercifully away on its August recess, now is a good time to evaluate what’s happened and what might happen regarding the ever-contentious, endless immigration haggle. President Obama has more than once promised to issue a far-reaching executive order amnesty that would grant legal status and work permits to between 5-10 million aliens. While […]

Politicians have ranges of positions of varying widths that they find acceptable. Hillary Clinton, like her husband, has a very wide range of stands she finds acceptable, depending on timing and circumstances. President Obama’s range of acceptable positions has been far narrower. This is reflected in their attitudes about military action in Iraq. Clinton was […]

Since 1998 it has been prohibited by federal law for states and localities to tax Internet access. This policy, known as the Internet Tax Freedom Act, has been extended three times with broad bipartisan support. But it is set to expire again onNovember 1, and some Senate Democrats appear willing, this time, to allow it […]

On: June 30, U.S. authorities announced a stunning $9 billion fine on French bank BNP Paribas for violations of financial sanctions laws that the United States had imposed on Iran, Sudan and Cuba. In essence, BNP had surreptitiously conducted business with countries that the United States had sought to isolate diplomatically (sometimes unilaterally in the case […]

If you’ve been watching cable news, reading Hollywood celebrities’ tweets and listening to race-hustling opportunists, you might think that every police officer in America has a finger on the trigger, hunting for any excuse to gun down defenseless youths. This hysterical nonsense must be stopped. The Cirque du Cop-Bashing, with Al Sharpton as ringmaster, is […]

There’s an old rule in journalism: All you need are three good examples to prove a trend. And by that measure, writer Robert Draper had more than he needed to declare a new “libertarian moment” in American politics. In a New York Times Magazine cover story, Draper made exactly that case. His chief evidence: Young […]

I am constantly amazed at the tendency of some to use the perspective of hindsight to condemn decisions of those who did not possess the supernatural gift of predictive prophecy at the time they made their decisions. So when a friend asked whether I believe that those who supported George W. Bush’s decision to attack […]

The news from Ferguson, Missouri, has brought back unpleasant memories from the long-ago riots in Asbury Park, New Jersey. It was the summer of 1970, and I was a young teenager close enough to the action to be appropriately frightened. The riots I remember were also fueled by racial grievances, and there were similar issues […]

LIMASSOL, Cyprus — Cyprus is a beautiful island. But it has never recovered from the Turkish invasion of 1974. Turkish troops still control nearly 40 percent of the island — the most fertile and formerly the richest portion. Some 200,000 Greek refugees never returned home after being expelled from their homes and farms in Northern […]

After our ill-advised complete withdraw from Iraq in 2011, President Barack Obama now sends hundreds of “advisors” and orders airstrikes. Let’s re-visit. When, in 2002, then-Illinois State Sen. Obama gave his famous anti-Iraq War speech, he argued that America had no business in this “dumb” war. Period. Obama considered Iraq a blunder of epic proportions, […]

“You can make money without doing evil” is No. 6 on the list of 10 things Google (the corporation) knows to be true. The Google list leaves out a few caveats. Like: You can make more money flouting antitrust laws. You can pay your brainiacs less if they believe you will retaliate if they try […]

Robin Williams made me cry. Like his mentor, the late Jonathan Winters, Williams, who committed suicide Monday, made me laugh so intensely tears would come to my eyes. Williams’ death made headlines and led TV newscasts. His comedic genius diverted us from stories about terrorism and other sadness in the world. That’s what comedy does. […]

Robin Williams’ suicide this week shook up people across the political spectrum — and for good reason. When a highly successful, incredibly popular figure from our culture decides to take his own life, it feels as though suicide could happen to anyone. It can’t. Robin Williams reportedly suffered from mentally illness. He stated during an […]

Wonder of wonders: The Washington press corps woke up. Finally, mainstream journalists are onto Barack Obama’s game. Their breaking-news shocker? Turns out all that “hope and change” stuff was just hot air. A new report from the D.C.-based press shows that — gasp — the White House is infested with Beltway lobbyists. Good morning, sleepyheads! […]

Drones — unmanned flying machines — will soon fill our skies. They conjure up fears, especially among some of my fellow libertarians, of spying and death from above. These fears aren’t groundless. President Bush approved the use of armed drones against suspected terrorists overseas, and President Obama vastly increased their use. Drones have killed thousands […]

Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera accused Matt Drudge’s website of “the worst kind of jingoistic rhetoric ever” for carrying news stories about the dangers of illegal immigration. He said Drudge “is doing his best to stir up a civil war. I mean, shame on Matt Drudge.” Republican Rep. Todd Rokita and his Indiana delegation have […]

President Obama is golfing on Martha’s Vineyard, and Congress is adjourned for a five-week vacation. So who’s minding the nation’s capital? No one. Truth is, no one is ever minding that store. A string of disgraceful revelations in the weeks before politicians packed up for vacation shows that Washington is permanently mired in a culture […]

Despite its military supremacy, the U.S. under the command of President Barack Obama is at risk of having an upstart group of Islamic terrorists take over Iraq — all because politically straitjacketed American military might has struggled against unrestrained guerrilla warfare, and the president has failed to absorb the lessons from America’s past mistakes. Obama’s […]

They don’t talk about the quiet in the house. Instead friends tell you all the fun you’ll have together, all the freedom you’ll finally achieve, once your kids are gone away to college. The problem is that they tell you in a chatty, excited voice, extolling the benefits of “reconnecting as a couple” and how […]

The hawks (including me) were wrong about a lot, but some got one thing right. It’s going to be a long war. In the early days after 9/11 there was a lot of talk about a “clash of civilizations” and a long “existential struggle” facing the West. I once asked the late Christopher Hitchens what […]

New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, like so many others who call themselves “progressive,” is gung-ho to solve social problems. In fact, he is currently on a crusade to solve an educational problem that doesn’t exist, even though there are plenty of other educational problems that definitely do exist. The non-existent problem is the use […]

In 2008, Americans appointed a president they expected to unify the country, lift the oppressed and restore America’s economy and relations in the world. But almost halfway through his second term in office, Americans are more polarized, and the oppressed are more hamstrung. And our country is more unstable than ever among the global community; […]

President Obama claims that the extremism and reality-challenged nature of his political opponents explain his limitless policy failures, which, of course, he also refuses to acknowledge. This is truly rich but nothing new. Obama told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, “What you’ve seen with our politics … is increasingly politicians are rewarded for taking […]

The highly acclaimed school standards called Common Core are becoming so unpopular that they may soon be politically untouchable. The critics are piling on from Glenn Beck to the Wall Street Journal, with senior academics and activist parents in-between. The latest is a detailed criticism of the mathematics standards by a prize-winning math professor at […]

Sen. Dianne Feinstein is a woman on a mission. As chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she has set out to prove the illogical — that enhanced interrogation techniques used for a time under the George W. Bush administration constituted torture: and: that they never produced useful intelligence. Americans are supposed to believe that top terrorists are […]