Category: Column

It is now all the fashionable rage in Washington, D.C., to proclaim solidarity with America’s working poor in front of the cameras — while stabbing them in the back behind closed doors. Privileged Illinois Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky and others have taken to Twitter, posting photos of themselves eating tuna sandwiches and buying Ramen noodles […]

I’m the underachiever in my family. My parents also produced Harvard Medical School research director Thomas Stossel. Mom called him the one who had “a real job.” For years, my brother annoyed me by not embracing the libertarianism that changed my life. It bored him. He was comfortable in his Harvard cocoon. But then he […]

While reading the first chapter of Jason Riley’s new book, “Please Stop Helping Us,” I thought about Will Rogers’ Prohibition-era observation that “Oklahomans vote dry as long as they can stagger to the polls.” Demonstrative of similar dedication, one member of Congress told Vanderbilt University political scientist Carol Swain that “one of the advantages and […]

He lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 16 years later to Bill Clinton in 1992. Now, 24 years later, in 2016, he may run again. Jerry Brown may seem like ancient history, but he is only nine years Hillary’s senior and may well challenge her for the Democratic Party nomination. Coasting to an easy […]

On Monday, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew urged Congress to provide more resources for the exploding number of people on permanent disability. It’s part of the Obama administration’s “give away the store” mentality, encouraging the masses to sign up for government programs at taxpayers’ expense. Even without Congress’ complicity, the administration is doing everything it can […]

This week, as I have been predicting for months, President Barack Obama announced that he would be considering unprecedented executive action to provide legal status for millions of illegal immigrants. His goal is not to solve the immigration crisis — you don’t grant legal status to 5 million illegal immigrants, then leave the back door […]

Barack Obama’s foreign policy disasters are about what one might expect from a leftist community organizer elected to be leader of the free world. So many of the countries this administration has touched — Ukraine, Libya, Iraq — have descended into acute civil war on Obama’s watch. It’s worth asking why, exactly, this has been […]

“Sorry to email you late on a Friday, but I need your urgent support,” Nancy Pelosi wrote me. The House minority leader went on to explain that “for the first time in history, Congress voted to sue a sitting president.” And, “Today: the White House alerted us that they believe ‘Speaker Boehner … has opened […]

With his approval numbers sinking to 39 percent a week ago, according to the Gallup tracking poll, President Obama isn’t alone in having a bad summer. So is Hollywood. Entertainment Weekly calls gross receipts for what should have been a blockbuster July 4-6 weekend “downright terrifying.” Writes EW, “Not only were grosses down 45 percent […]

Many years ago, on my first trip around the world, I was struck by how the children in the Middle East — Arab and Israeli alike — were among the nicest looking little children I had seen anywhere. It was painful to think that they were going to grow up killing each other. But that […]

American diets are being bombarded with genetically modified foods. Big seed companies initiate it. Big government enables it. Big food business loves it. But Americans are the ones paying the price through their pocketbook and especially their health. And worst of all, as the old song goes, it may be “killing you softly.” For those […]

  True, the Halbig case, if it makes its way to the Supreme Court, will present an opportunity for Chief Justice John Roberts to redeem himself from his abominably activist salvation of Obamacare. But more important, it will be an opportunity for the high court to reaffirm this nation’s commitment to the rule of law. […]

The New York Times has seen the light. On Sunday, the paper editorialized in favor of an end to the federal ban on marijuana. According to Tony Newman of the Drug Policy Alliance, The Gray Lady has become the first major national newspaper to support legalizing marijuana. The Times did not celebrate marijuana use; it […]

In order to justify killing Jews, Jew-haters throughout history made up libels about the Jews that were so awful that they justified, at least for the Jew-hater, the mass murder of Jews. The charge that the Jews of every age — not just some Jews at one time — killed God Himself was used by […]

In the last several weeks, I’ve heard people confidently declare that the 70 percent of Jewish Americans who voted for Obama are finally sorry. I’m skeptical, but even if they are, they’re probably telling themselves that Hillary Clinton would be a better friend to the Jewish state than the current president. They have short memories. […]

“Pare down the parasitic fringe” of government. “Favor a gospel of work” instead of aristocratic entitlement. “Rationalize finance” and “reverse the Parkinson’s law of bureaucracy.” All that sounds like rhetoric from the Tea Party or reform conservatives who assail what they call crony capitalism. But it’s not a contemporary criticism. Those are phrases from a […]

Remember back in April, 2007, when then-CIA director George Tenet appeared on 60 Minutes, angrily telling the program host, “we don’t torture people”? Remember a few months later, in October, President George W. Bush saying, “this government does not torture people”? We knew then it was not true because we had already seen the photos […]

The anti-Semitic “tradition” of blaming Jews for the world’s problems mostly took a temporary back seat in light of the indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel by the terrorist group Hamas. Major newspaper editorials condemned Hamas, but their condemnation was hedged by calls for “restraint” on “both sides” and “proportionality” in Israel’s response to the attacks. […]

by Anna Maria Hoffman:  When we flip through the latest edition of Vogue or Seventeen, we cannot help but notice unrealistic, unhealthy depictions of young women advertising the latest outfit or product from corporations like Victoria’s Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, Dolce & Gabbana, and Juicy Couture. Subconsciously, we seek to dress and appear like these […]

Remember the old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”? It’s meaningless now. Sticks and stones still break your bones, but the names have become a hate crime, which now is worse than actually hitting someone with sticks, stones or just about anything else. The First Amendment protects […]

America is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. But as we become bogged down in our many problems, I see, unfortunately, a mentality in which we are becoming increasingly a nation of the unfree — the victim — and the timid, in how we’re approaching these challenges. […]

I long for the sounds of summer I knew as a kid.

In the ’60s and ’70s, you see, most of our neighbors kept their windows open day and night, allowing the outside sounds to come in and the inside sounds to go out. 

I woke every morning to the birds chirping outside my window screen, […]

“I say it’s high time we update the wording of the presidential oath of office, which is specified in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.”: “Update it?”:  “That’s right. Our current president isn’t following it much anyhow, so why don’t you recite it from the top so we can get to work?”: “I do solemnly […]

Paul Krugman, liberal New York Times columnist and economist whose erroneous predictions and inflammatory opinions have inspired websites, blogs and columns by others detailing his multitude miscalculations, launched a Buk missile of a column at conservatives warning of inflationary government policies. Yes, the man who predicted with no uncertainty that Greece would give up the […]

The FBI’s motto is “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.” But given the FBI sting against Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow — a convicted felon who was freed from prison in 2003 because the feds got him to testify against a confederate — I suspect that a more apt motto might be “Fuggedaboutit.” On Thursday, San Francisco Chronicle columnists […]

Once again Israel is being forced to defend itself from the terrorists who run Gaza.: Once again Israel has had to drop bombs and send tanks and ground troops into Gaza to blow up tunnels and destroy the missile sites Hamas has been using to rain hundreds of rockets down on Israel’s farms and cities.:  And […]