Category: Column

The tea party isn’t dead. It’s just looking down ballot. While fiscal conservatives remain split over the GOP presidential candidates, grassroots activists are coalescing around a stellar slate of limited-government candidates looking to reinforce and reenergize the right in Washington. And in the spirit of the modern-day tea party movement, no entrenched incumbent — Democrat […]

President Obama said in his State of the Union speech, “We’ve already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings.” That was reassuring. The new budget he released this week promises $4 trillion in “deficit reduction” — about half in tax increases and half in spending cuts. But like most politicians, Obama misleads. […]

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s big story Feb. 4 was about how a budget crunch at the Philadelphia School District had caused the district to lay off 91 school police officers. Over the years, there’s been no discussion of what has happened to our youth that makes a school police force necessary in the first place. The […]

President Barack Obama, faced with no recovery from the recession as he enters an election year, has come up with a handy political gimmick: Fake the statistics The economic data which portend recovery are totally and completely inventions of Obama’s political operation. The reality is that no recovery is taking place! Economist James Fitzgibbon of […]

It’s always curious to watch the champions of “choice” decide what choices to champion and what choices to dismiss for the common good. If you believe that the Obama administration’s decision to force Catholic institutions to pay for and offer (directly or indirectly) products the church finds morally objectionable is an assault on religious freedom […]

I can’t believe that I actually agree with something President Obama has done. Granted, I’m one of those conservatives who has never subscribed to the full-meal-deal checklist, preferring to critically consider whether each of my positions is the most logical and sensible given the available information and my own values. Usually that process results in […]

Valentine’s Day is probably not the day most people would pick to remember the marriage of John and Jacqueline Kennedy. But on Feb. 14, CBS spent more than eight minutes recalling how it was the 50th anniversary of CBSs “historic” TV tour of the White House with Jackie. They brought on liberal historian Doug Brinkley […]

Several years ago, Paul Newman starred in a movie titled “The Hustler.” It dealt with the game of pool, and a hustler was a guy who set someone up and then hustled or beat him out of his money. The connotation of a hustler was definitely negative. Today, however, when we think of a hustler, […]

“It’s not about contraception,” thundered GOP presidential contender Rick Santorum. “It’s about economic liberty. It’s about freedom of speech. It’s about freedom of religion. It’s about government control of your lives. And it’s got to stop!” He was talking, of course, about the Obama administration’s recent decisions first to force large religious employers to pay […]

Although Barack Obama is the first black President of the United States, he is by no means unique, except for his complexion. He follows in the footsteps of other presidents with a similar vision, the vision at the heart of the Progressive movement that flourished a hundred years ago. Many of the trends, problems and […]

In 2008 — when my wife, Gena, and I were on the campaign trail backing former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for president — former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania was fighting to get former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney elected. (Go to http://bit.ly/zEIaPw to hear how Santorum passionately endorsed and elevated Mitt in his bid for […]

President Obama is nothing if not an incorrigible spendaholic, as his new budget reconfirms in spades. While the nation drowns in debt, Obama wants to buy new expensive Tinkertoys to indulge his utopian fantasies. Legend has it that prior to embarking on his mission to conquer the known world, Alexander the Great, who had not […]

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) last week. In the few words reported by the Weekly Standard magazine, he said just about everything one needs to know about Israel; about America and Israel; and about American political leadership: “America should stand by its friends and its democratic allies, […]

“Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” — Thomas Jefferson “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate […]

Well, Romney won the CPAC straw vote but what the media does not report is the extent to which Romney rigged the vote. His campaign bused in hundreds of College Republicans from all over, paid their registration fees, their hotel rooms, and even provided pizza for them. All the campaign demanded in return is that […]

Rick Santorum won big victories in three small contests in the Republican presidential race last Tuesday. In doing so, he reshaped the oft-reshaped nomination battle once again. But he has not installed himself as the favorite, and neither he nor Mitt Romney has established himself as the candidate who can do best in the general […]

Last October, one political pundit explained how a mere 3 percentage point decline in Massachusetts’ uninsured rate after the enactment of Romney Care showed the failure of universal health care at even a state level. She did not like the policy itself, but thought that Romney had the best chance of winning out of any […]

The domestic-violence case against San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi did not start with a call from wife Eliana Lopez or neighbors who heard a fight getting out of control at the family’s home on New Year’s Eve. It started with a Jan. 4 phone call to police from a friend and neighbor, Ivory Madison, whom […]

If you aren’t creeped out by the No Birth Control Left Behind rhetoric of the White House and Planned Parenthood, you aren’t listening closely enough. The anesthetic of progressive benevolence always dulls the senses. Wake up. When a bunch of wealthy white women and elite Washington bureaucrats defend the trampling of religious liberties in the […]

OK, I give up. About a week ago, I wrote a column making a case for Mitt Romney as the GOP nominee. My argument was aimed at fellow conservatives who just can’t get their minds — or at least their hearts — around a Romney candidacy. The details aren’t important right now (and they’re easy […]

As God’s instrument, Moses parted the Red Sea. Well, it appears President Obama has a different idea. With a wave of his hand, he’s going to reunite our bitterly divided political waters on the hottest of hot-button issues. Don’t get me wrong; Obama’s conscious effort to divide Americans on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion […]

Super Bowl XLVI was a good football game, marred once again by the bohemian elite at NBC. NBC could have prevented, but failed to stop, the broadcast of a female rapper “flipping the bird” at 114 million viewers during Madonna’s halftime show. It was another “fleeting expletive” of the hand-gesture variety, and somehow, despite elaborate […]

Rick Santorum — a man who lost his last election in his home state by 18 points — is suddenly threatening the front-runner status of Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination. He, not Newt Gingrich, is emerging, at least for the moment, as the conservative alternative to Romney, having won decisively in three state […]

On the campaign trail, presidential candidate Barack Obama once called for a “reset” policy with Iran. Supposedly, the unpopularity of the Texan provocateur George W. Bush and his administration’s inability to finesse “soft power” had needlessly alienated the Iranian theocracy. After all, the widely quoted but highly politicized 2007 National Intelligence Estimate claimed that Iran […]

A funny thing happened to Mitt Romney on the way to his coronation as the inevitable Republican candidate for President of the United States. Minnesota, Michigan and Colorado happened. Rick Santorum beat him in all three states on the same day — and beat him by huge margins in two of those states, as well […]

“Which of our Hispanic leaders would you consider to serve in your Cabinet?” A woman attending the last Republican debate in Florida asked this of the four Republican rivals. Oh, for crying out loud! Ethnic-based Cabinet appointees? Do we still need to go out and “seek” people of a certain color or religion to show […]

The Obama administration is touting the latest unemployment numbers released last week by the U.S. Department of Labor as proof its policies are working. But a closer look at the actual number of able-bodied people who are willing to work, but are not, reveals a different picture. As economist John R. Lott has written, not […]

The Obama administration is waging war on Christianity. Somehow, the networks haven’t seen this as newsworthy. On Jan. 20, Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services announced its perverse attempt to force Catholic schools, hospitals and other charitable agencies to finance sterilization, abortifacients and contraceptives in their insurance plans starting in 2013. Speaking for the […]

If you’re not with us, you’re against us. President Bush popularized this expression after 9/11 to describe his foreign policy doctrine: Countries couldn’t support or indulge terrorists and be our friends at the same time. But his detractors quickly turned it into a fairly paranoid vision of domestic political life, as if Bush had been […]