Category: Column

When asked at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 what the Founders had wrought, Benjamin Franklin famously said, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” That question might also be put to the five Supreme Court justices who voted last week to uphold the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, which mandates health […]

Some random media observations from the past few days::  How great it was to see the clip of Guns N’ Roses, the legendary rock and roll band playing Hatikvah to thousands of screaming fans in Tel Aviv this week ? http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/244074 Why is it that Mitt Romney’s announced plans to visit: Israel: is seen as an effort […]

We who work for newspapers have a love/hate relationship with the Internet. On the one hand, more people than ever — millions every week — are reading our product. On the other hand, fewer are paying for it. Search engines, such as Google, make it easier to look up information, but they’re pirates that make […]

That’s more or less what happened last Sunday in Mexico, at least as far as most American journalists (including me) are concerned. That’s a vivid contrast with the last three presidential elections in Mexico, which had enormous consequences for that country and for the United States. I happened to be in Mexico on vacation in […]

What’s pale yellow, riddled with holes and not very sharp? President Barack Obama’s renewed class-warfare attack on GOP opponent Mitt Romney. To kick off the Independence Day holiday, America’s fundraiser-in-chief took to Twitter to stoke wealth-bashing resentment against Republicans. “FACT,” Obama’s official Twitter account declared, “In 2010, Romney reported having a $3 million Swiss bank […]

Since progressives want government to run health care, let’s look at what government management did to K-12 education. While most every other service in life has gotten better and cheaper, American education remains stagnant. Spending has tripled! Why no improvement? Because K-12 education is a virtual government monopoly — and monopolies don’t improve. In every […]

Anthony Daniels, who writes under the pen name Theodore Dalrymple, is a retired prison doctor and psychiatrist who tells of his experiences with his patients in “Life at the Bottom.” It’s an insightful book of essays about the self-destructive behavior and attitudes of the underclass. In one essay, “We Don’t Want No Education,” reprinted by […]

In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”), NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” held a seminar of sorts at the Aspen Institute’s legendarily pretentious Ideas Festival. Someone in the audience asked NPR health policy correspondent Julie Rovner this question: “Today’s decision is a positive decision for the estimated […]

In the wake of my last commentary on the horrendous Supreme Court decision upholding Obama’s health care plan, several people have pointed out that I erred in saying that the income tax is a “direct tax.” While it is technically correct that the Court ultimately declared it to be an excise, not a direct tax, […]

Betrayal is hard to take, whether in our personal lives or in the political life of the nation. Yet there are people in Washington — too often, Republicans — who start living in the Beltway atmosphere, and start forgetting those hundreds of millions of Americans beyond the Beltway who trusted them to do right by […]

As we approach the Fourth of July and contemplate its glorious significance, recent events have brought into sharp relief the precarious condition of America’s unique liberty tradition. Our Constitution is the best written guarantor of human liberty in human history, but its safeguards do not make it completely bulletproof against systematic assaults undermining its integrity. […]

Given how many more Americans define themselves as conservative rather than as liberal, let alone than as left, how does one explain the success of left-wing policies? One answer is the appeal of entitlements and a desire to be taken care of. It takes a strong-willed citizen to vote against receiving free benefits. But an […]

In the court of public opinion, Republican officials cannot win. It’s a known fact, made more evident with each news cycle, that many campaign issues are lose-lose for the GOP. If the Supreme Court had overturned Obamacare, the public no doubt would have turned against the GOP for being too obstructionist, the GOP-led Supreme Court […]

When is a tax not a tax? When President Obama says it isn’t, or when the Supreme Court says it is? Obamacare was sold on several fraudulent lines. The president knows the country doesn’t want to pay higher taxes, given the deplorable way their government spends the money. And so the administration packaged it as […]

Here are my 10 Commandments for my daughter’s potential boyfriends. Please facebook, email and tweet this list and my accompanying: new video: to dads who do not want their daughters to ever date or marry Lil Wayne, Charlie Sheen, Beavis or Butthead. Commandment I. Thou shall understand that your presence doesn’t make me happy. And know this: […]

Many have weighed in on the Supreme Court decision on ObamaCare much better than I could. Two of the best were: Rush Limbaugh’s: and Mark Levin (download the June 28th show for free and share it widely). But a few things remain unmentioned as far as I can tell. First, the SCOTUS decision means the low-income uninsured […]

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision upholding the Obama administration’s health care legislation was a victory for the president, his administration and his party. Their most ambitious legislative achievement has not been nullified, and they are not left in obvious disarray. But it is only a partial victory and in some ways not a victory at […]

Let’s start with all the things San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi did wrong: 1) Mirkarimi bullied his wife, Eliana Lopez, when he grabbed her right arm and bruised it Dec. 31. 2) When police first contacted Mirkarimi about the episode, the sheriff did not cooperate with the investigation. Instead, he circled the wagons. 3) He […]

I vividly remember the 1st time I met Yitzchak Shamir – He was the Prime Minister of the State of Israel and I was 16 years old.: : The year was 1990, I had recently joined the Betar movement of: Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and Shamir was visiting NYC and spoke to a small group of Betarim. The man spent […]

Despite the celebrations among Democrats, yesterday a majority of Supreme Court justices ruled that the Constitution does not allow the government to force Americans to buy health insurance. However in providing the swing vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) Chief Justice John Roberts broke with the four other justices who shared that […]

Nowhere is political rhetoric more shameless — or more dangerous — than in the pious names that politicians give to the legislation they pass. Perhaps the most egregious example is the so-called “Indian Child Welfare Act,” which callously sacrifices the welfare of Indian children. Time and again, children with some American Indian ancestry, who have […]

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Did you know that President Obama has been incommunicado with Colorado’s governor for more than two weeks as the nation’s worst wildfires rage across the state? Maybe he thought we were all “doing fine.” After an embarrassing Beltway press briefing revelation about our out-of-touch White House, the administration finally decided to […]

Why not just cut open a goat and be done with it? In ancient Rome, a special kind of priest called a haruspex would “read” the entrails of sheep to divine the will of the gods, the health of the growing season, or whatever else was weighing on the minds of men. Because animal guts […]

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Obamacare v. the United States of America is yet another body blow to the U.S. Constitution’s principle of limited government and the freedom tradition, but there is a major upside. Despite President Obama’s opposition to an individual mandate when he was debating Hillary Clinton during the Democratic presidential primaries and […]

I approve. Chief Justice John Roberts has written a cagey political decision upholding Obamacare in order to keep the court from being too politicized. That’s a good thing. “We do not consider whether the Act embodies sound policies,” Roberts wrote. “That judgment is entrusted to the Nation’s elected leaders.” Roberts believes that the court should […]

Today, Barack Obama won the battle but will lose the war. The Supreme Court decision makes Obamacare the central issue in the 2012 election, just like it was in the 2010 election. And we know how that turned out. The Court has sustained the individual mandate. That imposes on us a mandate: To defeat Obama […]