Category: Column

Just before Christmas, the Obama administration issued a blanket waiver for millions of Americans from the individual mandate requiring purchase of government-approved health insurance. The waiver, whose announcement was choreographed to give political credit to Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, was limited to individuals and families whose health plans were canceled by Obamacare. As […]

“We will restore science to its rightful place … ” So intoned a “dismissive and derisive” President Barack Obama in his first inaugural. It’s been oft quoted in the five years since (frequently by me, I’ll confess) for its arrogance and condescension, which has continuing relevance, but before turning to the left’s latest departure from […]

There are two types of gold investors: those trying to make money on short-term market timing and those looking for long-term asset preservation. It was the fear-driven trading of the former that helped gold break $1900 in 2011, and for good reason – stormy markets steer investors to safe havens. But gold’s fortune has shifted […]

Is President Obama sleeping well on his Hawaiian holiday? I can think of many families of American soldiers who might not be enjoying the same bliss right now. That’s because 2014 opens with alarming news that the Afghan government will free an estimated 650 prisoners from a Bagram detention facility — including scores involved in […]

On Jan. 1, the Centennial State (it hasn’t yet changed its nickname to “The Rocky Mountain High State”) became the first place in the country to legalize marijuana sales for recreational purposes. And Brandon Harris is stoked. The 24-year-old Harris drove 20 hours from Cincinnati, along with a smoking buddy, to be the first Ohioans […]

A number of news items from the past few days underscore the painful reality that liberals are wholly unrepentant about their exploitation of the race issue and have no intention of changing their ways. John Nolte, on Breitbart, reported that MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry and her panel grotesquely lampooned a photo of Mitt Romney with his […]

In 1793, the envoy Lord Macartney appeared before the Qianlong emperor in Beijing and asked for British trading rights in China. “Our ways have no resemblance to yours, and even were your envoy competent to acquire some rudiments of them, he could not transport them to your barbarous land,” the long-reigning (1736-96) emperor replied in […]

Lots of things that should have happened in 2013 did not. We were supposed to have long ago reached “peak oil” and an age of always-higher gas prices. Wind and solar power — and a reduced lifestyle — were our dismal future. But someone or something did not cooperate with gloomy government predictions. After all […]

Michael Steele, then-chair of the Republican National Committee, criticized Obama’s stimulus plan as “a wish list from a lot of people who have been on the sidelines for years … to get a little bling, bling.” Steele, who wanted to expand the GOP’s appeal to young voters, used the expression to, in Steele’s words, “take […]

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 8, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared a “war on poverty.” Today, with roughly the same number of people below the poverty level as in 1964 and with many addicted to government “benefits,” robbing them of a work ethic, it is clear that the poor have mostly […]

Unable to comment on the “Duck Dynasty” controversy last week due to my hectic Kwanzaa schedule, I am able to sweep in at the end and comment on the commentary. Anyone who utters the mind-numbingly obvious point that A&E’s suspension of “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson doesn’t involve the First Amendment because a TV network […]

New Year’s Day should be a time of fresh beginnings and forward motion. But for the family of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, the holiday season has been suspended in a cloud of unfathomable pain and suffering: A routine tonsillectomy gone wrong. A beautiful child declared “brain dead.” Lawyers, TV cameras, tears. The McMaths are fighting for […]

Here’s a question that I’ve asked in the past that needs to be revisited. Unless one wishes to obfuscate, it has a simple yes or no answer. If one group of people prefers strong government control and management of people’s lives while another group prefers liberty and desires to be left alone, should they be […]

Front-page editorials, disguised as news stories, have become such familiar features of the New York Times that it should have been no surprise to discover in the December 28th issue a front-page story about a professor of finance at the University of Houston who has been a paid consultant to financial enterprises. Since professors of […]

The Beltway consensus seems to be that 2013 was a bad year for the same reason nearly every other recent year was bad: polarization and partisanship. Personally, I can think of plenty of more important things to worry about than partisanship. Democracy is about disagreements, and partisanship is often a sign of healthy disagreement. But […]

2013 was a year of revelations, a year of possible turning points. For nearly two decades, since Ronald Reagan left office, America moved steadily in the direction of the left, both culturally and politically. When the Soviet Union fell, optimistic scholars believed the world had shifted inexorably in the direction of free markets and liberal […]

2013 was the year of Obamacare whoppers. But the nastiest truth about the health law is still to be exposed — the tightening hold the federal government will have over your doctor, even if you’re paying with private insurance. President Barack Obama said, “You’re not going to have anybody getting in between you and your […]

Well, that was fast. In an early-September column about the Syrian conflict and the new world order, I wrote that Russia and the West could team up against the forces of radical Islam. It looks set to happen sooner than expected, given the current wave of Islamic terrorist attacks not far from the site of […]

Whenever we stand on the threshold of a new year, we are tempted to forget the hazards of prophecy, and try to see what may lie on the other side of this arbitrary division of time. Sometimes we are content to try to change ourselves with New Year’s resolutions to do better in some respect. […]

Last week, I cited “The Case for Christmas,” an excellent little book that is full of evidence of the reason in the reason for the season, by Lee Strobel, an investigative journalist at the Chicago Tribune who was educated at Yale Law School and was once an atheist. I gave snapshots from scholars he interviewed […]

When it comes to health care, Republicans need to strike while the iron is hot, and it is white-hot now — and will probably get worse — because of the Obamacare disaster. The nation’s health insurance rolls are hemorrhaging with Obamacare-forced cancellations, and new sign-ups are dreadfully slow — and not just because of the […]

Most Americans have an image of Mexico as a nation convulsed by violent drug wars and sending hundreds of thousands of desperate immigrants across our southern border. That image is out-of-date. The drug war has largely quieted down and scarcely affects most of the country while, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, net migration from […]

A funny thing happened during Australian climate change professor Chris Turney’s venture to retrace a 1912 research expedition in Antarctica and gauge how climate change has affected the continent: Two weeks into a five-week excursion, Turney’s good ship MV Akademik Shokalskiy got trapped in ice. It turns out, global warming notwithstanding, that there’s so much […]

In real life when you find yourself paying more and getting less, you usually search for another product or service. With the federal government, it isn’t possible to take your business elsewhere unless you are prepared to give up your citizenship, as some have done. Such a drastic step is rejected by most of us […]

2013 will be remembered as the year President Barack Obama’s halo went askew. It deserves to be remembered for some other things. It was the year Democrats killed the United States Senate. If you missed the story, it’s not surprising. When Sen. Harry Reid eliminated the filibuster, it was billed as the Democrats’ last-ditch response […]

Ever since President Nixon broke the US dollar’s last link to gold, the world has been set adrift on a sea of fiat currencies that have been increasingly debased, serving the interests of governments and financial elites. For the last five years, central banks have imposed near-zero rates of interest that have helped push up […]

Despite the fact that he has more academic alphabet soup behind his name than anyone else I know, including a doctorate in education, my baby brother often surprises me with the breadth of his common sense and the depth of his wisdom. A few years ago, I gave him a plaque bearing a quote from […]