Political Commentary & Opinion

Multiple news outlets last week reported on a 2018 video recording in which two men with Ukrainian connections, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, apparently inform President Donald Trump that the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was undermining his policy and asserting that he soon would be impeached. In response, Trump reportedly ordered: “Get rid…

During President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, we’ll hear a lot of talk about our rules for governing. One frequent claim is that our nation is a democracy. If we’ve become a democracy, it would represent a deep betrayal of our Founders, who saw democracy as another form of tyranny. In fact, the word democracy appears…

Tom Jipping, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, joins the podcast to explain the Equal Rights Amendment. He also discusses why Virginia technically can’t be the 38th state to ratify it—even though the Legislature claimed Monday to have done so. Listen on the podcast, or read a lightly edited transcript of the interview,…

I began part one of “Why Are So Many Young People Unhappy?” with data showing the apparently unprecedentedly high rate of unhappiness among young people in America (and elsewhere, but I am focusing on America). The rates of suicide, self-injury, depression, mass shootings, and loneliness (at all ages) are higher than ever recorded. It seems…

Tinslee Lewis, a very sick year-old baby, is at the intersection of a bitter Texas debate over current law and ethical responsibilities in end-of-life care. Texas hospital officials want to withdraw Tinslee’s life-support—after having given her mother 10 days to find alternate care for the baby, which is what Texas law requires. Trinity Lewis, the…

The Old Dominion is trending in an ominous direction, and it’s a problem for the whole country. On Monday, the Virginia General Assembly ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. Advocates of the ERA have argued that Virginia is the 38th and final state needed to add it to the Constitution, though the legal argument for that…

KYIV, Ukraine—Monday marks the 75th anniversary of the day Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz, Nazi Germany’s largest concentration and extermination camp. At Auschwitz, the Nazis murdered more than 1 million men, women, and children, mostly Jews, during the Holocaust. I have been to Auschwitz only once. It was a long time ago, in February of 2006….

Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world remembers the 6 million European Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War II and renews its commitment to ensure the tragedies of the Holocaust are never repeated. Sadly, on this 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, we cannot ignore the resurgent anti-Semitism…

It’s 2020, which means election year is upon us. And although Washington is currently preoccupied with the impeachment melodrama going on in the Senate, we should not lose sight of problems in our voter registration and election process that imperil the integrity of upcoming  local, state, and federal elections.  When our citizens exercise their right…

Ten years ago, the Supreme Court overturned portions of a federal law that empowered government to dictate how Americans who were not connected to any candidates and political parties could practice their inherent right of free expression. It was one of the greatest free speech decisions in American history. The case of Citizens United revolved…

You can see her coming from miles away—a ship with masts, lurching ever-nearer, slowly coming out of the wide, gleaming bay and up the Hillsborough River. Eventually, you’ll spot it: the black flag bearing a white skull over crossbones, a symbol of unmistakable meaning. The crew will debark at a bend in the river that…