Category: Column

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The smell of singed air here is inescapable. Less than 50 miles west of my neighborhood, the latest wildfire has spread across 1,100 acres. It’s the fifth active blaze to erupt in our state over the past month. But ashes aren’t the only things smoldering. The Obama administration’s neglect of the […]

It’s presidential season, so again pundits are indignant that money: is spent on politics. Spent by corporations! And rich people! Because the Supreme Court allowed that, “2012 will be a miserable year,” says The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne 2012 may be miserable — but if it is, it won’t be because corporations spend on politics. And […]

Back in 2009, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said we were “a nation of cowards” on matters of race. Permit me to be brave and run a few assertions by you just to see whether we’re on the same page. There should be two standards for civilized conduct: one for whites, which is higher, and […]

The battle of Barak Obama is ending in his defeat. A sagging economy, a likely setback on Obamacare, and sliding job approval are foreclosing the possibility that the president can be re-elected on his record in office. So the battle of Mitt Romney is beginning. It is evident to Obama’s people that only through a […]

Team Barack Obama knows they are in a heap of re-election trouble when pundits look at his shambles of an economic record. So what to do? Easy. The most shameless of our Obama-loving journalists are painting Obama as an action-movie superhero in the war on terror. Just open up Newsweek Magazine to an advertisement for […]

Remember when President Obama inspired Americans with such tired bromides as, “There are no red states or blue states, just the United States”? Remember when Obama declared that Americans had to pull together, because what united us was stronger than what divided us? Yeah, not so much. President Obama’s re-election campaign has been an exercise […]

Hey, did you hear the joke about the world leader who had the answer to the global economic crisis? Well, there you go — now you have. Remember the old days when leaders of developed nations would hold summits to decide how to solve the plight of the world’s poor? Now they ARE the world’s […]

President Obama’s latest political ploy — granting new “rights” out of thin air, by Executive Order, to illegal immigrants who claim that they were brought into the country when they were children — is all too typical of his short-run approach to the country’s long-run problems. Whatever the merits or demerits of the Obama immigration […]

Do you remember when President George H.W. Bush made the promise not to raise taxes (“Read my lips: No new taxes”) but unfortunately was talked into raising taxes and it cost him in his bid for a second term? If President Bush No. 41 could lose a re-election by breaking one promise, how can President […]

As disturbing as was President Obama’s lawless usurpation of constitutional authority in circumventing the DREAM Act to grant backdoor amnesty, this type of overreach is nothing new for him. He has frequently complained about how democracy and the Constitution are “messy” and do not permit him to exercise the authority of a Chinese president. But […]

Commentators on both the right and left and both secular and religious note with disdain that Mormons (Latter Day Saints, as Mormons refer to themselves) have irrational practices and beliefs. The former, we are told, includes the wearing of sacred undergarments and the latter includes posthumous baptisms and the claims by the prophet of Mormonism […]

“This notion I can somehow just change the laws unilaterally is just not true. We are doing everything we can administratively, but fact of the matter is there are laws on the books that I have to enforce. And I think there’s been great disservice done to the cause of getting the DREAM Act passed […]

I have two twentysomething daughters who’re currently taking over the planet. When these female charges popped out of their mommy’s womb, this thing called “responsibility for their upbringing” hit me like a Jackie Chan punch. I didn’t slough off my role in their lives onto my wife, my church, public school, day care, relatives, TV, […]

It seems as though the last month has been a gift to Republicans, particularly the Romney campaign. President Obama has committed gaffe after gaffe, and every new economic indicator is yet another pebble on the scale now fully tipped against him. Now he’s decided the key to stimulating the economy isn’t to lower the burden […]

While calls for U.S. Attorney General Eric “Stonewall” Holder’s resignation grow and the House GOP gears up for a contempt vote next week, it’s worth remembering how we got into this mess. In two words: feckless bipartisanship. “I like Barack Obama and want to help him if I can.” That was Utah GOP Sen. Orrin […]

Ancient Sparta turned its conquered neighbors into indentured serfs — half free, half slave. The resulting Helot underclass produced the food of the Spartan state, freeing Sparta’s elite males to train for war and the duties of citizenship. Over the last few decades, we’ve created our modern version of these Helots — millions of indebted […]

My daughter learned a neat rhetorical trick to avoid eating things she doesn’t like. “Daddy, I actually really like spinach, it’s just that this spinach tastes different.” Democrats and the journalists who love them play a similar game with Republicans and conservatives. “Oh, I have lots of respect for conservatives,” goes the typical line, “but […]

I saw it with my own eyes on a video clip that Sean Hannity played. At a speech in Baltimore, President Obama laughingly dismissed the notion that he is responsible for our nation’s current spending orgy. Seriously. Sporting a wide grin, Obama said, “I love listening to these guys give us lectures about debt and […]

Barack Obama keeps desperately pounding the entertainment industry’s ATMs in Hollywood and Manhattan, while our manufacturers of make-believe have absolutely refused to expel their vicious hatred of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. You wonder if, on any level, Obama is upset or chagrined or even embarrassed. Two examples have shown their ugly heads — […]

Reading a recent Haaretz article was stupefying – headlined: “The settler behind shadowy purchases of Palestinian land in the West Bank” one may think that Ha’aretz had discovered a mass scandal worthy of a “shadowy” headline. In reality, the sad truth the newspaper “exposed” was the Jews who work to purchase homes for Jews to […]

The new Federal Reserve report showing that household net worth collapsed between 2007 and 2010 quickly became campaign fodder for both sides. Republicans seized on the data to claim that the current administration is out of touch. President Obama helped the GOP with his comments that the private sector is doing fine and that small […]

Last week, President Obama said “the private sector is doing fine.” This was not reassuring to those of us who suspect the Democrats haven’t the first idea what “private sector” means. He did not help matters by becoming lachrymose over the suffering of public sector employees: “Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to […]

After President Barack Obama said, “The private sector is doing fine,” he later quickly regrouped. “The economy is not: doing fine (emphasis added). That’s the reason I had the press conference.” But Obama said he was particularly concerned about losses in the public: sector. The cluelessness is absolutely stunning. Obama is wrong about both the private and […]

Don’t you find it odd that the word extremism seems to apply only to conservative Republicans? Terminology often drives political discourse and those who control the terms often determine the outcome. Establishment Republicans have too often been uncomfortable in their own skin. When they win elections, they sometimes seem unsure of what to do next. […]

Who does Barack Obama listen to? Not Republican politicians. Evidently weeks go by between his conversations with Speaker John Boehner, who determines what legislation comes to the House floor. Not Democratic politicians. We have it on good authority that he seldom talks to Democratic members of Congress. Lyndon Johnson used to be on the phone […]

While JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon has been credited for a confident and feisty performance today in front of Congress, he was careful to not criticize their efforts thus far to regulate the financial services industry. Given that JP Morgan has been on the receiving end of federal bailouts, this should not be surprising. Last […]

It was gutsy for Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein to come out against Washington’s recent rash of dangerous intelligence leaks last week; she made criticism of the leaks bipartisan. Flanked by the House Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat, Dutch Ruppersberger, and GOP committee leaders, Feinstein declared: “This has to stop. When people say they don’t […]