Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
Shortly after the Trump administration takes office in January 2017, it will need to consider its strategy in Afghanistan, the country from which al-Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks and where U.S. and NATO-backed Afghan forces continue to battle the Taliban 15 years after the Islamist extremist group was ousted from power. Just last week, the…
Earlier this month, voters all across the country shocked the political and media establishments. America’s message was simple: We are tired of corrupt insider dealing in Washington and the self-serving nature of the establishment political class. This didn’t happen by chance. Millions of Americans found a reason to engage in the political process. Whether it…
Congress may have just removed an important religious liberty provision from a major bill. Reports have surfaced that House and Senate members of the conference committee negotiating the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) have caved to the Obama administration’s veto threat and stripped the Russell Amendment, which would prevent the government…
What are we to make of higher education when students and institutions respond to the recent presidential election with cry-ins, canceled exams, therapy dogs, Play-Doh, coloring books, group screams, Legos, bubble-blowing, and trauma counseling? Well, college “ain’t what it used to be.” For some time, higher learning has been a political matter, one where the…
Recently, the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras agreed as a bloc to seek support from Mexico in response to the election of President-elect Donald Trump. This move comes in response to the president-elect’s comments during a “60 Minutes” interview, where he vowed to deport unlawful immigrants with criminal records back to their country…
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally published as a letter to the editor at The Cornell Daily Sun. You can discern a lot about a person’s character by the way she handles disappointment. I’m concerned that Cornell’s current culture of safe spaces is hindering students from developing the character required to handle disappointment graciously and…
Republican President-elect Donald Trump announced on “60 Minutes” Sunday that he would refuse his $400,000 annual presidential salary, and would take just $1 instead. The wealthy businessman turned president’s statement caused some consternation from a few pundits who claim that it’s dangerous for a president to refuse compensation. The Atlantic published an op-ed claiming that…
The election happened, and now the establishment would like you to forget about it. Focus on 2017, they say. Focus on the inauguration, they say. Why? Because it’s lame-duck season in Washington and they’d like to pass major legislation without voters noticing. By “lame duck,” we mean the time between Election Day and the new…
President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of dismantling Dodd-Frank, and now Senate Democrats are pretty much the only thing that can derail that promise. This week, key Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee indicated they want little to do with dismantling the 2010 law. But in their rush to save Dodd-Frank, they’ve shown just…
Melvin Laird, secretary of defense under President Richard Nixon and nine-term Wisconsin congressman, died Wednesday in a Florida hospital. Before his election to the Wisconsin state Senate in 1946, Laird served in World War II as an ensign aboard the USS Maddox, where he was injured in a kamikaze attack and awarded the Purple Heart. From…
As climate negotiators work out the details of the Paris Agreement on global warming in Marrakech, Morocco, the question on everyone’s minds is: What will the Trump administration do? The president-elect has expressed skepticism about the Paris Agreement, and for good reason. American households and businesses will incur higher energy costs and a weaker economy…
For more than three months, thousands of protesters, most of them from out of state, have illegally camped on federal land in Morton County, North Dakota, to oppose the construction of a legally permitted oil pipeline project that is 85 percent complete. The celebrities, political activists, and anti-oil extremists who are blocking the pipeline’s progress…
The United Mine Workers of America—a roughly 100,000-member coal mining union—is lobbying hard for a taxpayer bailout of its underfunded pension plan before the end of the year. And it’s already well on its way. The Senate Finance Committee passed S.1714, the Miners Protection Act, out of committee on Sept. 22. The UMWA’s pension plan for coal…
Should a single mom be facing jail time for selling homemade food? California investigators recently completed an undercover sting operation into a community group using Facebook as a platform to exchange and sell homemade food items. This is yet another example of overcriminalization under the watch of California Gov. Jerry Brown, which also limits the…
The modern American media may have just had their worst year yet, and for their efforts, they have announced they’d like to reward themselves more power than they have held in decades. The past year has seen a declining trust in the media that is fully deserved. Debate moderators have been exposed as shills; network employees have been busted tipping the scales…
While in Greece this week, President Barack Obama called the anxieties about national, cultural, and ethnic identities that impacted this election a “volatile mix.” He attributed this angst, though, to impersonal forces such as globalization, deindustrialization, and social media. It wasn’t him. For eight years, the president said, he’s been working hard against approaches “that…
Donald Trump’s surprise win has millions of Americans, many of whom are black, in a tizzy. Many, such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, are writing about what it means to be black during a Trump administration even though Trump’s presidency has yet to begin. My argument has always been that the political arena is largely irrelevant to…
Like many union-run pension plans, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Administration—otherwise known as D.C. metro—has promised far more in pension benefits than it has set aside to pay. According to recent reports, the pension shortfall is $2.8 billion. This kind of overpromising of pension benefits is commonplace for union-run (also known as multiemployer plans) and…
Vanita Gupta, the acting head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, apparently has been working in violation of federal law for more than a year and a half. That may render all of the official actions she has taken during that period—lawsuits, demand letters, hires, you name it—“void” and of no effect. To…