Category: Column

One of the few things Americans on both sides of the partisan divide can agree on is that this election is shaping up to be vexingly petty. The hunt for gaffes — some real, many imagined — has taken over. Romney’s recent overseas tour, we are told, produced three: an impolitic, if defensible, statement about […]

The other day, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi nonchalantly explained to a group in Florida that conservatives are in the “E. coli club.” The next day, a pro-Barack Obama super PAC began running an ad blaming Mitt Romney and Bain Capital for the death of a steelworker’s wife (who actually had insurance and passed away […]

Traumas suffered by a society generations ago can still have a negative effect centuries later. This is something Americans of a certain age should have no difficulty understanding. Half a century ago, we had to grapple with a dysfunctional and unjustifiable system of legally imposed racial segregation. It was a legacy of the Civil War […]

Churchville, VA–During a symposium held recently at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yale historian, Tim Snyder told the attendees: “Climate change acts as a “multiplier of other resource crises leading to “the ecological panic that I’m afraid will lead to mass killings in the decades come.” In his attempt to predict the future, he is relying […]

What do you think the chances are the Obama Administration would have: done this for Tea Partiers? On Nov. 6, 2011, DHS/National Protection and Programs Directorate Chief of Staff Caitlin Durkovich and GSA Public Buildings Service Commissioner Robert Peck, who has since been fired, communicated via email and specifically discussed Occupy Portland protests that were occurring […]

Chutzpah overload in full effect: President Obama’s sleazy super-PAC, run by his former White House spokesman Bill Burton, just released an ad accusing GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney of causing the cancer death of a steelworker’s wife. It’s not just a slanderous and false attack. It’s a foolish attempt to camouflage the administration’s massive jobs […]

In Europe, especially in Germany, hoisting a swastika-emblazoned Nazi flag is a crime. For decades after World War II, people have hunted down and sought punishment for Nazi murderers, who were responsible for the deaths of more than 20 million people. Here’s my question: Why are the horrors of Nazism so well-known and widely condemned […]

Books about the history of Harlem have long fascinated me — my favorite being “When Harlem Was in Vogue” by David Levering Lewis. However, a more recent book, titled simply “Harlem” by Jonathan Gill, presents a more comprehensive history — going all the way back to the time when the Dutch were the first settlers […]

On his recent trip abroad, Mitt Romney observed an American taboo by not criticizing President Obama’s military policy. But before his trip, he made his position clear. Obama has “exposed the military to cuts that no one can justify,” Romney said. He meant that unless Congress intervenes, Pentagon spending will be cut by more than […]

Watching the Olympic Games, I find one phenomenon particularly striking. After an event, athletes who literally seconds before had been attempting to trounce one another in competition suddenly start hugging each other. An outsider might wonder about this coexistence of competition and affection. As a former elite-level swimmer, I can tell you: While it’s every […]

Marvin Hamlisch, 68, the composer-conductor who died Monday in Los Angeles after a brief illness was a certified genius. From the age of seven, when he became the youngest student ever admitted to New York’s Juilliard School of Music, Marvin grew up to win both the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for his 1975 musical […]

“A friend of mine, a Hispanic entrepreneur, asked me a question some time ago. He said, ‘When is the last time you saw a Hispanic panhandler?’ I think it’s a great question. I’ll tell you, in my life I never once have seen a Hispanic panhandler, because in our community it would be viewed as […]

The Israel Defense Forces has been releasing some great videos on YouTube — which do a wonderful job of humanizing the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).: : Today a video was released of the IDF’s only co-ed combat unit — and a well spoken young woman detailing the final exercise after months of hard training.: : This […]

The past week provided clear lessons not just in how central bankers have a limited ability to positively influence the economy but also how they are limited in their capacity to deliver the shortsighted policy actions that investors currently crave. The developments should provide new reasons for investors and economy watchers to abandon their faith […]

You hear liberal pundits beating their chests about how Obama is going to beat Romney, conservative pundits proclaiming that Mitt is on pace to win, the polls are all over the place – when do we start to get a better idea of what’s going on? It should be September. For example, if you look […]

It seems bizarre that there could be: so many of an “endangered” species in one area that they could torment a whole neighborhood, but that’s exactly what’s happening in a Fort Worth, Texas neighborhood. Tree branches and bushes are stripped almost bare of their summer foliage, and big piles of bird droppings have turned parts of […]

The truth is that there was a lot more grey area when it comes to Iraq’s WMDs than people like to admit. As a matter of fact,: that grey area is still being cleaned up today. Britain will help the Iraqi government dispose of what’s left of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons, still stored […]

It has long seemed to me that there is far more rationality in sports, and in commentaries on sports, than there is in politics and in commentaries on politics. What has puzzled me is why this is so, when what happens in politics has far more serious effects on people’s lives. To take one common […]

Last Thursday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad posted on his website his most recent anti-Semitic tirade, saying global forces should join together to annihilate Israel. Meanwhile, in Orlando, Fla., President Barack Obama had a takeout plate of pulled pork and rice. The Jerusalem Post reported Ahmadinejad as saying, “Anyone who loves freedom and justice must strive […]

President Obama’s disgracefully corrupt policies on green energy alone should be enough to ensure his defeat in November — even apart from his war on reliable energy sources, which is unspeakably outrageous. Recently revealed emails show the extent of the abject corruption and reckless waste surrounding Obama’s Solyndra project. The Heritage Foundation has compiled a […]

The Democratic mayors of Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. gave Mitt Romney and the Republican Party the greatest gift possible. They provided the American people with as clear an example of the unbridgeable differences between left and right, between Democrat and Republican, as could be hoped for. And it was largely wasted. The […]

The media are trying to create a sense of momentum and of inevitability about the Obama candidacy. One benighted Newsweek reporter even speculated about a possible Democratic landslide. On Friday, I saw the real numbers. These state-by-state polls, taken by an organization I trust (after forty years of polling) show the real story. The tally […]

Whenever a name Republican says something stupid or indefensible or arguably both, for the next three days folks will open a conversation by asking me (the only Republican they know) what I think about the latest GOP gaffe. That standard does not apply when Democrats talk out of turn — even when they make unsupportable […]

In the last week of July, ECB President Mario Draghi attracted investor interest worldwide by saying that he would do “whatever it takes” to solve the Eurozone crisis and, in the process, save the euro. Markets rallied as investors concluded that Mr. Draghi could only be referring to the financial heroine of quantitative easing (QE) […]

PLYMOUTH NOTCH, Vt. — Two of my pundit colleagues — David Brooks of The New York Times and Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal — have written about this “boring” and “inconsequential” presidential campaign. Perhaps the reason is that we’ve heard it all before. “There is nothing new under the sun,” wrote the author […]

Most informed people realize that our current Social Security system is unsustainable with the level of debt that we’re racking up. However, did you know that even Americans who are retiring today are: ALREADY receiving less money than they paid into the program? People retiring today are part of the first generation of workers who have […]

“One of the things you’ll learn in dealing with the professional Left is that they have absolutely no ethics whatsoever when it comes to dealing with conservatives. They’re perfectly content to smear us, lie about us, or silence us in any way that they can get away with. It’s very much an “end justifies the […]

As people have become progressively more wimpy and feminized, we’re hearing more and more calls for legislative and corporate action designed to prevent people from being mean to each other. Yes, really. That’s what has happened with bullying despite the fact that: hitting bullies in the mouth is an effective way of dealing with the problem: that […]