Category: Column

From New York to New Mexico and across the dependent plains, welfare recipients are getting sauced on the public dime. Drunk, besotted, bombed. But while politicians pay lip service to cutting government waste, fraud and abuse, they’re doing very little in practice to stop the EBT party excesses. Where’s the compassion for taxpayers? You see […]

“As the president said, if your actions result in only saving one life, they’re worth taking,” Vice President Joe Biden declared on Wednesday as he previewed what his commission on gun violence might actually do. “There are executive orders, there’s executive action that can be taken. We haven’t decided what that is yet. But we’re […]

Hey, folks, remember the good old days when candidate Barack Obama at least pretended to be bipartisan and conciliatory? Now it’s as if he’s on a mission to prove he was faking it. Obama is behaving like a bitter ex-spouse who knows all our hot buttons and delights in pushing them. He is governing by […]

Official Washington hailed the deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff as a significant bipartisan accomplishment. However, voters around the country viewed the deal in very partisan terms: Seven out of 10 Democrats approved of it, while seven out of 10 Republicans disapproved. Just a few days after reaching that agreement, an inside-the-Beltway publication reported […]

Economists who hold the popular view that expanding the money supply will provide the best medicine for our ailing economy dismiss the inflationary concerns of monetary hawks, like me, by pointing to the supposedly low inflation that has occurred during the current period of rampant Fed activism. In a recent blog post aimed specifically at […]

In Sunday’s New York Times, Elisabeth Rosenthal claimed, as the title of her article put it, “More Guns = More Killing.” She based this on evidence that would never be permitted in any other context at the Times: (1) anecdotal observations; and (2) bald assertions of an activist, blandly repeated with absolutely no independent fact-checking […]

As a senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama said that he detested budget deficits. In 2006, when the aggregate national debt was almost $8 trillion less than today, he blasted George W. Bush’s chronic borrowing and refused to vote for upping the debt ceiling: “Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that […]

If Republicans do happen to force a shutdown in Washington, it’s very possible they’ll be embracing a political loser while doing the rest of us an immense favor. With three Washington-manufactured fiscal apocalypses — sequestration, the debt ceiling and a new “budget” — on the docket, the idea of shutting down government to extract concessions […]

Biography isn’t policy. President Obama’s choice for secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel, former Nebraska Republican senator, has a resume most politicians can envy: a clean senatorial record, no ethical lapses and two purple hearts from a war many opposed and many more tried to avoid. Some think Hagel’s 2006 comment about “the Jewish lobby” should […]

Now that President Obama has nominated a Senator Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary, we will see who the real friends of Israel are. Jews, particularly in New York State, are very interested in whether their Senator — Chuck Schumer — has the moxie to stand up against the Hagel nomination. The litany of Hagel’s sympathy […]

“It is now time to return the control of our prison system to California,” Gov. Jerry Brown declared at a news conference Tuesday morning. Amen to that. Federal lawsuits and federal judges have taken over the state’s prison system. Unelected judges don’t have to worry about paying for what they command. Nor need they worry […]

The Republicans need a new strategy for their upcoming negotiations with President Obama.:  The last round, they had a distinct disadvantage where doing nothing would have led to a terrible consequence, namely everyone’s taxes going up.:  With these negotiations behind us, we no longer have the sun setting on good policy, which requires action for […]

Egypt’s terror-coddling President Mohamed Morsi has repeated his arrogant demand that America free convicted 1993 World Trade Center mastermind Omar Abdel-Rahman. I’d like to report that President Obama repeated his unequivocal rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood leader’s entreaties. But as of this writing, no such public statement or restatement yet exists. That’s right. Obama has […]

The Obama administration now proposes to spend millions more on handouts, despite ample evidence of their perverse effects. Shaun Donovan, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says, “The single most important thing HUD does is provide rental assistance to America’s most vulnerable families — and the Obama administration is proposing bold steps […]

Nearly two years ago, U.S. News & World Report came out with a story titled “Educators Implicated in Atlanta Cheating Scandal.” It reported that “for 10 years, hundreds of Atlanta public school teachers and principals changed answers on state tests in one of the largest cheating scandals in U.S. history.” More than three-quarters of the […]

The Republican Party and its House leadership need to find a place to stand in the debt limit battle that is approaching. Lacking a politically-viable place to stand is just a prelude to an inevitable surrender. On the one side are those who oppose any increase in the debt limit and who demand major spending […]

It’s official. President Obama has named former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) as his nominee for secretary of defense. Hence, we may be in store for the worst defense secretary nomination fight since George H.W. Bush’s failed appointment of Sen. John Tower (R-Texas) more than 20 years ago. The interesting question is, why? Why waste the […]

This week’s column is brought to you by the word “a–holes.” It’s one of the left’s favorite words these days, fond as they are of shutting down the debate and casting their political opponents out like lepers. Take, for example, the website Gawker. The website is liberal. And as liberal Obama backers, they feel the […]

It’s very likely that kids will find this column to be, like, totally stupid, and will conclude that they can write one sooooo much better. They will declare this on their Twitter feed, sandwiched between the hundreds of photos of themselves making that pursed-lips “duck face,” then wait for the “friends” they’ve never met in […]

Many years ago, as a young man, I read a very interesting book about the rise of the Communists to power in China. In the last chapter, the author tried to explain why and how this had happened. Among the factors he cited were the country’s educators. That struck me as odd, and not very […]

George Washington warned us in his Farewell Address about a time in America’s future when we might be tempted to discard the pillars of civility: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor […]

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tells us the tax issue is behind us and that we can now move on to spending. Really? What makes him think the GOP will succeed this time when it couldn’t last time? The just-concluded fiscal cliff deal included no material spending cuts, which the GOP justified by saying it […]

On the last day of 2012, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen inadvertently clarified two huge matters regarding the left. The first was the ignorance about conservatives and conservatism that permeates the left. The second was the primary reason decent people identify with the left: the effective caricaturing and demonizing of the right. Were it not […]

“Never make an enemy by accident,” housemaid Anna Bates warned her husband in the third season premiere of “Downton Abbey” Sunday night. That’s what the housemaid’s mother always told her. If his mother ever gave him the same advice, former GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel — now President Barack Obama’s pick to serve as secretary of […]

As the son of a woman, the husband of a woman and the father of daughters and granddaughters, I celebrate the record number of females who are now United States senators. However, I do see some differences in the way these and other women are treated, depending on their party, policies and beliefs. Diane Sawyer […]

Don’t you love how the Left and their step-n-fetch media mavens are trying to make law-abiding gun owners the bad guys? You don’t? Yeah, me neither. From Hollywood’s heavily armed guarded elite to the radical, anti-gun commie rag: Journal News,: peaceful and upright average Joes are being isolated and concentrated on as the bane of America’s existence […]