Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
When it has nothing else to do, the liberal establishment will dip into its bulging bag of clichés and declare that this time, absolutely, positively, without any doubt, the conservative movement is done. And once again it becomes the duty of right-thinking analysts to stand up and firmly say, “Poppycock!” Here are five of the…
One of the lessons of statecraft is that mistakes tend to compound themselves. Good options disappear and bad ones proliferate. The hole is dug deeper because desperation convinces you to contemplate options that would never have been considered in better times. This is what I fear may happen next in Iraq. Because we have so…
The beheading of another American journalist this week sparked many members of Congress to urge President Obama to amp up U.S. military action against the Islamic State, otherwise known as ISIS. But before he does so, many of those same lawmakers are demanding that the president first seek congressional authorization, pursuant to the War Powers…
America is built on the philosophy of bootstrapping, or pulling yourself up through your own talents and abilities. No tool is better suited for doing that than a good education. For years, however, a good primary and secondary education has been increasingly difficult to find. But I’m happy to report, at the start of another…
Two weeks ago, President Obama took time out from his vacation to speak to the American people. Oddly, he didn’t talk about ISIS, Ukraine, the Islamist takeover of Tripoli or even border security here at home. No, what lured the president from the links of Martha’s Vineyard to a radio microphone was the opportunity to publicly…
The contrast between last week’s press conference in London by British Prime Minister David Cameron and the White House remarks by President Obama could not have been starker. Cameron delivered a robust assessment of the scale of the Islamist threat to Great Britain and to the free world. He told journalists assembled at Downing Street…
The Environmental Protection Agency has developed detailed maps of waters located throughout the country. These waters include, according to the maps, ephemeral streams that flow only in response to precipitation events and intermittent streams that contain water for only part of the year. In light of the EPA’s proposed “waters of the U.S.” rule that…
This wasn’t the voice of President Reagan, rallying the free world to confront a great evil, a great menace to the world today.
The German Marshall Fund announced the results of its annual Transatlantic Trends survey this week, to coincide with the 2014 NATO summit in Wales. The survey results revealed continued support for NATO’s core mission among European and American respondents alike. A majority of those polled believes that NATO is key to securing the territorial integrity…
According to a recent news story, President Xi Jinping of China and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India will not attend the upcoming UN climate summit. The clear, but unsaid, implication is that the two most populous and still poor countries do not want to attend a bashing of CO2 emitters—of which they are major…
When pressed about the staggering increases in regulatory burden under his administration, President Obama says not to worry because the benefits exceed the costs. But a new and revealing set of charts from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce highlights the shameless deception used to calculate the bulk of these purported benefits. In Charting Federal Costs…
The concept of “net neutrality” sounds nice on paper: All data on the Internet should be treated and delivered equally. “A bit is a bit,” we are told. But is it really? Internet pioneer Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT’s Media Lab and the One Laptop Per Child project, calls the idea “crazy.” He explained why…
Biotechnology once again could play an important role in helping to address a major problem affecting agriculture. The $9 billion Florida citrus industry is being threatened by a disease believed to have originated in China known as huanglongbing, commonly referred to as citrus greening. The bacteria that causes the disease is carried by an Asian…
Today’s employment report dashed some cold water on hopes the economy has finally begun a robust recovery. For six straight months the payroll survey reported employers creating over 200,000 net jobs. In August net job creation dropped to just 142,000 – well below expectations and only slightly more than necessary to keep pace with population…
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri’s video announcement launching an al-Qaeda wing in the Indian Subcontinent is almost certainly part of the organization’s efforts to compete with the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq for recruits, money and ideological supremacy. The recent military gains by the IS—an al-Qaeda breakaway group–in Iraq and its increasing efforts to recruit militants…
Fans of the hit TLC show “19 Kids and Counting” were excited to watch daughter Jill Duggar get married in June–but they weren’t expecting to hear she was pregnant just two months later. Duggar and her husband had pledged to remain sexually abstinent until marriage. So, had they violated the pledge? Or was she just…
Earlier today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia announced it will rehear a case in which a three-judge panel previously ruled the IRS does not have the authority to subsidize health coverage bought through insurance exchanges run by the federal government. On July 22 in Halbig v. Burwell, a panel of…
“Let me just tell you: If New Jersey were [blasting] rockets into New York, we would wipe them out,” said comedian Joan Rivers in July. Rivers died today at the age of 81.
Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, is putting the finishing touches on his supposed "investigation" of the IRS scandal that will, in essence, be a press release for the IRS and the administration, a reliable source tells me. A forthcoming report is expected to clear the IRS of wrongdoing for targeting…
One-tenth of 1 percent of state prisoners are in jail for marijuana.