Category: Column

Pop culture is a better indicator of the public mood than political talking points, so it’s interesting to see how two top-rated and long-running CBS television dramas have recently dealt with the issue of inequality. They suggest it’s a real issue, but not in the way politicians talk about it. “Bones” features a brilliant but […]

  Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a disaster of a declining population, corruption, authoritarianism, a warped economy and a high rate of alcoholism.   Why, then, would Putin want to ruin additional territory in Crimea and Ukraine the way that he has wrecked most of Russia?   Doesn’t Russia have enough land for its diminishing population? […]

In 1920, a bond salesman walked into Joseph Yenowsky’s Waterbury, Conn., clothing store. Yenowsky was a tough sell. During their lengthy conversation, Yenowsky told the salesman he thought Vladimir Lenin, the Russian Bolshevik leader, was “the brainiest man” in the world. The bond salesmen turned Yenowsky in to the police for sedition. Yenowsky got six […]

In 1996 California voters passed Proposition 209, which prohibited discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity or sex in admissions to public college and universities. But the moment 209 passed, UCLA, according to a new book, set about figuring ways around it. “Cheating: An Insider’s Report on the Use of Race in Admissions at […]

“It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress,” Monica Lewinsky, now 40, writes in a Vanity Fair essay due for digital release today. All I can say is: You go, girl. The 1998 revelation of L’Affaire Lewinsky and its fallout should have made one thing clear to American women. Forget “You’ve come […]

  Ever since the Supreme Court ruled organized prayer and Bible study in public schools unconstitutional in the early 1960s, conservative Christians have been trying to re-enter the secular arena.   Take Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). The case, The New York Times wrote last year, “…challenged a 1968 Pennsylvania law that reimbursed religious schools for […]

On Monday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie dodged a political bullet when the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the National Rifle Association’s challenge to his state’s highly restrictive gun law. The justices’ decision not to hear the case Drake v. Jerejian leaves Second Amendment law in disarray. Federal appeals courts around the nation […]

Hollywood is sick, sick, sick. Behind its curtain of holier-than-thou progressivism, the entertainment world’s top A-list stars have engaged in the most depraved sexual abuse against vulnerable children and teens, according to a growing number of victims. After years of cover-up, the institutional scandal is exploding. Finally. The latest alleged atrocities involve “X-Men” director Bryan […]

Last week, when the NBA banned racist team owner Donald Sterling, some said: “What about free speech? Can’t a guy say what he thinks anymore?” The answer: yes, you can. But the free market may punish you. In America today, the market punishes racists aggressively. This punishment is not “censorship.” Censorship is something only governments […]

Last week’s U.S. Supreme Court 6-2 ruling in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action et al. upheld Michigan’s constitutional amendment that bans racial preferences in admission to its public universities. Justice Sonia Sotomayor lashed out at her colleagues in a bitter dissent, calling them “out of touch with reality.” She went on to make […]

The nation was shocked by charges that more than 1,400 vets lingered and 40 died on a secret waiting list at the Phoenix VA medical center. The list was concocted to conceal long waits for care. But what you haven’t heard is even worse. VA hospitals all over the country are manipulating the official electronic […]

After three months of consistently disappointing jobs numbers, the markets were as keyed up for a good jobs report as a long suffering sailor awaiting shore leave in a tropical port. The just released April jobs report, which claimed that 288,000 jobs were created in the U.S. during the month, provided the apparent good news. […]

How did Obama administration aide Ben Rhodes get the language for the talking points he prepared for Susan Rice condemning the anti-Muslim Internet video that purportedly triggered “spontaneous” demonstrations leading to the attack on Benghazi? Interestingly enough, the words he sent out about the video were identical to those used by Hillary Clinton two days […]

Why is Benghazi important to Americans? You’ll hear a lot about Benghazi in coming days and you’ll hear the familiar screeching of partisan politics, now that House Speaker John Boehner has decided to convene a select committee to investigate the 2012 terrorist attack in that dusty fly-bitten town in Libya. If the past is any […]

PARIS — The good news is that the Obama administration plans to create a lot of new jobs. The bad news is that those jobs will mostly be in Asia. President Obama’s recent trip to Asia revived debate about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the cornerstone of this administration’s so-called pivot to Asia. The controversial […]

Second-term presidencies are an opportunity for bipartisan compromise. The institutional stars are in alignment to address long-range problems not amenable in other circumstances. The president is barred from running for a third term and thus does not have to worry about his next campaign. In Congress, members of the president’s party, with some reason to […]

On Monday, as Vladimir Putin waged an actual war in Ukraine, Bashar Assad waged an actual war in Syria, and a Nigerian terror group waged an actual war on underage girls, President Barack Obama announced his own war on “climate disruption.” White House adviser John Podesta explained on Monday afternoon that Obama would be acting […]

If you want to get some idea of the moral bankruptcy of our educational system, read an article in the May 4th issue of the New York Times Magazine titled, “The Tale of Two Schools.” The article is not about moral bankruptcy. But it is itself an example of the moral bankruptcy behind the many […]

Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker was internationally renowned within the economics profession, but was not nearly as well known among the general public as he deserved to be. More important, his path-breaking ideas, including his analysis of the economics of racial discrimination, deserved to be much more a part of the many discussions of that […]

A year ago, I wrote a two-part series titled “My Mom’s Advice for America.” There’s no better time than now — between my mother’s 93rd birthday (May 4) and Mother’s Day (May 11) — to talk about her mother’s advice, which my mother recorded in her autobiography, “Acts of Kindness: My Story.”  Last week, I […]

Don’t trouble yourself trying to figure out whether President Obama is more political than ideological. He’s an expert at straddling both and getting his way without compromise.  Analysts have long debated whether partisan Obama would prevail over ideological Obama in his decision to approve or reject the Keystone XL pipeline, but in the end, it […]

Last week, Oklahoma authorities botched the execution of a murderer named Clayton Lockett. The execution by lethal injection took more than 40 minutes. According to witnesses, he twitched and gasped and said, “oh, man” after officials had thought he was unconscious.  Opponents of the death penalty outdid one another in expressing their outrage. It was […]

“Dude, this was, like, two years ago.” Thus spake former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor on Thursday after Fox News Channel anchorman Bret Baier asked him whether he had been involved in changing talking points to prepare then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice for Sunday talk shows in the wake of the […]

Most people, perhaps even the super-wealthy, who are usually accountable to auditors, want to know where their money goes. This is especially true when they detect money for which they can’t account. Not so with the federal government.  Some recent headlines reflect a disturbing pattern that has contributed to our $17 trillion debt and to […]

The headline looks like a hoax– saturated fat does not cause heart disease — but it’s real. This news is more than just another example of changing health guidelines; it’s a cautionary tale about trusting the scientific consensus. For more than 50 years, the best scientific minds in America assured us that saturated fat was […]

Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling is being run out of professional basketball for racist comments he made in private while both Democrats and Republicans rightly cheer. Racism, many in the media would tell you, is no longer acceptable in America. But that’s a lie. Racism in America is dying, but it’s not dead yet. […]

Get this: People are becoming addicted to their smartphones.: According to a report from Flurry Analytics, says The Washington Post’s Style Blog, the average mobile consumer checks his phone 150 times a day. A “mobile addict” is defined as someone who launches apps more than 60 times a day – 10 times as often as the […]

Donald Sterling is a despicable human being. The racist landowner and L.A. Clippers owner’s years of racist activity included evicting a “smelly black woman” from her apartment because she complained about the leaking plumbing. Now the NBA has banned the owner of the Clippers from all basketball activity for his racist rant recorded by his […]

MOBILE, Ala. — “That situation didn’t define who I was,” Clarence Aaron, 45, told a group gathered for a weekend celebration at the Mobile high school he attended about two decades ago. When, at age 24, he found himself in federal prison in 1993 — after he was convicted and sentenced to life without parole […]

  For a president who hasn’t enjoyed many foreign policy successes lately, Barack Obama did pretty well on his just completed trip to Asia.   In Japan, he reiterated in no uncertain terms the American defense commitment, including on the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, which China also claims and calls the Diaoyus. […]