Category: Column

President Barack Obama’s drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, doesn’t like the term “drug war.” He argues that none of the smart guys in law enforcement uses it. Instead, the smart guys talk about middle-of-the-road strategies that emphasize treatment over incarceration — as did both Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush — while they also advocate […]

Some 20 million Americans in primaries and caucuses will take part in selecting the Republican presidential nominee. One person will choose the vice presidential nominee. This has long struck me as absurd: One person choosing someone who, as a result, might become president for as long as 10 years. But just about everyone in politics […]

Stop the presses: Big-spending Democrats are finally up in arms over a federal boondoggle. Details of the U.S. General Services Administration bacchanalia get worse by the day. We’ve graduated from overpriced breakfasts in Vegas, friends-and-family junkets galore and in-house videos mocking their own profligacy to extravagant bonuses, alleged kickbacks, obstructionism and bribes. But the scandal […]

We spend too much time waiting for orders — and money — from Washington. The collapse of the housing bubble gave politicians a license to do what they wanted to do all along: spend. The usual checks on extravagance, weak as they are, were washed away. Budgets? We’ll worry about that later. Inflation? We’ll worry […]

It’s difficult to be a good economist and simultaneously be perceived as compassionate. To be a good economist, one has to deal with reality. To appear compassionate, often one has to avoid unpleasant questions, use “caring” terminology and view reality as optional. Affordable housing and health care costs are terms with considerable emotional appeal that […]

With most current presidential polls of likely voters showing 9-10 percent undecided, the question of where the undecided votes go becomes of paramount importance. To answer this question, I compared the final Gallup Polls with the actual results in every race in which an incumbent president was opposing an insurgent since 1964. This included the […]

So many imaginary villains and so little time. This week, President Barack Obama is taking the fight to “oil speculators” and “market manipulation” (nee “free enterprise”), demanding that traders put up more money for transactions and government ratchet up enforcement and monitoring. “None of these will bring gas prices down overnight,” Obama helpfully explained in […]

America is a land of class mobility. That’s what makes America a magnet destination for people all over the world: Come to America and make something of yourself. If you want great welfare benefits, try to bust into Europe; if you want to work for a living and get rich, come to the United States. […]

Republican strategists should generally be wary of campaign advice from liberals — and when it’s from the media, generally becomes definitely. Washington Post political writer Chris Cillizza recently suggested Mitt Romney’s general-election strategy should start with getting a “positive first introduction” to voters through the liberal media because “only the national media can provide that […]

My boyfriend and I are college juniors, happily together 10 months and living together for five. An article I read said it’s healthy to argue with your partner, and I got a little worried. We sometimes bicker about what to watch on TV, but one of us quickly gives in, and that’s it. It does […]

“The choice in this election is between an economy that produces a growing middle class and that gives people a chance to get ahead and their kids a chance to get ahead, and an economy that continues down the road we are on, where a fewer and fewer number of people do very well and […]

A busy executive was being pressured by his 7-year-old son to pay attention to him, and the father kept putting him off. In one last effort for attention, the youngster said, “Dad, who do you like best — Batman or Superman?” The father impatiently replied: “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose Superman,” and immediately went […]

Apparently the soaring national debt and the threat of a nuclear Iran are not enough to occupy the government’s time, because the Obama administration is pushing to force Westchester County, N.Y., to create more low-income housing, in order to mix and match classes and races to fit the government’s preconceptions. Behind all this busy work […]

President Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department have a new obsession to obstruct any state’s passing of voter identification laws, even recently attacking South Carolina and my own state of Texas. Holder calls voter ID laws “unnecessary” and says voter fraud “doesn’t exist,” but new video proof in his own voting […]

Of all the myriad scandals of the Obama administration, there is one, largely ignored by the mainstream media, that could actually be its worst. That scandal is the operation run from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, under the Justice Department, known as “Fast and Furious,” through which the federal government actually encouraged […]

As all baseball fans and many other Americans know, the manager of the Miami Marlins, Ozzie Guillen, told Time magazine that he loves Fidel Castro. The news focus has been on Guillen’s remarks — for which he has profusely apologized — and whether the Marlins were right to suspend him for five games. More important, […]

Virtually everything said and done in a presidential election year distorts the truth, much like concave and convex mirrors in a carnival attraction alter one’s true reflection. That kind of distortion occurred in the recent dustup over whether women who choose to stay at home can completely understand the economic challenges and personal struggles faced […]

President Barack Obama calls his proposed tax on millionaires the “Buffett rule,” based on financier Warren Buffett’s claim that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Obama claims that the “Buffett rule” asks millionaires to “do their fair share” by paying the same income tax rate that middle-class families pay. Despite a sluggish […]

Yes, this is about race and racism. But no, it’s not about the Trayvon Martin case and how the media is pimping it. It’s not even about the equally tragic black-on-white crimes some push to expose media bias in the Martin case. I don’t subscribe to the “Yeah, sure, but what about this!” game some […]

CHURCHVILLE, VA–President Obama says the Republicans want to throw everyone under the wheels of a Darwinian “survival of the fittest” machine. He says the dog-eat-dog of the free market will be bad for blacks, Latinos, women, and the handicapped. He’s got it exactly backward. Peaceful competition in free markets is the alternative to Darwinism! Darwin […]

I was amused to read Maureen Dowd’s recent column titled “State of Cool” in The New York Times, calling Hillary Clinton “cool,” because I was about to write just the opposite — not just about Hillary, but about her (and my) whole generation of liberal-progressive-whatevers. They are anything but cool. They are the New Squares. […]

You have to really work at it to get arrested at a University of California campus protest. University administrators look at protest as part of the education process — and they frequently issue memos stating how much they agree with left-wing causes. Administrators don’t want campus police to arrest students — especially students who attend […]

How much will Obamacare — call it the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act if you like — cost over the next 10 years? More than you’ve been led to believe, reports Charles Blahous of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. To be specific, he projects it will add $1,160 billion to net federal spending over […]

Harvard professor and Manliness author Harvey C. Mansfield opined, “We are attracted to the manly man because he imparts some of his confidence to everyone else.” Manly men–past and present–have captivated the world with their talents, leadership, oratory skills, and virility. They are strong, protective, and brave. They are fathers, gentlemen, husbands, friends, and neighbors. […]

The authenticity of conservative women has always been under attack by radical orthodox feminists, but perhaps not as brazenly as by someone with such direct and frequent access to the corridors of the White House message machine as Hilary B. Rosen. The D.C. career lobbyist and Democratic media strategist took to CNN’s airwaves this week […]

President Obama’s re-election largely hinges on his ability to play young voters for suckers — again — and whether Mitt Romney will let him. In 2008, Obama won the youth vote by better than a 2-1 margin, 66 percent to 32 percent. Even more impressive, he actually expanded the share of young voters going to […]