Category: Column

We live in a bipolar culture. We allow ourselves to be drenched in sexual images in movies, on television and on the Internet and then defend First Amendment protection to even the most graphic of them. Then, when a politician acts out what culture promotes, we criticize him, especially if he’s conservative, branding him with […]

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind about Newt Gingrich, as he leads in polls for the Republican presidential nomination nationally and in Iowa and South Carolina, and may be threatening Mitt Romney’s lead in New Hampshire. One is that he is an autodidact. A second is that he has incredible perseverance. […]

She’s perfect. Miley Cyrus, Hollywood’s perpetually half-dressed wild child with an insatiable appetite for attention, jumped in front of the Occupy Wall Street bandwagon this week. The young Disney mogul unveiled a YouTube anthem hailing the aimless, anti-capitalist protesters. Smells like opportunistic teen queen spirit. Like so much of the warmed-over, Big Labor-underwritten Occupy movement, […]

In 2008, I wrote a book called “Liberal Fascism.” That title came from H.G. Wells, one of the most important socialist writers in the English language. He believed, as did his fellow Fabian socialists, that Western democratic capitalism had outlived its usefulness. What was needed was a new, bold, forward-thinking system run by experts with […]

Every four years, we are pushed farther and farther away. The candidate recedes into the distance, separated from us by rope lines, staff and attitude. This will be the 10th presidential election I have covered, and sometimes people ask me what has changed the most over the years. We used to get close, I tell […]

Instead of trying to govern, a matter about which I suppose we should be grateful, President Obama is once again galloping from fundraiser to fundraiser, straining to make the implausible case that the country needs his second term. In New York for three events — in which he raked in $2 million from the very […]

With the mainstream media giddily reporting on an alleged affair involving Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, how long can it be before they break the news that their 2004 vice presidential candidate conceived a “love child” with his mistress, Rielle Hunter? The left is trying to destroy Cain with a miasma of hazy accusations leveled […]

From 2007 to 2009, a surge of 20,000 troops under the generalship of David Petraeus saved a mostly lost war in Iraq. Petraeus’ counterinsurgency doctrine helped win over the population, as the surge in troops gave greater security to Iraq’s government and military. Despite occasional violence, fewer Americans have been killed in Iraq in 2011 […]

When Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., announced his intention not to seek re-election after a 32-year career, not one of the nightly news broadcast network anchors found time or space to mention either Frank’s central role in the housing meltdown or his congressional reprimand. Not one. Similarly, an Associated Press article headlined, “Democratic Rep. Barney Frank […]

One question I sometimes have been asked in this presidential campaign goes something like this: Why does Mitt Romney sound so corny? Actually, phrasing it that way suggests the answer. “Corny” is a word you don’t hear people say much any more. As you reach a certain age, you hear yourself uttering words or phrases […]

Seventy years ago this month, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and brought America into a war that had begun in Europe in 1939. In his masterful new book “December 1941: 31 Days That Changed America and Saved the World,” Craig Shirley takes readers back to a very different America. Through hundreds of stories and advertisements […]

Benefiting from a hint from an article titled “Is Harry Potter Making You Poorer?”, written by my colleague Dr. John Goodman, president of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, I’ve come up with an explanation and a way to end income inequality in America, possibly around the world. Joanne Rowling was a welfare mother […]

At the dawn of his administration, President Obama opined: “A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency.” Magical rays of white-hot sunlight emanated from his media-manufactured halo. And then bureaucratically engineered darkness settled over the land. For three years, White House officials have rolled out countless executive orders and initiatives touting open government. Just this […]

It used to be common for people to urge us to learn “the lessons of history.” But history gets much less attention these days and, if there are any lessons that we are offered, they are more likely to be the lessons from current polls or the lessons of political correctness. Even among those who […]

This week, in Oakland, Calif., America saw yet another stellar example of the glories of diversity. At a taping of a rap music video in that fair city, eight people, including a one-year-old child, were shot. When a classical music video goes wrong, somebody busts a string. When a rap music video goes wrong, somebody […]

Have you noticed how often government takes sides against the little guy? Street vending has been a path out of poverty for Americans. And like other such paths (say, driving a taxi), this one is increasingly difficult to navigate. Why? Because entrenched interests don’t like competition. So they lobby their powerful friends to erect high […]

Earlier this month, the left-wing magazine The Nation highlighted Joe Therrien as a symbol of the Occupy Wall Street movement. A New York City public-school drama teacher, Therrien was frustrated with the shortcomings of the school system. So he quit his job and “set off to the University of Connecticut to get an MFA in […]

The conventional wisdom is that the GOP nomination race has boiled down to Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Not so fast! A contest limited to these two men would leave two key Republican constituencies unsatisfied. And unsatisfied voters tend to stray. Particularly in Iowa. While Romney is the strong favorite among the financial and political […]

In politics, this has been The Year of Living Dangerously. It has been the year of the risk, the shiver, the shudder, the thrill. All quickly felt. All quickly passing. The media have driven it. Faced with an incumbent president running a careful and as yet uninspiring campaign, and a Republican field as dynamic as […]

From the breaking news, one might think that with a woman who claims she had a 13-year affair with presidential candidate Herman Cain, someone is being seriously exposed as a hypocrite. That would be the press. The media can’t deny they continue to display a lousy double standard. For Republican candidates, scandalous news is instant. […]

Sunday on “Meet the Press” Colin Powell blamed divisive, poisonous Washington politics on the media and the Tea Party. The essence of Powell’s argument was: “Republicans and Democrats are focusing more and more on their extreme left and extreme right. And we have to come back toward the center in order to compromise. … The […]

For 10 years, this woman and I have had a hot-and-cold long-distance relationship, the temperature of which she’s always controlled. She’s 56; I’m 46. Last year, she felt ready to try for something lasting. She couldn’t afford to travel, so I paid for her flight. She stayed with me for two wonderful, passionate months, and […]

Several years ago, on a cold, drizzly morning, I was working in my office, when I heard a strange noise in the chimney. After several minutes, my wife heard it too and thought it might be a bird or a squirrel. I realized it was a bird and that it was trapped, so I opened […]