Category: Column

Los Angeles County, where I was born in the mid-1940s, reached an ominous milestone last July. Recently released Census Bureau data show that in 2013 LA County’s population inched over 10 million, nearly twice the total of second place Cook County, Ill. with its 5.3 million people. In 1940, LA’s population was a hard-to-believe-it-was-so low […]

When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in 1830, he was struck by how many Americans were participating in voluntary associations. It was quite a contrast with his native France, where power was centralized in Paris and people did not trust each other enough to join in voluntary groups. Tocqueville might have a different impression should […]

In recent years a good part of the monetary debate has become a simple war of words, with much of the conflict focused on the definition for the word “inflation.” Whereas economists up until the 1960’s or 1970’s mostly defined inflation as an expansion of the money supply, the vast majority now see it as […]

In a blockbuster Associated Press story your local paper may have skipped, Kelli Kennedy reports that patients with cancer and other serious diseases all over the country are being hammered by the same problem: the one-size-fits-all structure of Obamacare plans imposes outrageously high out-of-pocket costs for their specialty drugs. Kennedy tells us about breast cancer […]

Republican Senate candidates now lead their rivals in seven contests, including three involving Democratic incumbents. Republicans need to win six seats to gain control of the Senate. In an eight seat, the Republican is tied with a Democratic incumbent. And, in a ninth contest, the GOP candidate trails the Democratic incumbent by only two points. […]

Here’s another reason government should never own a business. In February 2010, the Obama administration’s transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, told America, without a shred of evidence, that Toyota automobiles were dangerous to drive. LaHood offered the remarks in front of the House subcommittee that was investigating reports of unintended-acceleration crashes. “My advice is, if anybody […]

Desperate to find a Texas lifeline, the struggling Wendy Davis for Governor campaign, staffed primarily by out-of-state Obama operatives, resurrected a tired national wedge issue: equal pay. After two weeks of hyperventilating media coverage, I presume you have some awareness of this issue. Let’s put five basic facts out on the table: 1) Gender-based pay […]

Attention, class: A Common Core mouthpiece wants to rap my knuckles with his Gates Foundation-funded ruler. In response to my column two weeks ago about the marketing overlords pushing the Fed Ed racket, Chad Colby of Achieve Inc. demanded corrections. Let’s go to school. “I wanted to take a moment to highlight two points that […]

President Obama was doing his favorite thing this week: talking to crowds of adoring young people who already agree with him while acting like he persuaded them about something. They also seemed to give Obama the impression that he’s a really funny guy. On Wednesday, he told a crowd of 1,400 at the University of […]

It’s one thing to spike the football when you actually score a touchdown, but why is Obama celebrating in the end zone when he just got tackled for a safety? What on earth is this man boasting about? Boasting is obnoxious enough when the braggart in question has accomplished something, but how many people do […]

“The conservative minds of the Heritage Foundation have found a way for Republicans to shrink the gender gap: They need to persuade more women to get their MRS degrees.” So wrote the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank about a panel that featured Mollie Hemingway, Karin Agness and yours truly. It was so nice of Milbank to […]

I am an optimist. I believe that America’s best days are still to come and today’s children will live a life far better than their parents and grandparents. The vast majority of Americans are more pessimistic, and it’s easy to understand why. Looking at the behavior and performance of our political leaders, there’s little reason […]

Last Sunday, The New York Times published a front-page article about the heartfelt need of California farmers for more illegal aliens. The first tip-off that heinous public policy ideas were coming was that the Times introduced farmer Chuck Herrin, owner of a farm-labor contracting company, as a “lifelong Republican.” That’s Times-speak for “liberal.” Herrin admitted […]

No place on the planet is as beautiful and as naturally rich as California. And few places have become as absurd. Currently, three California state senators are either under felony indictment or already have been convicted. State Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) made a political career out of demanding harsher state gun-control laws. Now he […]

A quick way to kill debate is to accuse your political adversary of “lying.” Still, it’s hard to figure out what else propels President Barack Obama to falsely assert, yet again, that employers rip off female employees by paying them 23 cents less per dollar than men –: for doing the same work. In his last […]

So far, 2014 has been a paradoxical year for gold. Many investors aren’t even aware that it has rallied almost 8%. On the rare occasion that the financial media mentions the yellow metal, it is only in the context of comparing the recent rise to last year’s decline. In spite of this overwhelming negative sentiment, […]

When people speak of a legacy, they usually mean something other than what the late economist Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose, left behind, namely the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice (edchoice.org).   The foundation has just released a small book entitled “The ABC’s of School Choice: The comprehensive guide to every private school choice […]

Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, gave $1,000 to Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure passed by a majority of California voters to limit marriage to one man and one woman. The U.S. Supreme Court voided the measure, but the hate campaign against its supporters lives on. There’s a Twitter campaign to force Eich to step […]

Finally, someone has come up with a way to settle the debate over climate change: Put the people on the wrong side of the argument in cages. A writer for the website Gawker recently penned a self-described “rant” on the pressing need to arrest, charge and imprison people who “deny” global warming. In fairness, Adam […]

Question: Who are the most prominent public purveyors of Asian stereotypes and ethnic language-mocking in America? The right answer is liberal Hollywood and Democrats. The wrong and slanderous answer is conservatives, which is what liberal performance artist/illegal-alien-amnesty lobbyist Stephen Colbert wants Americans to believe. Last week on his Comedy Central show, Colbert resurrected his “satirical” […]

Did you fill out a March Madness bracket this year? In many states, if you put money in a pool, that’s illegal! The NCAA website warns, “Fans should enjoy … filling out a bracket just for the fun of it, not … the amount of money they could possibly win.” Give me a break. Americans […]

There are several race and sex issues that need addressing. Let’s look at a few of them with an ear to these questions: Should we insist upon equal treatment of people by race and sex or tolerate differences in treatment? And just how equal are people by race and sex in the first place? According […]

In 1983, the British Labor Party issued its manifesto for the coming election, demanding a radical move away from the West, the dismantling of the U.K. military and increases in taxes and more government regulation. The manifesto so alienated the British electorate that Conservative Party MP Gerald Kaufman called it “the longest suicide note in […]

Even a former cornerback who failed to graduate from Whatsamatta U. can deduce what will happen to college football in America. Football’s past may have been all about raccoon coats and chants of Boola-Boola. But the future of college football will be written along the Chicago Way. So after decades of making piles of treasure […]

On Tuesday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., presented his 2015 budget proposal. The Senate Democrats did not provide any such proposal; President Barack Obama’s proposal posited an unending federal deficit and massive tax increases. Ryan’s proposal, by contrast, lowered the rate of increase of spending moderately (by $5.1 trillion over the next decade), […]

It’s hard to know which is worse, the dying or the lying. A bacterial infection called C. diff is the No. 1 hospital-infection killer, according to information released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on March 26. It kills more people than dreaded staph infections and about as many as AIDS. What […]

PARIS — In an apparent effort to fight bribery with even more overt state-sanctioned bribery, the battle for the hearts and minds of Ukraine has devolved into two suitors — the West and Russia — flashing their respective bank account statements. How obscene. I don’t recall U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev […]