Category: Column

Amine Gemayal, the former president of: Lebanon, warned during a recent speech that Christians in the: Middle East: face an “existential crisis,” due to the “dangerous phenomenon of religious cleansing.”: : He said “Christians are often victims of persecution by both the state and society in the: Middle East.”: Gemayal delivered a speech, entitled, “The Future of Religious Minorities in the: Middle East,” […]

You’ve seen them on television and heard them on the radio, those commercials boasting that “conservatives” like Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan are working to make sure we have a tough, enforceable immigration system that closes our borders and makes all those illegals go to the back of the line to await possible future citizenship. […]

“Admit it. You’re a dirty rotten conservative!” “That’s false. I eat tofu for breakfast.” “But we found your name on a donor list of a group that sought 501(c)(4) status to promote the founding principles of the U.S. Constitution!” “You’re mistaking me for someone else with the same name. I listen to Barry Manilow records.” […]

Liberals are slurping at a new yet familiar theme trough: Republicans are hypocrites because they’re against NSA surveillance now but were all for it during the Bush administration. It’s a simplistic verbal backslap designed to make lemmings feel good about themselves. The real truth is more nuanced and reasonable. During the Bush administration, the program […]

Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Calif., believes that if her Assembly Bill 926 passes, researchers will be able to pay egg donors as they develop medical advances that can help all women. To her, the bill is an issue of simple fairness — gender equity, really. Since a well-intended 2006 bill banned researchers from paying egg donors […]

Churchville, VA–: I just took part in a remarkable event: a public debate over manmade global warming in which both sides appeared–and the Associated Press reported on it! I have been invited to many of these events over the past six years, but the warmists always canceled when they found a skeptic was part of the […]

It’s no news to anyone that I disagree strongly with President Obama on just about any issue or policy position you can name. But I’m not the least bit uncomfortable saying I admire something about the president that transcends politics and makes him a role model for every man in America. President Obama is a […]

The Bradley Foundation, a private, independent grant-making organization based in Milwaukee, recently handed out its annual Bradley Prize to four men who have, in the words of the organization’s mission statement, “(preserved and defended) the tradition of free representative government and private enterprise that has enabled the American nation and, in a larger sense, the […]

We all know now what the vengeful Obama IRS has been doing to conservative nonprofits the past four years: strangling them in the crib. But do you know how much pampering and largesse far-left welfare-state charities have received while limited-government groups suffered? You don’t know the half of it. Before President Obama took office, I […]

“Why are there no libertarian countries?” In a much-discussed essay for Salon magazine, Michael Lind asks: “If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines?” Such is […]

Another week, another controversy in official Washington. At the moment, 35 percent of voters consider recently exposed National Security Agency surveillance efforts as the most serious. The Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservatives is No. 2 on the list, followed by concerns about the Obama administration’s handling of the incident in Benghazi last fall in […]

Democrats terrify Hispanics into thinking they’ll be lynched if they vote for Republicans, and then turn around and taunt Republicans for not winning a majority of the Hispanic vote. This line of attack has real resonance with our stupidest Republicans. (Proposed Republican primary targets: Sens. Kelly Ayotte, Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio.) Which […]

Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald wrote that Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former intelligence analyst who leaked information on huge U.S. data mining operations, “will go down in history as one of America’s most consequential whistleblowers.” House Speaker John Boehner called Snowden “a traitor.” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein railed that he had committed “treason.” My […]

The scandals surrounding the Obama administration come down to one common theme — that the ever-growing size and scope of our federal government gives it enormous power over virtually every aspect of our lives, power that in the wrong hands can be used to reward supporters, exact revenge and punish enemies. In education, health care, […]

The Obama administration is facing scandals everywhere — using the IRS to punish political enemies, seizing the phone records of Associated Press and Fox News reporters, monitoring phone and email accounts of millions, and making up stories about what happened in Benghazi. In other words, the sort of government overreach that hardly raises eyebrows in […]

Ever since President Clinton “did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” whatever remains of standards seem to have fallen even lower among people who hold offices and positions once thought to require good behavior and strong moral character. Last year, several Secret Service agents left the agency amid scandal after allegedly engaging […]

There are many idealistic progressives who’ve remained opposed to the National Security Agency’s data mining programs regardless of who is in the White House. (We can’t surrender our freedom for safety, you know!) It’s only a shame that these same people have such little reverence for constitutional liberties in other areas of public life. Really, […]

“Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” That’s what Secretary of State Henry Stimson said to explain why he shut down the government’s cryptanalysis operations in 1929. Edward Snowden, who leaked National Security Agency surveillance projects to Britain’s Guardian, evidently feels the same way. “I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government,” he explained, […]

Welcome to Opposite World again. As the U.S. Senate geared up yesterday for the Gang of Eight illegal alien amnesty bill debate, President Obama goaded Capitol Hill to pass what he called “smarter enforcement, a pathway to earned citizenship and improvements to the legal system” of immigration. Bullcrap. The White House has already bulldozed a […]

This week, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said the National Security Agency’s data mining violates our Fourth Amendment right to be “secure in their persons, houses, papers” and is “tyranny that our founders rebelled against.” Good for him. In an op-ed, he adds, “We fought a revolution over issues like generalized warrants, where soldiers would go […]

Last week a federal judge ordered Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to allow 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, to be moved to the adult lung transplant list. That gives her a better chance of receiving a potentially lifesaving transplant. Sarah Murnaghan’s fate should force us to examine our organ […]

PARIS — Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor on the lam for having dumped some classified documents on the desk of a British reporter, says that he doesn’t consider himself a hero, but his girlfriend’s blog paints a different picture, with delusions of grandeur dating back more than three months. If only the […]

The contradictions at the heart of the Obama presidency are finally out in the open. As a result, a man who came into office hell-bent on restoring faith in government is on the verge of inspiring a libertarian revival. There have always been (at least) two Barack Obamas. There is the man who claims to […]

The headline on the front page of the New York Times said it all: “Women in the Senate Confront the Military on Sex Assaults.” In a triumphalist article showcasing the growing numbers of women on the Senate Armed Services Committee, “one of the Senate’s most testosterone-driven panels,” the story line presents female Senators attacking male […]

With leaker Edward Snowden revealing to the world that the National Security Agency has been both monitoring phone records for all Americans and obtaining emails, videos, voice chats and other private communications between American citizens and those outside the United States under the so-called PRISM program, controversy has broken out over the scope of government […]