Category: Column

Ah, the income tax preparation season is upon us. You’re probably wondering why you have to spend a couple of weekends barricaded in a room, sorting through receipts in the faint hope of complying with our confusing income tax laws. The income tax first came to America in 1861. Americans paid it to help finance […]

Republicans won’t let Obama raise taxes again until he agrees to real spending reform, and the President won’t reduce spending. Stalemate. While visiting House Republicans for the first time in years, some Americans thought maybe the President was really going to work with Republicans this time and get serious about a budget. That is, until […]

In his State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama proclaimed, “Over the last few years, both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion.” It’s a claim that the president makes frequently — along with the notion that having done all that heavy lifting, Washington now needs to find […]

I love talk radio; I love Fox News. If it weren’t for the arrival of their strong conservative voices, Americans would still have nothing to listen to but the one-sided news and opinions of the left-liberals who run the mainstream New York-D.C. media. But I’m frustrated. Talk radio and Fox are getting so boring, so […]

The good news is the national Republican Party has conducted a fairly comprehensive self-examination in an attempt to broaden its appeal and avoid descending into irrelevancy. The bad news is the national Republican Party has conducted a fairly comprehensive self-examination in an attempt to broaden its appeal and avoid descending into irrelevancy. There is benefit […]

When Air Force One touches down in Israel for meetings this week, President Barack Obama has his hands full. Iran is about a year away from developing a nuclear weapon and Obama must convince Israel he is trustworthy before he can suggest to anyone that taking a preemptive strike against Iran is a lousy idea. […]

The Republican National Committee’s latest report, released March 18 at the National Press Club, offers more evidence that the GOP is out of touch-but not in the way it thinks. According to what the RNC called an “autopsy” of what went wrong in the November 2012 election, it concluded that the party is perceived as […]

Obamacare is falling apart before our eyes. The long-term care insurance program known as the CLASS ACT was deemed financially unworkable and shut down by the administration’s own actuaries. Taxpayer-funded health care cooperatives never got off the ground and were shut down in the fiscal cliff deal. Last month the federal Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan […]

What’s the catch? Whenever something seems too good to be true, it usually is. Our country, since the FDR era, has believed in entitlements as an earned benefit that serves as a safety net for all Americans. Unfortunately, those programs, created in the 1940s and only modestly changed since then, are unaffordable, promising more in […]

It’s business as usual in the post-9/11 world. Your federal government is back to pandering to wealthy travelers from Saudi Arabia. In the eyes of our massive homeland security apparatus, the comfort of Saudis is a higher priority than the safety of American citizens. And thanks to reckless, feckless bureaucrats who fear being labeled “racists,” […]

Just because things can be put on the same list doesn’t mean they are necessarily similar. My attic contains within it thousands of comic books, an inflatable bed, some jigsaw puzzles, some family pictures and a “Frampton Comes Alive!” album. These things are, roughly speaking, in the same location, but they’re hardly of equal value, […]

No matter what progress Republicans may make in electoral politics over the coming years, it will be difficult to roll back the steady march of liberalism that has taken place inside our cultural, bureaucratic and legal institutions — from academia to regulatory agencies to the Department of Justice — but we have to try. A […]

This week financial analysts, economists, politicians, and bank depositors from around the world were outraged that European leaders, more specifically the Germans, currently calling many of the shots in Brussels and Frankfurt, could be so politically reckless, economically ignorant, and emotionally callous as to violate the sanctity of bank deposits in order to fund a […]

Americans have a healthy respect for free market competition and are resistant to government interference — even when they don’t like what the market is up to. For example, 69 percent of Americans believe that large corporate executives are overpaid, but only 17 percent want the government to regulate their pay. In that context, it’s […]

For all the Obama-era talk of decline, there is at least one reason why America probably won’t, at least not quite yet. “Peak oil” and our “oil addiction” were supposed to have ensured that we ran out of either gas or the money to buy it. Now, suddenly, we have more gas and oil than […]

To the list of liberals who vote for higher taxes — and then proceed to complain about them — add comedian Bill Maher. Incredibly, the caustic, left-wing Maher recently warned, “ln California, I just want to say: Liberals — you could actually lose me.” As a resident of California, a state with high income taxes, […]

If you want to know why Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapons ban couldn’t muster 40 votes — that’s according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who says he will cut the ban from the Democrats’ gun bill — attend a National Rifle Association event in Feinstein’s backyard. Though critics like to paint the organization as […]

Republicans now have a comprehensive “autopsy” report detailing some of the perceived and some of the real shortcomings of the 2012 presidential election. And the rather optimistically named Growth and Opportunity Project’s report is jampacked with so many painfully obvious observations that one wonders why it had to be written in the first place. You […]

President Obama should listen to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the “founder” of shuttle diplomacy. Kissinger told Bloomberg TV’s Judy Woodruff recently that he sees little hope in the “Arab Spring,” nor is he optimistic about peace in the region following the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Welcome to the party, Dr. Kissinger. Some […]

Rarely does a political party issue a document so scathingly critical of itself and its most recent presidential nominee as the report of the five-member Growth and Opportunity Project of the Republican National Committee. It refers to Mitt Romney on occasion as “our presidential nominee” and notes disapprovingly of his reference, in the debate about […]

President Obama has probably repeated the phrase “balanced approach” when talking about budget and deficit solutions, over 100 times at this point. If you just listen to him saying that phrase over and over, you probably think that he is interested in raising some taxes, as well as cutting spending to solve our country’s debt […]

I had barely left the stage at CPAC when Republicans: did the exact thing I told them not to do.Contrary to giddy liberals writing the obituary of the Republican Party, the nation has not swung left. Republicans just keep losing easy races through unforced errors. I advised them to stop doing that. Not two days later, […]

Will President Obama really nominate billionaire Chicago gal pal Penny Pritzker to head his Commerce Department? “It’s a done deal,” according to a White House source close to the Chicago Tribune. As further confirmation, Pritzker resigned abruptly from the Windy City’s school board late last week. The crony fix seems to be in. Taxpayers, beware. […]

Shortly after I did my first TV special on education, “Stupid in America,” hundreds of union teachers showed up outside my office to yell at me. They were angry because I said union rules were a big reason American kids don’t learn. The union (SET ITAL) is (END ITAL) a big reason kids don’t like […]

“At CPAC, the Future Looks Libertarian,” read a dispatch on Time magazine’s website. “CPAC: Rand Paul’s Big Moment,” proclaimed The Week magazine. Meanwhile, the New York Times headlined its story about the annual conservative political action conference “GOP divisions fester at conservative retreat.” George Will, a man who actually knows a thing or two about […]

After reading Dr. Thomas Sowell’s latest book, “Intellectuals and Race,” one cannot emerge with much respect for the reasoning powers of intellectuals, particularly academics, on matters of race. There’s so much faulty logic and downright dishonesty. Many intellectuals attribute the behavior patterns of blacks to “a legacy of slavery” or contemporary racial discrimination. But when […]

With over two million children now schooled — usually quite well — at home, the education establishment and the teachers unions find themselves leaking students at an alarming rate. Driven by bad public education, the threat of school violence and a virtual prohibition against values-based learning in government schools, more and more Americans are taking […]