One of the things that attracted me to the political left, as a young man, was a belief that leftists were for “the people.” Fortunately, I was also very interested in the history of ideas — and years of research in that field repeatedly brought out the inescapable fact that many leading thinkers on the […]

It is 41 years since the Supreme Court handed down the Roe v. Wade decision, effectively legalizing abortion everywhere in the United States. Ever since, it has been a source of controversy — and confusion. Some of that confusion is owed to the fact that the opinion was written by Justice Harry Blackmun, the only […]

Wendy Davis, the Texas state senator running for governor, became a liberal superhero last June when she filibustered a bill to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks. (This was the good filibuster, not that awful filibuster three months later by Ted Cruz — that was just grandstanding.) Apart from her enthusiasm for abortion (and you have […]

Since this year will mark the 50th anniversary of the “war on poverty,” we can expect many comments and commemorations of this landmark legislation in the development of the American welfare state. The actual signing of the “war on poverty” legislation took place in August 1964, so the 50th anniversary is some months away. But […]

For all hysteria over former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ new insider memoir of his tenure during the Bush and Obama administrations, the disclosures are more breaches of trust than earth-shattering revelations. Much of “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War” is the ordinary stuff of public service. What little gossip in the book that may […]

The Rev. William Barber, head of North Carolina’s chapter of the left-wing NAACP, recently said this about black, tea-party-supported Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, S.C.: “A ventriloquist can always find a good dummy.” Sounds like Barber might have mentored an ex-high school classmate with whom I recently had the following exchange: Ex-Classmate: “Uncle Tom in […]

Everyone “knows” it is conservatives who are mean-spirited, intolerant, censors of speech with which they don’t agree, anti-gay, anti-black and anti just about everything else, right? We know this because the left keeps telling us so. Which is why in this era of increasingly corrosive language — note the overuse of the f-word in the […]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Jerry Brown is in an enviable position. He delivered a State of the State address Wednesday that did not require hand-wringing about ugly shortfalls and painful cuts for public schools. As he prepares to run for re-election, he doesn’t even need to announce that he is running for re-election. No Democrat […]