Category: Column

The next stage of the Aimless Occupation of America is upon us: On Wednesday, rabble-rousers in the San Francisco Bay Area will walk off jobs they don’t have and encourage everyone else around the country to abandon work to protest high unemployment. The Occupiers are calling their organized day of inaction a “Mass Day of […]

One sign of economic ignorance is the faith that “Buy American” is the path to prosperity. My former employer, ABC News, did a week’s worth of stories claiming that “buying American” would put Americans back to work. I’m glad I don’t work there anymore. “Buy American” is a dumb idea. It would not only not […]

After Moammar Gadhafi’s downfall as Libya’s tyrannical ruler, politicians and “experts” in the U.S. and elsewhere, including French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, are saying that his death marked the end of 42 years of tyranny and the beginning of democracy in Libya. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said Gadhafi’s death represented an opportunity for Libya to […]

Now is a particularly dangerous moment for American national security interests. Not just because threats are growing. Not just because the current administration is making a historic bungle from China to Iraq to Iran to Russia to Europe to Mexico to our historic allies in the Middle East — both Jewish and Muslim. All that […]

Like the assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo, which triggered World War I, the decision of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou to submit his nation’s bailout deal with the European Union to a national referendum could be the spark that brings down the international financial system. The financial interdependence of the world’s banks is […]

A person can’t go but a few clicks on the Internet these days without tripping over some shocking item about the “explosion” of income inequality that has, like the dark smog of capitalistic excess, been choking the life out of this unjust nation. And when it comes to inequality, there is certainly only one vital […]

NBC anchor Brian Williams, in the argot of the moment, certainly belongs to “The One Percent.” He lives in the glass-encased Bloomberg Tower in mid-town Manhattan, 34 stories above the tony restaurant Le Cirque at 58th Street and Lexington Avenue. For years, he has lived up in the luxury apartment heavens with Beyonce and General […]

Looking back on the events of 2011, who do you think has more regrets for his bad decisions, Hosni Mubarak or former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty? I guess you have to give it to Mubarak. After all, the guy gave up a cushy gig ruling Egypt just so he could be (justifiably) prosecuted from a […]

I admire that you often add research to your columns, so I thought I’d ask you about an article I read on birth control pills. Apparently, taking the pill can cause the “wrong” man to smell good to you — a man you might not be into once you’re off the pill. Unfortunately, I experience […]

Chances are excellent that when you read the heading on this column, you thought to yourself, “Man, what’s he talking about? I live in Chicago, New York or Los Angeles! That’s not a small town!” You’re right. However, in every big city there are lots of “small towns.” The place you work, the neighborhood in […]

In various cities across the country, mobs of mostly young, mostly incoherent, often noisy and sometimes violent demonstrators are making themselves a major nuisance. Meanwhile, many in the media are practically gushing over these “protesters,” and giving them the free publicity they crave for themselves and their cause — whatever that is, beyond venting their […]

Want to know something almost as scary as an Obama re-election? Many news sources have reported over the past couple of months how Monsanto Co., the world’s biggest vegetable seed-maker, will begin selling biotech, or genetically engineered, sweet corn this fall for U.S. consumers. There are at least three alarming aspects to this particular veggie-gene […]

There he goes again. President Obama, on the campaign stump, rails against the “rich,” saying our “wealth gap” shows a need for a “fairer approach.” Does he really believe our economic problems have been caused by insufficient taxes on the rich? Insufficient taxes overall? If not, then what can we conclude about his insistence on […]

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s feminist magnum opus, “The Feminine Mystique,” we can have a perspective on feminism that was largely unavailable heretofore. And that perspective doesn’t make feminism look good. Yes, women have more opportunities to achieve career success; they are now members of most Jewish and […]

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles last Tuesday granted a request for a preliminary injunction that temporarily blocks a provision in North Carolina’s new abortion-restriction law that would require women seeking an abortion to view an ultrasound image of their womb within four hours of the procedure. In her decision to suspend […]

The argument is being made in some quarters that, however unsuccessful Barack Obama’s domestic policies have been, his record in foreign policy has been successful. But when you examine the claims of success, they seem a bit peculiar. Take the widely read New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Last week, he argued that Obama’s “lead […]

I used to like the flat tax. In fact, I used to propose exactly what Rick Perry is now pushing: an optional flat tax allowing taxpayers to either make their way through the labyrinth of IRS fine print in search of deductions or simply pay a flat percent of their income in taxes and be […]

If the old saw, “No good deed goes unpunished,” is true, or at least has some truth to it, then what about its corollary: “No bad deed goes unrewarded”? Between promoting the rebranding of PJ Media and eyeballing the seriocomic “occupy” demonstrators down the street from the Capitol, I was puzzling that conundrum while in […]

If a private health insurer had engaged in the kind of criminal obstruction that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been tied to in her home state of Kansas, it would be a federal case. Instead, it’s a non-story in the Washington press. Nothing to see here. Move along. On Monday, a district […]

There’s only one way the Occupy Wall Street movement can become like the tea parties, and that’s for Barack Obama to lose in 2012. Why? Because Obama is the most divisive figure in American politics today. I suspect that sentence reads funny to some people because in the mainstream press, “divisive” is usually a term […]

With his latest pseudo-compassionate expansion of the student loan program, President Obama reminds us why we ask whether he is simply unable to learn from history or he is indifferent to government waste incurred in pursuit of “good intentions.” Back when Obama was trolling for illusory savings to manipulate Congressional Budget Office scorekeepers into decreeing […]

Those prestigious publishers at Simon and Schuster selected All Saints Day to unleash the book world’s latest attempt at mocking Christianity. It’s called “The Last Testament, by God.” The author is David Javerbaum, a top writer for 11 years for “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, perhaps America’s leading religion-hating TV network. Is it any […]