Category: Column

Polls indicate that the public is so disgusted with Washington politicians of both parties that a surprisingly large proportion of the people would like to get rid of the whole lot of them. It is certainly understandable that the voters would like to “throw the rascals out.” But there is no point in throwing the […]

The FBI reports on its website that “not only is human sex trafficking slavery but it is big business. It is the fastest-growing business of organized crime and the third-largest criminal enterprise in the world.” I noted in Part 1 of my series on human trafficking that ABC News reported in July on a National […]

Two snares stand in the way of conservatives’ fervent desire to dismantle Obamacare: 1) a possible perception that its problems are limited to the technical issues with the rollout and 2) the GOP’s potentially suicidal impulse to bail Obama out. Though the problems with the rollout are far more than website “glitches,” they can and […]

When opinion shifts in modern America, the change can be like a flash flood. Three years ago, 54 percent of California voters rejected Proposition 19, which would have legalized the recreational use of marijuana. Last year, Colorado and Washington voters approved measures to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Last week, Gallup released a poll […]

I have been broadcasting for 31 years and writing for longer than that. I do not recall ever saying on radio or in print that a president is doing lasting damage to our country. I did not like the presidencies of Jimmy Carter (the last Democrat I voted for) or Bill Clinton. Nor did I […]

Since Obamacare made its debut, discussions have focused on Ted Cruz’ efforts to defund the law and the shockingly bad functionality of the Website itself. Fortunately for Obama, polling indicates that Senator Cruz has lost, at least for now, the battle for hearts and minds. The President has not been nearly so lucky on the […]

Enrollment figures from state Obamacare exchanges are revealing a pattern that will alter fundamentally the terms of the debate over President Obama’s signature health insurance program. When it was proposed, considered and enacted, it was seen as a program requiring everybody to buy private insurance on health exchanges or face a fine. Those already covered […]

The spectacularly dreadful debut of Obamacare represents the greatest political opportunity for conservatism and the Republican Party in two generations. Big government stands rebuked. It has overreached, overpromised, and, embarrassingly, failed to deliver. Even if the website’s gremlins are banished, and even if Obamacare purrs along like a BMW from now on, voters will be […]

“The examination of war from an exclusively military perspective, isolated from its social and political context, leads to false conclusions and poor strategy.” That is the conclusion of Emile Simpson, a former infantry officer in the Royal Gurkha Rifles, who served three tours of duty in Afghanistan, in his book, War From the Ground Up. […]

“Bye Bye Birdie” is an old musical that survives in high school productions and in some people’s memory bank. It debuted on Broadway in 1960 and was made into a film in 1963. One of the songs from the show might serve as an inspiration, if not a theme, for Republicans in the winter of […]

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is responsible for the epic failure of the ObamaCare exchanges. By one count, at least ten times as many people have lost insurance than have been able to purchase insurance through the exchanges. Even leading liberals have called the exchanges “almost criminal” and a “failure.” Yet Secretary Sebelius is refusing to […]

Political discussions commonly assume there are two separate sets of issues. There’s a social agenda – issues like abortion and marriage. And there’s an economic agenda – issues like federal spending, debt, taxes, and government programs like entitlements. It’s usually assumed that these two agendas don’t have anything to do with each other. But it’s […]

When I wrote last week that Democrats eventually would come to Congress seeking to “fix” the mess that is Obamacare I never thought “eventually” would be a week later, but that’s where we find ourselves. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., was the first to put fingers to keyboard this week: when she wrote: President Obama saying, “Given the […]

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ): announced today it has launched a new web strategy to challenge ObamaCare and the individual mandate. The ACLJ, which already is challenging the HHS mandate in federal court, has launched: www.ICantEnroll.com: encouraging Americans to add their names to a growing chorus of protest to ObamaCare. “We want to send a […]

In the 1980s, the media seemed amazed at how the public never seemed to turn on Ronald Reagan. They even coined a phrase for it: the Teflon Presidency. More amazing by far is the continued support Barack Obama receives from the adoring segment of the voting public that refuses to give up on his unworkable […]

Rebecca was stunned when she opened her mail last week. Her insurance carrier, Highmark BCBS, said her health insurance premium would rise 40 percent this year and her policy would be canceled on: Dec. 1, 2014. She had purchased the policy in 2009, after her husband had passed away from lupus, which he’d contracted 10 years […]

Most of us expect about 90 percent of our charitable contributions to go toward funding any charitable cause to which we give. How do you feel about the NFL donating only 8 percent of Pink gear sales toward cancer research? This is one of those big stories that got lost in the giant news vacuum […]

During the Obama years, a potent mythology has taken root in Democratic circles. In this narrative, Democrats are victims, martyrs even, whereas Republicans are wily tricksters. Last year, there was a hyped-up fable about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. President Barack Obama told “60 Minutes,” “When I first came into office, the head of the […]

Democrats have only one goal to accomplish between now and the 2014 elections: To paint Republicans as the bad guys. In doing so, they’ll win the 2014 elections, gain control of the House of Representatives, and as President Reagan once said, the rest of us will be spending “our sunset years telling our children…what it […]

Month after depressing month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its dismal jobs report. September was no different. Earlier this week, in the report the government shutdown delayed, the BLS announced that the U.S. economy added just 148,000 jobs, significantly fewer than anticipated and mostly in the low wage service and clerical functions. With legal […]

The United States federal government is now mandating, under penalty of law, that millions of Americans purchase a product through a broken website. Is that fair? Is it moral? An estimated 16 million people recently received letters indicating that their health plans are no longer available. So they head to Healthcare.gov to see what plans […]

In a news conference expected to feature a mea culpa for the Obamacare website fiasco, President Barack Obama turned the tables on his political opponents, scolding them for using their supernatural ability to transform the mere hope of failure into a reality. “It’s time,” he implored, “for folks to stop rooting for its failure, because […]

Why does the White House need a private-sector “tech surge” to repair its wretched Obamacare website failures? Weren’t all of the president’s myriad IT czars and their underlings supposed to ensure that taxpayers got the most effective, innovative, cutting-edge and secure technology for their money? Now is the perfect time for an update on Obama’s […]

Earlier this week, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski tried to call the HealthCare.gov helpline and got an operator. That’s right: an operator! The call went through! MSNBC, the unofficial AV department of the Democratic Party, had a scoop. The network tweeted out the big news along with a link to the video: “Mika called the Obamacare hotline […]

Documents from whistle-blower Edward Snowden and published by The Guardian indicate that the NSA tapped the phones of 35 foreign leaders without their knowledge or permission. The revelation comes on top of the existing controversy surrounding taps placed on the phones of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mexican President Felipe Calderon. But these disclosures beg […]

Slate magazine deserves credit for publishing a series of articles about polyamory. The first, “Why I’m Still In The Polyamory Closet,” by the pseudonymous “Michael Carey,” elicited angry letters because Carey compared polyamorists with homosexuals. Polyamory (the desire — need? — for multiple sexual partners) is a choice, the letter writers protested, whereas homosexuality is […]

Sherlock Holmes famously solved a mystery by noticing the dog that did not bark. In the recent government shutdown/debt ceiling fight, there was a five-letter dog that didn’t bark: T-A-X-E-S. Democrats insisted they wouldn’t negotiate until they negotiated, and they insisted that a government shutdown was unprecedented although it was the 17th such shutdown since […]