Category: Column

The Los Angeles City Council asked Mickey Kantor, President Clinton’s ex-secretary of commerce, to head a commission to assess the shape of American’s second largest city. The report pulled few punches. Los Angeles, said the report, “suffers from a crisis in leadership and direction.” L.A., it says, risks becoming “a city in decline.” These problems […]

“Well, then,” Jesus said, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.” (Mark 12:17 Living Paraphrase) When considering what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, what happens when the federal government seeks to replace God by defining “church” and when life begins to have value, the […]

Blacks must become multilingual. I’m not saying that black folk should learn a second language such as Spanish or Chinese – although the fact that Hispanics are the dominant minority and China is ascending economically might make knowledge of these languages a handy skill. No, it’s not as much about how things are being said […]

When President Barack Obama and other Democrats began talking about raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour, I didn’t believe them. Instead, cynical thoughts came to mind, like “class war” and “November elections” and “pandering for votes.” But I’ve changed. Now I agree with the president, the national Democrats and the Chicago Way boys […]

It’s 9 a.m. on a weekday, and I’m at the Marisol Therapeutics pot shop. This is serious business. Security is tight. ID checks are frequent. Merchandise is strictly regulated, labeled, wrapped and controlled. The store is clean, bright and safe. The staffers are courteous and professional. Customers of all ages are here. There’s a middle-aged […]

We’re told government protects us, but protectors quickly become bullies. Take the Food and Drug Administration. It seems like the most helpful part of government: It supervises testing to make sure greedy drug companies don’t sell us dangerous stuff. The FDA’s first big success was stopping thalidomide, a drug that prevented the nausea of morning […]

Some statements and arguments are so asinine that you’d have to be an academic or a leftist to take them seriously. Take the accusation that Republicans and conservatives are conducting a war on women. Does that mean they’re waging war on their daughters, wives, mothers and other female members of their families? If so, do […]

Throughout her political career, Hillary Clinton has used her gender and the still-novel specter of a woman running for president to cloak her advances and shield her from losses. It is never about her. Her own merits, qualifications, defects, failures or shortcomings are never the issue. The question is always: How are we to treat […]

Few Americans have ever met their Congresspeople. They don’t see them at the grocery store; they don’t meet them at the bowling alley. They’re more likely to see their representatives in photographs from the Daily Grill in Washington, D.C., than at a local town hall. Constituents’ closest contact with those they elect comes on Election […]

PARIS — There’s no faster or easier way to shut down legitimate debate than to slap an undesirable label on someone based on their views. Criticize same-sex marriage and you’re a bigot. Take issue with immigration policy and you’re dismissed as a racist. In the latest incarnation of this phenomenon, any conservative who dares to […]

Recently former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice added her voice to those who have long been urging the Republican Party to reach out to black voters. Not only is that long overdue, what is also long overdue is putting some time — and, above all, some serious thought — into how to go about doing […]

With Obamacare’s March 31 sign-up deadline and subsequent penalties looming over the heads of young and old Americans, citizens are wondering more than ever — and with good reason, I might add — whether Washington has dished out another bill of bad goods. And here are a few more solid reasons our skepticism about socialist […]

It’s fitting that the pro-abortion crowd dominating the Obama executive branch is not about to adopt a “live and let live” attitude toward its opponents in litigation concerning the government’s effort to force corporations to subsidize the killing of human beings. The Affordable Care Act, an Orwellian title for a statute if there ever was […]

Actor-turned-producer Robert Redford boasts that his new CNN series, “Death Row Stories,” is “about the search for justice and truth.” That’s odd, because the series has aired three episodes and they’re all about victims of prosecutorial abuse. So far, nobody’s really guilty. The second episode features a woman who never spent a night on death […]

The defamation of Paul Ryan as a racist for noting the multigenerational persistence of joblessness in troubled neighborhoods is more than just another episode of hysterical name-calling by the left. The episode represents, in microcosm, the left’s intellectual bankruptcy. Ryan’s comments were not just true and well-intentioned; they were obviously so. Even if Ryan were […]

Last week, Pope Francis warned Italy’s Mafia leaders that if they continue their evil ways, they will go to hell. Hooray for the pope. More power to him for threatening evil people with hell. I had begun to despair that in my lifetime I would hear such talk from mainstream Christian or Jewish leaders. For […]

Will Hillary Clinton be elected America’s next president? The polls suggest she will. Recent polls compiled by Real Clear Politics show her winning 67 percent of the vote in Democratic primaries, with no other candidate above 11 percent. General election polling shows Clinton with an average lead over various possible Republican nominees of 51 to […]

My parents taught me never to speak ill of the dead, but in the case of Fred Phelps, who died last week at the age of 84, I think they would have made an exception. The man, who will be referred to in this column without the modifier “reverend,” because there was nothing reverent about […]

The recent upset victory by Republican candidate David Jolly for the open seat in Florida’s 13th congressional district, a district carried by Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, has produced a rush of excitement in Republican circles. This coupled with polling data – Americans are increasingly unhappy with our president, with his signature health care […]

I was making a Costco run with my friend George on Friday, and the subject of the weather came up. It was a nice day, relatively speaking, but Saturday was going to be nicer — nearly 70 degrees. This was a nice change of pace from the polar vortexes and dump trucks full of snow […]

On city streets throughout America a battle is being waged for the soul of humanity, and it is taking place right in front of our eyes. As darkness descends, the fading light lays bare an open wound in the fabric of society. The most vulnerable among us are being offered up as prey for those […]

“Look, if you want ObamaCare, you are just going to have to make some better budgeting decisions.” “Budgeting decisions? I make $36,000 a year. The best deal I could find on ObamaCare, with subsidies, is $350 a month. That is a hefty 10 percent of my income!” “Like President Obama recently said at a Spanish-speaking […]

No one should be surprised that President Obama signed a Democratic Party bill that puts more homeless people in the streets. It just needs to be repealed. On May 20, 2009, President Obama reauthorized the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act of 2009. It redefined homelessness and promoted all sorts of […]

Until this month, supporters of racial preferences in California have enjoyed a cozy narrative. They were able to dismiss the 55 percent of voters who passed Proposition 209, which barred race and gender preferences in university admissions, hiring and public contracts in 1996, as over-entitled fear-obsessed white folks with little understanding of and sympathy for […]

Talk about March Madness. The 31st is the deadline for signing up for ObamaCare, which has made the buying and selling of health insurance one of the most complicated, deceptive disasters in the history of Big Government. The president could always whip out his Hugo Chavez pen again at the last minute and re-write another […]

Recent findings from a Pew Research poll titled “Millennials in Adulthood” should leave conservatives, capitalists and generally anyone embracing smaller government, deeply concerned — because the America they know today will be much different in the near future. And here’s why. According to this poll, millennials, now ranging from age 18 to 33-1/2, are unique, […]

America used to be a land with great upward social mobility, but isn’t anymore. America never was a land with great upward social mobility. Which do you believe? Keep in mind that your answer will have significant implications for public policy. Most politicians, of both right and left, favor the first statement. Conservatives say big […]