Category: Column

As usual the Federal Reserve media reaction machine has fallen for a poorly executed head fake. It has fallen for this move many times in the past, and for its efforts, it has tackled nothing but air. Yet right on cue, it took the bait once more. Somehow the takeaway from Wednesday’s release of the […]

All it takes is one crack for a stone wall to start crumbling. Nine months after the deadly 9/14 raid on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, the families of two fallen Marines may finally get some answers. Real accountability, of course, is another story. A formal internal investigation into lax security at the base — a […]

OK, young’ns, here’s your chance. In two consecutive elections, you’ve carried Barack Obama to victory. When he said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” he basically meant you. You voted for Obama by a margin of 66 percent to 32 percent in 2008, and, despite a horrendous economy for people your age, by […]

It’s as if President Obama believes he’s still in the faculty lounge at Harvard glamorizing leftist ideals, seemingly oblivious that he is actually president now and that his duties require him to work on truly pressing matters instead of fantasizing about Utopia. He is finally approaching the hot seat. Endless scandals are dogging his Teflon. […]

Does having health insurance make people healthier? It’s widely assumed that it does. Obamacare advocates repeatedly said that its expansion of Medicaid would save thousands of lives a year. Obamacare critics seldom challenged the idea that increased insurance coverage would improve at least some people’s health. Now, out of Oregon, comes a study that casts […]

While recognizing that it’s important to fight terrorism with all of the tools at our disposal, the American people are having a hard time finding good guys in the story about the National Security Agency’s surveillance program. There are legitimate concerns about the sweeping nature of the surveillance effort. Two out of three voters believe […]

Well, of course the government is spying on Americans! Look at the havoc caused by American citizens engaging in terrorism. There’s “American citizen” David Coleman Headley, who conspired with Pakistani military officers to commit the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, that left more than 160 people dead. Headley’s ancestors served under Gen. George Washington […]

Truth is the lifeblood of democracy. Without honesty, the foundations of consensual government crumble. If the Internal Revenue Service acts unlawfully, our voluntary system of citizens computing their own taxes implodes. Yet Lois Lerner, one of the IRS’s top officials, would not answer simple questions about her agency’s conduct during congressional testimony, instead pleading the […]

The recent Obama administration scandals shift the spotlight from the economy. Yet the recovery remains depressingly sluggish, with the labor force participation rate at a 34-year low as millions of able-bodied, able-minded Americans simply stopped looking for work. With President Obama in the fifth year of his presidency, let us examine the effect of the […]

When a man has been in the Oval Office for a few years, does he start to buy his own balderdash? In an interview with PBS’ Charlie Rose that aired Monday, President Barack Obama asserted that the debate on National Security Agency intelligence gathering “is a healthy thing” and “a sign of maturity” and that […]

After 12 years of fighting, the Taliban in Afghanistan have announced they are ready to talk peace with the United States. The Taliban opened a political office in Qatar. The talks will take place there, but without the Afghan government, which is refusing to take part in the “peace” talks. President Obama says there will […]

Here’s what we know about the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban most abortions after 20 weeks: The Associated Press tells us that the “GOP-led House on Tuesday passed a far-reaching anti-abortion bill.” But don’t worry, Politico adds. It is “largely symbolic: The bill will be dead on arrival in the Senate.” All […]

You can try to put “conservative” lipstick on the lawless amnesty mob. In the end, however, it’s still a lawless mob. The big government/big business alliance to protect illegal immigration got a lot of mileage using foolish Republicans Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan as front men. But the true colors of the open-borders grievance-mongers always […]

As Americans obsess over NSA spying, abuse by the IRS and other assaults on our freedom, I can’t get my mind off the thousand other ways politicians abuse us. In their arrogance, they assume that only they solve social problems. They will solve them by banning this and that, subsidizing groups they deem worthy and […]

Grutter v. Bollinger was the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s racial admissions policy. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the majority, said the U.S. Constitution “does not prohibit the Law School’s narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the […]

PARIS — Anyone who knows anything about the real world of intelligence and espionage knows that James Bond is a joke who wouldn’t survive his first day on the job (and not just because he’d fall asleep during static surveillance). But just try explaining to people that Agent 007 bears absolutely no resemblance to the […]

President Obama is as thoroughly fenced him by his scandals as President Nixon ever was. The scandals that are engulfing him hurt him badly with both the younger voters who have been his political base and the older voters he has sought to woo. And, the media scandals are destroying his image with his political […]

It would make things so much easier for everyone if Edward Snowden were working for China. And that’s certainly a possibility. His decision to flee to Hong Kong — a Chinese vassal — was an odd one, given that China is hardly a bulwark of transparency and civil rights. It’s a bit like complaining that […]

Last week, Bill Clinton warned that President Barack Obama risked looking like a “wuss” and “a total fool” for not acting sooner on Syria. Shortly thereafter — but two months after Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel charged that strongman Bashar Assad had crossed a “red line” in using chemical weapons against his own people — […]

On Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorists, on orders from their superiors based in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, flew U.S. commercial planes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. They would have targeted the White House or Capitol with a fourth plane if not for the heroism of the passengers on Flight 93. Overall, almost 3,000 […]

Amid all the heated cross-currents of debate about the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance program, there is a growing distrust of the Obama administration that makes weighing the costs and benefits of the NSA program itself hard to assess. The belated recognition of this administration’s contempt for the truth, for the American people and for […]

Though deadbeat dads and high-school dropouts might pervade some communities, there are still far more models than mess-ups across our country, and some stand head and shoulders above the rest. Let me tell you about a few stellar examples. I understand that the fact that 1 in 4 U.S. students do not receive a regular […]

Are Americans becoming more libertarian on cultural issues? I see evidence that they are, in poll findings and election results on three unrelated issues — marijuana legalization, same-sex marriage and gun rights. Start with pot. Last November voters in the states of Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana, by a 55 to 45 percent […]