The Senate debate over extending three key sections of the egregiously misnamed USA PATRIOT Act is over, and the winner is . . . Sen. Rand Paul. The losers are clearly Sens. Mitch McConnell and John McCain, both of whom tried desperately to win an extension of what Paul accurately described as “that most unpatriotic...
Agents of the Department of Justice wasted little time launching a civil-rights investigation into the death of Freddie Gray. In a press release, Attorney General Loretta Lynch explained that “Department officials heard from residents about concerns regarding the Baltimore Police Department and the lack of trust they feel exists between the police and the community.”...
In the life of politicians, single moments stand out when a decision to act or not to act defines their character and shapes their future success. Calvin Coolidge’s stand against the Boston police strike of 1919 and Ronald Reagan’s firing in 1981 of striking air-traffic controllers defined who they were. Gov. Scott Walker’s stand in...
In mid-February, U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen issued an injunction enjoining the Obama administration from implementing the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program (DAPA). Under DAPA, over four million illegal aliens present in the United States would be shielded from deportation and would be eligible to receive work permits,...
The terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo staffers provides an important opportunity for us to face a new reality: Fourth-Generation Warfare (4GW) has found a home in France, as well as in the rest of Western Europe and the United States. According to theorist William Lind, First-Generation Warfare involves massed manpower, such as the Napoleonic clashes;...
Five years before Michael Brown and Eric Garner would become household names, there was Mark Barmore. On August 24, 2009, Rockford, Illinois, police officers Oda Poole and Stan North were patrolling in a prisoner-transport van when they received a notice from a dispatcher that 23-year-old Mark Anthony Barmore was wanted for questioning in a domestic...
One year ago, House Republicans were girding their loins to introduce legislation that would amnesty millions of illegal aliens. The “path to citizenship” was reportedly off the table, as GOP leaders, in an effort to please everyone (meaning no one), prepared to veer off onto the “path to legalization,” kicking the can of citizenship down...
The Center for Immigration Studies recently issued two reports that show how transformative mass immigration has been in recent decades. The first study focused on the number of immigrants now living in the United States. Recent data from the Census Bureau show that 3.3 million immigrants, both legal and illegal, came to America between July...
The 50th anniversary of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 run for the presidency has been surprisingly muted in a year of anniversaries: 50 years also for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the British Invasion; 75 years for the beginning of World War II; 100 years for the beginning of World War I. Under the slogan, “In...
Christians objecting to assisting with homosexual “marriage” ceremonies continue to suffer defeat in various state courts. The most recent example comes out of New York, where a Christian couple declined to host a homosexual wedding and reception at their farm. The Christians were declared guilty of unlawful discrimination. New York boasts that it “has the...
Based on reactions from the political left to Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., one would think that American women have been stripped of fundamental constitutional protections. Gone are the franchise, free speech, and the right to serve on a jury. The Washington Post’s blog averred that the “Hobby Lobby case is an attack on...
“Supreme Court sharply limits presidential power on recess appointments.” Thus read the headline in the Los Angeles Times after the High Court’s decision in National Labor Relations Board v. Canning. Applying its spin to the decision, National Review opined that “the Court rejected the administration’s power grab on recess appointments” and clarified when a recess...
In May, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause is not offended when a city council opens its meetings with a short prayer (Town of Greece v. Galloway). While this result seems to be an example of commonsense constitutionalism, conservatives should not be too quick to pat the Court on the back. ...
Will Russian philosophy gain a foothold in Russia? It already has, laments David Brooks in a New York Times op-ed (“Putin Can’t Stop,” March 3). Brooks finds disturbing Vladimir Putin’s tendency to quote the likes of Nikolai Berdyaev, Vladimir Soloviev, and Ivan Ilyin; more worrying still, the Kremlin has recently sent copies of these three philosophers’ works to...
Americans are getting a taste of unintended consequences from overly broad public-accommodation laws enacted in the past half-century. Christian business owners are especially burdened when individuals practicing what once was considered perversity are deemed “suspect classes” and are thus entitled to heightened legal protection. A prime example is Elane Photography v. Willock. Elane Photography is...
The headline in the New York Times trumpeted the paper’s approval: “Arizona Governor vetoes bill on refusal of services to gays.” Had Jan Brewer not done the right thing, the nefarious bill passed by the Arizona legislature “would have given business owners the right to refuse services to gay men, lesbians, and other people on...
Careful readers have long suspected that the ATF’s “Operation Fast and Furious” was about something more sinister than bureaucratic ineptitude and Department of Justice stonewalling. The ATF allowed arms dealers in Arizona and New Mexico to sell weapons to individuals working for Mexican drug cartels in order, the DOJ claimed, to trace the movement of...
When Sonia Sotomayor decided, in the last hours of the last day of last year, to issue a temporary stay on the enforcement of the ObamaCare contraception mandate, she surprised a lot of people, but likely no one more than the man who had appointed her to the U.S. Supreme Court. Barack Obama prefers his...
“Allies fear a U.S. Pullback in Mideast,” shouted a headline splashed on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, reflecting a sense of hysteria in Israel and Saudi Arabia that the diplomatic rapprochement between Washington and Tehran was “just the latest evidence that a war-weary U.S. is slowly seeking to close the books on...
“What did Republicans get for 16 days of a government shutdown with people being hurt? We have absolutely nothing to show for it, other than a damaged brand.” This is how second-term Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) described the events of October. And the young Tea Partier is right. Polls show that eight in ten Americans...
“I do believe that big money does organize itself somewhat like feral hogs. If they detect a weakness or a bad scent, they’ll go after it,” said Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve, on June 24. Shortly thereafter, we started finding that our banks were engaged in all kinds of nonbank business—aluminum, electricity,...
On August 31, President Obama announced that he would seek congressional approval for military action against Syria, in response to chemical-weapons attacks that took place outside Damascus ten days earlier. The White House said the attacks killed 1,400 people, including more than 400 children, and that the U.S.-imposed “red line” had been crossed by the...
The 2013 Summer of Race has come to a close, and thanks to endless badgering from the media, America remains sharply divided. We’re told that on one side are those who care deeply about the plight of blacks in America and, on the other, are racists of varying degrees who are glad that George Zimmerman...
In early May, a group called the Evangelical Immigration Table (“EIT”) held a press conference and announced the unleashing of a $250,000 advertising campaign. The goal of this media blitz is to persuade American Christians to support the Gang of Eight’s immigration legislation (The Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013). The...
Who do you suppose would get the better of it if the mayor of your city made a bet with Goldman Sachs on the direction of interest rates? Would you be surprised if the mayor lost, costing the city’s taxpayers millions of dollars? Do you think betting taxpayer dollars is legal? In the years leading...
Terrorist bombings that killed 3 and wounded and maimed over 260 at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15 prompted the militarized “lockdown” of an American city for days, as police in full combat gear took part in a massive manhunt that may have given us a glimpse of our future. As...
Not many people would argue with Paul Begala’s view that the baby boomers are “the most self-centered, self-seeking, self-interested, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing generation in American history.” Since coming to power, the boomers (Americans born between 1946 and 1964) have destroyed most of what was good in America. Now it seems they have saved their best...
If the Beltway right has any confidence it can win the culture war, the latest news from River City should shatter that illusion. Departing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has declared war on nature. Military women will now serve in combat. “Valor knows no gender,” President Obama said, as if whether a woman can be physically...
Last June, the Supreme Court decided that the ObamaCare individual mandate passed constitutional muster under Congress’s taxing power. It left undecided a host of other issues that are now being litigated in the lower courts. Under the HHS mandate that followed ObamaCare, employers with 50 or more full-time employees must offer health-insurance coverage for sterilization...
Newtown has now joined the ranks of Columbine, Aurora, and Virginia Tech as ominous names that evoke memories of tragic violence. This one stings especially because 20 children, ages six and seven, were among the 26 murdered at the hitherto tranquil Sandy Hook Elementary School by a punk named Adam Lanza. Celebrities and news anchors...
Republicans, after their comprehensive defeat on November 6, have been going through an identity crisis. Defeated Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown said, “We need to be a larger tent party.” A Republican aide adds, “We need candidates who are capable of articulating their policy positions without alienating massive voting blocs.” The Economist advised that, if the...
The October 1 issue of the New York Times carried an important piece by Michael Shear and Ashley Parker stating that the Romney camp was going to stop running a campaign focused solely on the economy: Instead, Romney intends to hit the White House with a series of arguments—on energy, health care, taxes, spending and...
Former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland told the Democratic convention that Barack Obama was an “economic patriot” and blasted Mitt Romney for being an “outsourcing pioneer.” That is certainly the theme of the Obama campaign in the industrial Midwest. Any television left on in Ohio for more than 15 minutes is likely to broadcast an attack...
Mitt Romney is not known as a gambler, but he took a gamble when he selected Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to be his running mate. Congressmen lack the high profile of senators, governors, and generals, all reputed to be on Romney’s short list for vice president. Indeed, no congressman has been elected vice president since...
Chief Justice John Roberts left U.S. Supreme Court watchers dumbfounded. Before the release of the opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, pundits expected the healthcare case to turn on the Commerce Clause and for Justice Anthony Kennedy to be the usual swing vote. If Kennedy sided with the conservatives (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas,...
Shortly after Barack Obama’s inauguration, rumors began spreading in the immigration-restrictionist movement that the President would attempt to accomplish the “comprehensive immigration reform” that Congress had denied his predecessor by imposing it on the country through executive order. Now he has used his claimed executive powers to announce a partial amnesty for young illegal immigrants...
Everyone hates Walmart nowadays. Environmental groups protest the company’s “greenwashing,” numerous violations of the Clean Water Act, and contribution to suburban sprawl. Traditionalists detest Walmart’s displacement of small, family-owned businesses with big-box stores that serve as little more than cash drop boxes for the Bentonville, Arkansas, mother ship. Organized labor, as expected, objects to the...
Newspapers are down and will soon be out, destroyed by the internet. Next to follow them into the sewer pipes of history will be TV network news—first broadcast, then cable. In the meantime, there’s still a lot of money to be made gluing eyes to the page or screen the old-fashioned way: by stirring up...
Within weeks of September 11, the United States launched military operations in Afghanistan in order to remove the Taliban regime and deny Islamic-terrorist networks a key base of operations. In subsequent years, as the focus of the Bush administration moved to Iraq, the Afghan operation was relegated to the neglected “other war.” Its initial objective—ostensibly...
President Barack Obama surprised even battle-hardened pro-life Americans with his official remarks on the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that has, since 1973, littered garbage dumps across America with the corpses of 50 million babies, 32 percent of them African-American. In a White House press release praising the landmark case...
Mitt Romney’s life traces the economic path of America, from global colossus to deadbeat in hock $15 trillion. His father, George, built things, running American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962. Although AMC was a weak sister to the Big Three auto companies, under George it was a profitable firm, especially with the popular Rambler...
With the presidential election still a year away, Bill Kristol decided to throw in the towel. “It seems clear that 2012 isn’t going to be another 1980,” Kristol lamented on the website of The Weekly Standard. Neither the Republican nominee nor the next president of the United States will be another Ronald Reagan. Kristol arrived...
Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles tirelessly advocates for illegal aliens. A native of Mexico, he has an ardent love of his homeland and his people. He testifies frequently on Capitol Hill in favor of various amnesty-related issues, always in the name of the Catholic Church. He promotes the same theme before various groups of...
“Demography is destiny,” sociologists and demographers tell us. No. Morality is destiny. Demography stems from that, as does economics. Americans now are learning that lesson the hard way. Tax rates, debt, deficits, trade policy, monetary policy, government spending, and other factors all affect economic growth and prosperity. But they’re all trumped by demographics—and above that,...
The stagnant economy remains the central concern of most Americans. Although the financial crisis of 2008 had repercussions around the world, the brunt of the job loss was felt here: The International Monetary Fund estimates that one out of every four jobs lost as a result of the financial crash of 2008 was lost in...
On July 11 President Obama said that thanks to his “swift and aggressive action . . . we’ve been able to pull our financial system and our economy back from the brink.” Six days later, Larry Summers repeated the analogy: “We were at the brink of catastrophe at the beginning of the year but we...
As of this writing, stories describing the horrifying bombing and shootings committed in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik are still coming in, but there is enough information available for an attentive reader to draw some preliminary conclusions about the self-identified mass-murderer. Breivik’s actions and certain sections of his lengthy manifesto belie the mainstream media’s portrayal...
The New York Times, in a 2,128-word obituary (nearly three times the length of this article), fondly recalled Jack Kevorkian as “A Doctor Who Helped End Lives.” Kevorkian, 83, the Michigan pathologist turned assisted-suicide activist, died in a hospital, a more dignified locale than the 1960’s-era Volkswagen microbus where he uncorked the Thanatron, his suicide...
Every guy remembers the day he got his driver’s license. Pop, a little warily but proudly, handed him the keys to the family car, and the road was open to drive anywhere in the 48 continental United States. Of course, most guys were just happy to take a girl on a date without Pop chauffeuring....
There is little in Donald Trump’s record to inspire confidence in conservatives. He supported John Kerry in 2004 and John McCain in 2008, and the list of candidates to whom he has given money—which includes Rudy Giuliani, Charles Schumer, Harry Reid, Newt Gingrich, and Hillary Clinton—contains not a single bona fide conservative. Trump has embraced...