With 2011 drawing to a close, it is time to account. As an early-and-often chronicler of Chicago-on-the-Potomac, I am amazed at the stubborn and clingy persistence of President Barack Obama’s snowblowers in the media. See no scandal, hear no scandal, speak no scandal. Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan asserted in May — while Operation Fast […]

As 2011 draws to a close, I wonder: Is freedom winning? Did America become freer this year? Less free? How about the rest of the world? I’m a pessimist. I fear Thomas Jefferson was right when he said, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” That’s what’s […]

National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman has called for states to mandate a total ban on cellphone usage while driving. She has also encouraged electronics manufacturers — via recommendations to the CTIA-The Wireless Association and the Consumer Electronics Association — to develop features that “disable the functions of portable electronic devices within reach of […]

For those Republican presidential candidates who eventually conclude there is no path to the nomination, there is consolation in the notion that they won’t be the ones to face the brutal onslaught being prepared for the GOP king-of-the-mountain by team Obama and its army of “objective” media allies. This time around, the Obama machine cannot […]

You overlooked the danger when you replied to the woman who was invited on a hiking date by a man she’d had a crush on. You said that he probably got interested because he saw her with her new boyfriend. Well, he could also have wanted to murder her because of that. Every year, there’s […]

It’s that time again to take a look back at some of the subjects of the past year’s columns and muse about what I would have gotten each of them for Christmas, if I could, in fact, have been bothered — which I couldn’t. But here we go anyway. President Barack Obama: Ten sessions with […]

Many times, I’m asked the question “Is motivation permanent?” and my standard response is “No, but then, neither is bathing.” However, in view of a recent letter I received, I’m going to change my answer to “No, motivation is not permanent, but the impact can be permanent, depending on what the motivation is.” For example, […]

I’ve made a disturbing discovery: I am a member of the conservative “establishment.” I feel like Michael Douglas at the end of “Falling Down”: “I’m the bad guy?” Largely in response to the real and perceived excesses of the Bush years and the overreach of the Obama administration, the base has become more populist. In […]

Last week, I documented more than a dozen ways in which, in just the past six months, the Obama administration is trampling on the religious liberties of America’s finest military service members. (If you haven’t read Part 1, you can find it at creators.com.) I am very disappointed by the dissolution of religious liberties in […]

According to the Mayan “long count” calendar, the final day on Earth is less than a year away, on Dec. 21, 2012. While we wait to see if that apocalypse occurs, a more reliable prediction includes an end of a different sort. The economic stimulus pipeline from Washington to the states is about to run […]

Random thoughts on the passing scene: Talk show host Dennis Miller said, “I don’t dig polo. It’s like miniature golf meets the Kentucky Derby.” Nothing illustrates the superficiality of our times better than the enthusiasm for electric cars, because they are supposed to greatly reduce air pollution. But the electricity that ultimately powers these cars […]

The world usually turns out to work differently from what American presidents expected when they were campaigning. Franklin Roosevelt campaigned on domestic issues in 1932 and ran a more isolationist foreign policy for his first years in office than any of the Republican presidents elected in the 1920s. But he became aware of the threat […]