Category: Column

While the national media is mostly focused on the Federal Communications Commission’s latest net neutrality follies (still a regulatory solution in search of a problem), the far bigger policy challenge the Commission faces is executing the most complex spectrum auction in the agency’s history. Unfortunately, the FCC seems more concerned with picking winners and losers […]

After The Daily Beast released excerpts of his warning world leaders that Israel would devolve into an “apartheid” state if it failed to agree to a peace deal, Secretary of State John Kerry walked back his comments. “If I could rewind the tape,” he explained, “I would have chosen a different word to describe my […]

Texas has a part-time legislature, and inherent in any state with a part-time legislature is the potential for conflicts of interest.Unless a legislator is personally wealthy, they must hold a job, which inevitably leads to their consideration of a bill that impacts their industry or company directly.Texas ethics laws are lax and have loopholes. Legislators […]

After the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, members of the American left found one thing they could all agree on: America’s Our First Amendment rights were in peril. The American Prospect insisted on Sept. 12, when the rubble was still burning and the dead had not yet been retrieved, that “a number of government agencies […]

At the recent annual convention of Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, President Obama said his political opponents are “pass[ing] laws to make it harder, not easier, to vote.” It was another attempt by the President and his supporters to energize their base – in this case, African-Americans – through scare stories they hope will move […]

Hannibal Lecter. Freddy Kreuger. Jason Voorhees. Charles Manson. Jeffrey Dahmer. Ted Bundy. Hollywood loves a homicidal monster. But what happens when an evil being exposes the monstrosities of malign government neglect and deadly ideology? Crickets. Tinseltown couldn’t conjure a bigger nightmare than true-life Philadelphia serial killer Kermit Gosnell. He preyed on hundreds of poor minority […]

A book by a French economist on income inequality has become a pop sensation among Democratic liberal elites. Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” initially released in France, has an English translation, which has received rave reviews from pundits like Paul Krugman of The New York Times. It is also the latest reason to […]

We can’t ignore it anymore – the markets are rigged. The LIBOR scandal broke almost two years ago, and the banks found responsible for manipulating that key index are still dealing with lawsuits.: Meanwhile, allegations of gold market manipulation have been simmering for over a decade and grew into an inferno after the spot price dropped […]

The Obama administration has no shred of integrity left concerning the Benghazi scandal. Caught in the act with the “loaded gun,” those in the administration are telling us it is a toy pistol, but no honest observer can possibly believe them anymore. It took a lawsuit to force the White House to release emails that […]

The Ben Rhodes memo revealing the duplicity of this administration on the subject of Benghazi reminds us about the character of those involved. That President Barack Obama could lie so evenly and so passionately (remember the second presidential debate?) is not perhaps surprising at this stage. But let’s not forget what it took for Hillary […]

News reports this week were filled with lamentations from death penalty opponents about the messy and unnecessarily painful execution of Oklahoma’s Clayton Lockett. As Andrew Cohen wrote in The Atlantic, Oklahoma corrections officials “were using an untested mix of lethal drugs, never previously used in that dosage combination, obtained through secret means, which precluded the […]

**: NOTE: Some quoted language below may offend readers.** I had listened to roughly eight hours of commentary on Donald Sterling and the ugly remarks he made in conversations secretly tape-recorded by his girlfriend, before I heard anyone mention a wife. HE HAS A WIFE? At first, I thought the topic must have changed when I […]

  Sometimes doctrines just vanish, once they appear as naked as the proverbial emperor in his new clothes.   Something like that seems now to be happening with affirmative action. Despite all the justifications for its continuance, polling shows the public still strongly disagrees with the idea of using racial criteria for admissions and hiring. […]

A secretly taped conversation between long-time L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling and his then-girlfriend was released. The NBA has now banned Sterling from the league. The commissioner recommends that Sterling sell his team. Goodness, what happened?   The old guy had a quarrel with his girlfriend, which she apparently — surreptitiously — recorded. The most […]

Faith is making a comeback among liberal Democrats, but they still have a way to go. First, some history. Hoping to attract some Evangelical Christian votes more than 20 years ago, former vice president Al Gore wrote that the biblical story of Noah and the Ark could be paraphrased in modern terms, “Thou shalt preserve […]

  Dunbar High School in Washington is becoming a controversial issue again — and the controversy that is beginning to develop has implications for American education well beyond the District of Columbia.   There has not been much controversy about Dunbar High School for a long time. Since sometime in the late 1950s, it has […]

This weekend on “Fox News Sunday,” anchor Chris Wallace credited his guest, Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, with leading the nation as the “first state to fall out of the Common Core national education standards.” If only it were true. Wallace didn’t do his homework. And presidential aspirant Pence was too busy daydreaming about 2016 […]

Did you know that I started Facebook? Really! Well, sort of … When I was in college at all-male Princeton, I tried to make money by adding photos to a snarky guide to neighboring girls’ schools. The guide had been a profitable publishing success, and my idea was simply to add the girls’ pictures. Schools […]

Let me run through a few good ideas. I think it’s a good idea for children to eat healthful, wholesome foods. In the raising of our daughter, before-dinner treats were fresh vegetables, and after-dinner treats were mostly fruits. I arrive at my gym sometime between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., at least four times a […]

An unwritten American novel is playing out in Los Angeles. It’s about rich, whiny racist Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. And it’s about his cooing kitty-cat of a girlfriend, who infuriated him by bringing black people to his games. It will make an even better American movie, with an inside look […]

French economist Thomas Piketty’s book “Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century” has been inspiring a lot of comment and controversy. The English translation published last month zipped to No. 1 on: amazon.com. It has given a lift to economists on the Left who have cheered on Barack Obama’s flagging attempts to make income inequality a voting issue. […]

Of the last eight people who have won the Republican nomination for president, six ran for the office and lost before eventually getting their party’s designation. To win as a Republican, it would seem you have to first go through losing. Romney, McCain, Dole, Bush-41, Reagan, and Nixon all lost before they won. Only Bush-43 […]

While there is wide agreement that the cost of college education has risen far faster than the incomes of most Americans, there is some debate as to whether the quality of the product has kept pace with the price. Not surprisingly, almost all who argue that it has (college administrators, professors, and populist politicians) are […]

PARIS — A Cold War is purely an intelligence war. If you go on a Ukrainian geopolitical bender in front of a former KGB chief like Russian President Vladimir Putin without having a firm grasp of the opposition’s mind-set, you risk launching yourself into a wall like some kind of drunken frat bro on a […]

The pristine natural world has been gone for a long time; get used to it. Nearly all of the earthworms in New England and the upper Midwest were inadvertently imported from Europe. The American earthworms were wiped out by the last Ice Age. That’s why when European colonists first got here, many forest floors were […]

In November 2009, Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling settled a lawsuit in which the Department of Justice alleged that Sterling had discriminated against Hispanics, blacks and families without children in his rental properties. The lawsuit contained testimony that Sterling had suggested Hispanics were poor tenants because they “smoke, drink, and just hang around the […]

Top Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Washington, is walking back comments attributed to her that Obamacare can’t be repealed. But she’s not the only one suggesting that the goal should be making changes within the framework of the health law. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, says the goal is to get the law “fixed.” […]

It is not easy to demonize people who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money to help educate poor children. But some members of the education establishment are taking a shot at it.   The Walton Family Foundation — created by the people who created Walmart — has given more than […]