March 10, 2016

The Manhattan Candidate

Carly Fiorina quizzed her fellow candidates during the first “under card” presidential debate. She asked if any of them had received a phone call from Bill Clinton prior to announcing their entry into the race. None had. And if you’...

October 5, 2015

Planned Parenthood: Why Fund These Killers of the Unborn?

The recent national debate about violence and race points us to the important work of two of Family Research Council's lead researchers, Dr. Patrick Fagan and Christina Hadford.  Their report is titled "The State of the Black Family in ...

September 29, 2015

Speaker Boehner's Final Opportunity for Redemption

We did not join in the cheers and whistles that greeted the announcement in Washington that House Speaker John Boehner had decided to resign from Congress at the end of October. And we did not agree with the conservative firebrand who sarcastically s...

September 20, 2015

Under Mr. Obama, Drug Law Enforcement Lapses

Like too many politicians of his generation, President Obama seems to think that proper enforcement of our nation's drug laws would be hypocritical.  We know from David Maraniss's highly acclaimed biography, Barack Obama: The Story,...

September 14, 2015

The Clintons: Security Risks Squared

Hillary Clinton seems to be standing on quicksand.  Her every attempt to extricate herself from the burgeoning email scandal only seems to sink her prospects deeper and faster.  Now, even Joe Biden is beginning to look hungrily at an entry ...

August 29, 2015

With Hillary, It's 'What You See Is What You Get'

It's a term from the early days of the tech boom: WYSIWYG, or "what you see is what you get." We can't help feeling a bit sorry for Hillary.  But we're sorrier still for the liberals who lined up early for her.  Wha...

June 21, 2015

Barack Obama's Third Term?

The best line President Obama delivered in his 2015 State of the Union Address was not one written for him by his speechwriters. When he said he would not be on the ballot again, Republicans who had just taken over both Houses of Congress stood and a...

June 5, 2015

For Bill Clinton: Rushin' Rubles

Communism may have collapsed in Russia, but the people who brought you the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall haven’t.  Now they are classed as biznessmen.  Now, they court Western politicians and use their oil money to lubric...

May 28, 2015

Putin and the Super Power Super Bowl Ring Scandal

There’s a lot of interest in New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, team owner Robert Kraft, and the controversy over deflated footballs.  It has football fans following and reporting on every detail.  What is the prope...

May 14, 2015

Miliband's Lesson for Hillary

The recent national elections in Britain proved quite a surprise to pollsters and pundits alike. Many had predicted a Labour Party victory under the leadership of Ed Miliband. “Red Ed” had stunned the political world in Britain and beyond...

May 11, 2015

If Iran were Applying for UN Membership Today...

For decades, the U.S. was opposed to admitting Communist China to the UN. That sounds wildly irrational today. But we understood through Democratic and Republican administrations that China was a danger to the international order that the UN was foun...

May 3, 2015

Good News from the Mideast

Doesn’t it often seem as if “Crisis in the Middle East” has been painted on our TV screens? Can anyone remember the last time we had good news from that perennially troubled region? Yet , for once, there actually is good news fro...

March 29, 2015

Why Two States West of the Jordan?

It’s a phrase endlessly repeated since 1989. It’s been on the lips of Western diplomats, especially our own State Department types, for a quarter century: “Two-State Solution.” We must have a Roadmap to Peace and that destinat...

March 20, 2015

Netanyahu in Tall Cotton

The foreign policy clerisy in this country was loud in its denunciation of Arkansas freshman Sen. Tom Cotton (R) when he circulated a Round Robin letter with the signatures of 47 GOP senators.  Sen. Cotton’s letter simply states the obviou...

March 12, 2015

Going <em>Islamisant</em> on Marriage

We have previously argued that President Obama’s policies in foreign policy are Islamisant (iss-lam-i-ZONT). That is, we do not say he is Islamic, or Islamist, to be sure. What we argue instead is the effect of his policies is to favor Islam. ...

March 5, 2015

Netanyahu's Timely Warning on Iran

Iran is the gravest danger to the U.S. and the world. Not ISIS. Not Boko Haram. Not Kony. Not Al Shabab. Iran on the path to a nuclear weapon.   Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress helped refocu...

February 25, 2015

Liable for Terror: PLO/PA

We have previously claimed that the so-called Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the inventors of airline hijacking for terror purposes, had merely subcontracted their murderous work in 1989 when they morphed into the so-called Palestinian Au...

February 18, 2015

The Word for this Administration: <em>Islamisant</em>

We Americans have been puzzling over our President’s curious inability to see twenty-one ISIS terrorists cutting off the heads of twenty-one Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya and call the horrible deed what it is -- an Islamist atrocity. No...

February 11, 2015

Common Core German Lesson:

We haven’t heard what the Common Core curriculum has planned for foreign language instruction, if anything. But we offer this German lesson as an introduction and a warning to all those who want central control over what is taught and what it t...

January 30, 2015

Liberals' Israel Crisis

"Netanyahu's Contempt for President Obama," reads the headline of the online version of Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen.  The print edition toned it down somewhat, calling the Israeli prime minister's acceptan...

January 18, 2015

'What are you doing to my Jews?'

That was the querulous question Winston Churchill barked at Colonial Secretary George Lloyd in the depths of World War II. It would be hard to imagine any other statesman asking such a question, speaking so paternally of the Jewish people. But weighe...

January 9, 2015

Cuba and Kristallnacht: the Lessons

The left in the U.S. and throughout Western democracies are excited, of course, over President Obama’s decision the week before Christmas to restore “normal” diplomatic relations with Cuba. This has been a long-sought goal of the le...

December 19, 2014

Kerry: Lose that Limp-Shrimp Pink Tie!

Well, here’s the problem.  No wonder the U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks are going nowhere.  Sec. of State John Kerry has had to kick the can down the road – again.  He just gave Iran another extension on the West’s d...

December 18, 2014

Doing Stupid Things with Iran

The Obama administration has obviously decided to go silent on human rights abuses in Iran in hopes of concentrating like a laser on arms control. It is true that it is urgently necessary to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. The last three ...

December 16, 2014

Capitol Hill is Alive with the Sound of Music

In announcing his new nominee for Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, President Obama noted that his choice for Pentagon chief was a great fan of Motown. Especially, Mr. Obama noted, Ash Carter likes the Four Tops.   The president said what t...

December 10, 2014

What Did the President Learn?

Is college still America’s best friend? Defeated for re-election last month, Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) may not be so sure. A racially-charged college paper of his surfaced to his great embarrassment and may have helped to bring him down. We s...

December 5, 2014

Can President Obama Pass Disraeli's Test?

British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli famously said: "The Lord deals with the nations as the nations deal with the Jews." Winston Churchill was an avid student of Disraeli’s “Tory Democracy” and passed Disraeli’s ...

December 3, 2014

America's Recessional: President Obama's Legacy

Candidate Barack Obama went to Berlin in 2008. He addressed an adoring crowd of tens of thousands there and told these Europeans he was “a citizen of the world.” It was an almost unprecedented event. Dwight Eisenhower was the first pre...

November 17, 2014

Gruber Lets Obama's Socialist Cat Out of the Bag

Not since the Kermit Gosnell murder trial has the mainstream press labored so diligently to ignore a hot story.  Rush Limbaugh delights in calling them “the drive-by media,” but in the case of Kermit Gosnell’s trial for the neg...

November 8, 2014

President's Lawyer: Jerusalem = Crimea

While virtually all politicos and pundits eyes were focused on the elections, President Obama’s solicitor general Monday was quietly dropping a bombshell in the U.S. Supreme Court. In a case being heard by the high court involving a U.S. citize...

October 31, 2014

Rebuild East Berlin? Sure! Rebuild East Jerusalem? No Way!

The Wall Street Journal recently covered an interesting story about the rebuilding effort underway in East Berlin. Since German reunification took place peacefully and democratically in 1990, many private and government sources have sought to restore...

October 24, 2014

ISIS Crisis? Kerry Blames the Jews!

“There wasn’t a leader I met with in the region [of the Middle East] who didn’t raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was the cause of recruitment and of street ange...

October 18, 2014

Putin: Autocrat of all the 'Russias'

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is moving with a steady pace to establish his total control over Russia. He’s now pushing a law to help him deal with the last pesky parts of the post-Soviet period of Russian history -- that annoying free press. In...

September 26, 2014

Should Joe Biden Step Down?

Vice President Biden is being urged by liberal activists to “brush up his Shakespeare.” His friends are trying desperately to clean up the latest mess that Joe Biden has caused. He recently told a group at a Legal Services Corporation eve...

September 13, 2014

It Depends on What the Meaning of IS is

Stet is that proofreader’s mark that means “keep it that way.” We say keep it ISIS. President Obama was at pains on Wednesday night to reassure the world that ISIS is not Islamic. As National Review’s Jonah Goldberg put it, th...

August 28, 2014

It Isn't <em>Their</em> Twenty-First Century, Mr. President!

President Obama’s reaction to the brutal televised murder of American journalist Jim Foley was heartfelt, to be sure, but it missed the mark. The president deplored such barbarous acts and called them out of place in “the Twenty-First Cen...

August 16, 2014

President Obama's Goldilocks Mideast Policy

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is too strong. PLO boss Mahmoud Abbas is too weak. That’s why we can’t get a peaceful settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, says President Obama in an interview with the ever-serious Tom Friedm...

July 26, 2014

Ground Kerry, Send Amb. Hussain!

Secretary of State John Kerry was heard off-mic sarcastically putting down Israel’s push into Gaza. “Helluva pinpoint operation,” he said, deploring the number of Arab casualties in the latest war between Israel and Hamas. Mr. Kerry...

July 23, 2014

Washington, D.C.: Where Christians Unite for Israel

Security was tight (and needed) at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in downtown Washington, D.C.  This year’s conference of Christians United for Israel brought thousands to the nation’s capital.  Planned a year in adv...

July 19, 2014

Bowe Bergdahl's Duty -- and Ours

Bowe Bergdahl has been returned to “active duty.” Apparently, that means a desk job while the Army considers what should be done with this young enlisted soldier. Bergdahl was held for five years by the Taliban since walking away from his...

June 21, 2014

Russian Re-Set: Ms. Clinton's 'Brilliant Stroke'?

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been making the rounds of TV interviewers, promoting her new book, Hard Choices. The book covers her four years as America’s top diplomat. She knew she would face questions -- few of them really har...

June 6, 2014

No U.S. dollars to PLO 'Terroristan'

For too long, the U.S. taxpayers have been forced to shell out money to the PLO -- the Palestinian Liberation Organization. For nearly a quarter of a century, the PLO -- repackaged as the Palestinian Authority -- has been raking in billions of dollar...

May 30, 2014

President Obama, meet Chancellor Bismarck

When Sen. Barack Obama went to Berlin in 2008 and proclaimed himself a “citizen of the world,” he was acclaimed by hundreds of thousands of young Germans. They were as excited as many young Americans were by this avatar of Hope and Change...

May 24, 2014

Danger at the Summit

First Lady Michelle Obama recently appeared on the Web holding a sign: #BringBackOurGirls. She was presumably acting with the full approval of her husband. President Barack Obama is the Commander-in-Chief of what was once known as a Superpower. In Lo...

May 18, 2014

Putin Out and Proud

The Wall Street Journal recently showed Vladimir Putin in Crimea.  There was the saturnine Slav in an unusually ebullient mood.  He was standing in front of a banner ostensibly celebrating the victory of the USSR in what Russians still call...

May 4, 2014

Secretary Kerry at the Water's Edge

"I will not allow my commitment to Israel to be questioned by anyone, particularly for partisan, political purposes, so I want to be crystal clear about what I believe and what I don't believe," Kerry said after U.S. lawmakers and pro-I...

April 30, 2014

President Obama: Take Away Kerry's 'Big Stick!'

Secretary of State John Kerry has taken only one element from all of America’s history in his peripatetic quest to forge a Mideast peace settlement: It is Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “Big Stick.” It was the Nobel Peace Prize w...

April 26, 2014

Secretary Kerry's Mideast 'Piece' Talks Break Down

Secretary of State John Kerry has been tireless in his travels to the Mideast, pressing and pushing for an Arab-Israeli peace settlement. But the peace settlement he has pursued should more accurately be called a “piece” settlement, since...

March 23, 2014

Back in the USSR?

How did our relations with Russia go so far wrong so quickly? The Obama administration hoped to have a “reset” of our bilateral ties by wiping the slate clean. In giving the Russians a reset, we were showing a willingness to let bygones b...

March 19, 2014

How's This for <em>Flexibility</em>, Mr. President?

It was a shocking disclosure just two years ago.  In Seoul, South Korea, President Barack Obama’s voice was picked up on a hot mic as he told Russia’s Dmitri Medvedev: "Tell Vladimir [Putin] I can be more flexible after the elec...

March 6, 2014

Climate Change, Mr. Secretary?

Just last week, Secretary of State John Kerry pronounced Climate Change the greatest threat to the international community. And this week, with Russia’s seizure of Crimea, the international climate has changed. The man is a prophet! Let...

February 14, 2014

Both Jesses Were Right

Rev. Jesse Jackson spoke to a bank of microphones outside the White House. He had just come from conferring with President Jimmy Carter. He had been invited to join domestic policy specialists and civil rights leaders in a meeting. Mr. Carter was thr...

February 7, 2014

Puffing John Kerry

The Washington Post this week carried a Carter Eskew story about Sec. of State John Kerry's travels that contains enough puffing to inflate the Hindenburg. The Post's man is seemingly in awe of Sec. Kerry's peripatetic globe-trotting in pursuit of pe...

February 3, 2014

Selling Out Israel: The Obama-Kerry Plan

Israel is being urged to give up major portions of the West Bank of the Jordan River to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).  That outfit is now known in Western media as the Palestinian Authority (PA), but it comprises the major te...

January 31, 2014

Obama Syria Policy: Paying the Persecutors

Americans are being taxed to support jihadist groups in Syria who kill Christians. That's the inescapable conclusion brought to us in Washington by a delegation of Syrian Christians. Sponsored by the Westminster Institute, the Syrian Christian group ...

January 17, 2014

Mr. Secretary: Cool Your Jets!

President Obama did not want to "meddle" with Iran's internal affairs. So, in 2009, when thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators took to the streets of Tehran to protest the fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the White House and the Stat...

January 9, 2014

The Left's Necessary Lie

The debates over Obamacare seem to be, like Ben Franklin's death and taxes, the only certainties in our lives. This has clearly been the case since Inauguration Day, 2009. Yes, President Obama called for an immediate "stimulus" of nearly $1 Trillion ...

December 19, 2013

Moving U.S. Embassies: Vatican City? Jerusalem?

The Obama administration is at pains to tamp down the latest controversy on the diplomatic front.  They are planning to move the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican.  They want it to be close to the United States Embassy to Italy, which i...

December 11, 2013

A Necessary Lesson for Dems

A new book by historian James Oakes comes just in time. Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 brings us an important new interpretation for the crucial events of our American Civil War. Focusing less on the batt...

November 9, 2013

Impeaching Himself, Period

The side-by-side comparisons of President Obama's statements then and now are devastating. Especially the "period." Period here is no punctuation mark. It's a way of underscoring the word of the President of the United States. If you like your he...

November 6, 2013

Sec. Hagel Meets with Belgium's Defense Minister: How Reassuring!

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was probably briefed on the demonstrations in Tehran this week.  The mobs there burned U.S. flags, chanted "Death to America," and celebrated -- yes, celebrated -- the worst humiliation of the United States in ...

November 3, 2013

The Global Impact of the Obamacare Lie

During his visit to Israel last spring, his first as president, Mr. Obama assured the worried Israelis that his administration "had Israel's back." President Obama descended to street gang talk to demonstrate his willingness to help our embattled Mid...

October 21, 2013

Chris Matthews: Did You Drink Three Fifths?

MSNBC's erratic Hardball host, Chris Matthews, has again gone off the deep end with his nonsense talk about the Constitution's three-fifths clause. He's claiming that conservatives believe black people are, or once were, only three-fifths of a person...

October 1, 2013

What American Defeat Looks Like

If the United States is ever to be eclipsed as a major power, defeat might begin with foreign "leaders" -- all dictators, actually -- having ready access to the American people via our own mass media.  Recently, Russian strongman Vladimir P...

September 29, 2013

The Obama Administration: Helping the Bear

There's a hoary old joke about the parson who is treed by a bear. The clergyman prays most earnestly to God, but in an evenhanded way: "Lord, I know I'm a sinner, but I beg you: If you won't help me, please do not help that bear!" Christian persecut...

September 20, 2013

The Frederick Douglass Free Public Library

In Washington, D.C., one of our most stately buildings is undergoing an extensive renovation. The Free Public Library, Northeast Branch is probably the library closest to Capitol Hill. And this red brick structure, with its stylish quoined corners, p...

September 17, 2013

After Re-election, 'More Flaccidity'

President Obama's whispers to Russia's then-President Dmitri Medvedev were picked up on a hot mic. "This is my last election," the president confided to the Russian under his breath, "after my election, I'll have more flexibility." ABC's Jake Tapper ...

August 23, 2013

Jerusalem: Capital Cut-Up Kerry's Latest Joke

Twenty-five years ago, then-senator John Kerry cracked up a business audience in Los Angeles with a joke. Responding to the victory of president-elect George H.W. Bush and his much derided running mate, Kerry said "If anything happens to George Bush...

August 17, 2013

Iraq Wants the 'Jewish Trove,' but Not the Jews

Some fifty-three percent of Americans told the Gallup Poll last spring they regarded the Iraq war as a mistake. The numbers were not evenly divided.  The vast majority of Democrats (73%) say it was a mistake, while only a minority (30%) of Repub...

July 26, 2013

Putin: Lord of the Ring?

There's a famous picture of Josef Stalin hefting a two-handed broadsword. It was a gift from the British people in honor of the defense of Stalingrad. Made of the finest Sheffield steel, it was presented it to the Soviet dictator by Prime Minister Ch...

July 4, 2013

Obama's Rhetoric Little Noted nor Long Remembered

The press was all anticipation. Something big was going to happen at the Brandenburg Gate. President Obama was coming there to deliver a speech. It would be compared with that immortal address of the young John F. Kennedy on that very site fifty year...

June 21, 2013

President Obama's Belfast Blarney

President Obama's recent trip to the G-8 Summit in Belfast, Northern Ireland, included an address at the Waterfront hall. There, he criticized Catholic and Protestant schools and compared them to segregated schools in the U.S. when he was a boy. His ...

June 9, 2013

The New Axis

Mikey Weinstein and his militant atheizers in MRFF (the so-called Military Religious Freedom Foundation) are boasting of their ability to crush any outbreak of Christian expression in the military. Mikey and MRFF proudly call CAIR their "allies." CAI...

April 30, 2013

Lincoln, Obama, and Us

A very significant date, March 4, 2013, has passed virtually without notice. It was on that date that President Obama's tenure exceeded that of Abraham Lincoln. We can all give thanks to God, of course, that Mr. Obama's term in office has not been cu...

April 25, 2013

Like It or Not, War Is Interested in You

One of the most famous sayings of the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky was this: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."  It's one of the few correct things that violent Communist ever said. President Obama is cle...

April 18, 2013

Snubbing Thatcher's Funeral? No, Obama Is Consistent!

Is President Obama snubbing Lady Thatcher's funeral in London?  No, he's simply being consistent.  Mrs. Thatcher was a great defender of democracy.  Mr. Obama is not. Mr. Obama went to London in 2009.  There, he bowed to that de...

April 13, 2013

Obama's Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay

It's a pity North Korea's Kim Jong Un had to spoil the party last week. Rockers at the White House should not have had to listen to disturbing news stories about rattling sabers and missile launches Here's a satellite photograph that East Room part...

April 7, 2013

Swallowing Camels/Straining at Gnats

Some media types these days don't like "Bible thumping." But there are times when, as the author of Cultural Literacy, Prof. E. D. Hirsch noted, the Bible can be a useful communications tool. The retired University of Virginia prof made a splash with...

March 26, 2013

John Brennan's Spooky Swearing-In

President Obama's choice to be Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) was approved by the Senate on a vote of 63-34, with thirteen Republicans voting to confirm him. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) created quite a stir with his 13-hour filibuster against the ...

March 19, 2013

World Opinion: Getting it Wrong

Before he became a China scholar, our friend Steve Mosher was an engineer. He likes to say that if you are an engineer whose bridges collapse or whose highways break up, you're likely to lose your Professional Engineer's license. But if you are a soc...

March 13, 2013

Cruz, Haley, Jindal, Rubio: Flight 2016 Cleared for Takeoff

Let's close down the silly season on presidential eligibility early. Our colleague, Ken Klukowski, is a constitutional lawyer who argues here that newly-sworn-in Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) is likely eligible to run for president in 2016. The only questi...

March 7, 2013

Brennan Signals 'Our Saudi Partners'

When President Obama met Saudi King Abdullah in London in 2009, the former bowed low before the latter.  No American president had ever so abased himself before one of the world's most oppressive rulers before. Now, Mr. Obama has nominated Joh...

February 28, 2013

Getting Lincoln Right

The Oscar for Best Actor went to Daniel Day-Lewis, and deservedly so. This Welshman brought the Great Emancipator to the screen in a remarkably lifelike portrayal. He captured the Hoosier accent, the awkward gestures, even the pained walk of a man wh...

February 15, 2013

Democrats Claiming Lincoln

Connecticut Congressman Joe Courtney is right to be upset with the Steven Spielberg movie Lincoln's historical inaccuracy. The Democrat from the Constitution State was suspected by some Hollywood conspiracy theorists of having an ulterior motive...

February 12, 2013

Losing Lincoln's Legacy

If you visit the excellent new Ford's Theater Center for Education and Leadership, there is a stack of books on Abraham Lincoln that rises three or four stories. We know that of the making of many books there is no end, but does that also apply to bo...

January 16, 2013

Endangered Religious Freedom Day?

January 16th is observed as Religious Freedom Day in America. On this day in 1786, the General Assembly in Richmond passed the sweeping Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom. First proposed by Thomas Jefferson in 1779, it was Jefferson 's most loyal ...

January 13, 2013

RG II, Not Bill Clinton for Father of the Year!

Sometimes, committees simply lose their minds. This is clearly the case with the National Father's Day Council. The council has, unbelievably, voted to make Bill Clinton Father of the Year. What were they thinking? Perhaps they wanted to smooth the p...

January 9, 2013

The Hagel Pick Telegraphs Weakness

President Obama's choice of former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense is a dangerous choice that telegraphs weakness toward Iran.  In the Senate, Mr. Hagel compiled a worrisome record toward the world's leading sponsor of terrori...

January 4, 2013

The Falklands: Borrowing Trouble

The Obama administration may be opening the door for another war in the South Atlantic. Repeated diplomatic missteps about "las Malvinas" (the Spanish name for the island group) have encouraged Argentina's unstable political leaders to think this may...

December 22, 2012

Question John Kerry Long and Hard!

Sen. John Kerry has a long and dubious record in foreign policy. In the 1970's, he testified against his fellow Vietnam War veterans before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He charged that they were violating the Geneva Conventions every ...

November 17, 2012

James Madison, Rick Perry Quash Secesh Talk

It was said of the royal Bourbon family of France that "they forget nothing; they learn nothing."  Have some of the fringers on our own side become Bourbons?  Or have they just been hitting the bourbon since Election Day? What is this nonse...

October 19, 2012

They Didn't Riot over This Video

After nearly a month of cringing and getting lost in its people's own contradictions, the Obama administration is finally clinging to an elliptical mention by the president of "acts of terror" that he claims won't deter us from doing whatever we are ...

October 17, 2012

Benghazi Consulate's 3 AM Phone Call

It was one of the most memorable images from the 2008 presidential campaign.  It was not a McCain ad or an Obama ad.  It was, instead, a Hillary Clinton ad. The ad featured a red telephone ringing urgently at 3 am in the White House.  ...

October 12, 2012

Gold and Fear

When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams served the infant American republic as diplomats in Paris in 1785, they were both deeply concerned about the Barbary pirates. These pirates, Muslims living in North Africa, had been preying upon American merchant ...

October 7, 2012

The Obama Mandate: The Gravest Threat to Religious Freedom in 226 Years

A liberal reporter speaking at a conference in Georgetown recently dismissed conservative alarms about the Obama administration's mandate that forces religious institutions -- like Catholic Hospitals and Evangelical colleges -- to provide coverage fo...

September 28, 2012

Ahmadinejad at the U.N.: Sympathy for the Devil?

It is beyond reason.  The inmates clearly have control of the asylum.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rant before the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week would better have been delivered in Stockholm.  The famous Stockholm Syndrome was ...

September 20, 2012

Real-Life Horror: The Beijing Scavengers

Hollywood has made a number of movies on this theme.  Whether they are cloned humans who suddenly awaken to the knowledge that they have been created only to have their organs scavenged or normal humans kept alive in a coma, the creepy idea of b...

September 6, 2012

One Hundred Twenty Nations Vote against President Obama

President Obama continues to get high marks in all public opinion polls on foreign policy.  Much of that, doubtless, is due to his crisp dispatch of Osama bin Laden last year. The latest dust-up about that raid is a mere tempest in a teapot....

August 22, 2012

Three Minutes to Midnight

The national media was clearly tired of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright rants broadcast over and over again on talk radio and shown on FOX News four years ago.  The press was only too happy when candidate Barack Obama disavowed the man he said he could...

August 17, 2012

Iran's Khamenei and Israel's Casus Belli

There are precedents for what Iran's "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has just done.  Khamenei is at the top in Tehran, and he is threatening to wipe Israel off the map.  Khamenei said that "the fake Zionist (regime) will d...

August 1, 2012

Hillary Clinton: America's Worst Secretary of State

The scene could hardly have been more bizarre: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's motorcade was pelted with rotten tomatoes and shoes as she was being driven to the opening of a U.S. Consulate General in the ancient Egyptian city of Alexandria...

May 12, 2012

American Sovereignty: LOST at Sea?

Sen. Dick Lugar's defeat in a Republican primary this week has not been attributed, as nearly as we can tell, to his 1979 trip to Moscow with Joe Biden.  Then, the two members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee left the bosses of the Krem...

May 10, 2012

Two Prime Ministers, Two Americas

Winston Churchill became prime minister of an embattled Great Britain on May 10, 1940.  At last, his political exile was over.  Also that day, Adolf Hitler launched his blitzkrieg against Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg, and his arm...

April 26, 2012

What's Iran Up To? 'We Know,' Says Netanyahu

It was just a short clip on CNN.  Reporter Erin Burnett recited some statistics that suggest Iran's oil tankers are all tied up, that the Islamic Republic's oil revenues have been hard hit.  Economic sanctions have been tightened on the mul...

April 21, 2012

In the Age of Obama, the Eagle Has Fallen

Columnist Charles Krauthammer calls the ceremonial interment of the shuttle Discovery an act of "willed American decline."  He's certainly right about that.  It is an historic retreat for America. It was under John F. Kennedy, a libera...

April 7, 2012

Mr. Obama's Own War on Women

Anti-war presidential candidate Gene McCarthy once described reporters as being like blackbirds on the telephone lines: one lands, they all land; one flies off, they all fly off. We're seeing those media blackbirds again.  They're going on and o...

March 22, 2012

Mr. Obama's Kulturkampf

TIME Magazine's nation editor, Amy Sullivan, thinks all this talk of President Obama's "war" on religious liberty is overwrought.  She told a recent Georgetown gathering that it was absurd to claim that the latest mandate from HHS ranks with suc...

February 17, 2012

Rationing our Rights

They said it would never lead to rationing.  But rationing is already here.  Under the latest assault by the Obama administration, they are rationing our rights.  Tens of millions of Catholics -- and tens of millions of the rest of us ...

November 12, 2011

Open Mic, Closed Minds

The whole world was watching, and listening. The leaders of the G20 nations gathered in Cannes, France, for another of those endless schmooze fests we now call summits, Presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy were caught on tape telling us what t...

October 29, 2011

Arab Spring/Islamist Fall

Reuters' Paul Chapman has filed a report from Tunis. There have been elections there, less than one year after an uprising ousted dictator Zine al Abidine Ben Ali. The former Tunisian strongman is said to be enjoying his retirement in Saudi Arabia. T...

October 4, 2011

Back in the USSR (You Don't Know How Lucky You Are)

The news this week has offered us a wonderfully satirical view of Russia.  Headlines tell us that Russian Premier Vladimir Putin will once again "run" for president of the Russian Republic.  Now, this is being reported as if he really has t...

June 2, 2011

Move the US Embassy to Jerusalem

To understand the question of Jerusalem's status, we should first ask ourselves where the capital of Russia is.  Everyone knows it's Moscow.  That's where the U.S. Embassy, Spaso House, is located.  It's in Moscow because Vladimir Leni...

January 9, 2011

The Constitution Did Not Condone Slavery

"There's nothing new under the sun," said President Harry Truman, " there's only history we haven't learned yet."  The history we haven't learned yet was on display on page one of the Washington Post.  Post writers Phili...

May 15, 2010

A Gathering of Wolves

When Bill Clinton's administration acted in 1995 and 1996 to deliberately reintroduce wolves into the 2.2-million-acre Yellowstone National Park, there were the predictable jokes about Clinton's wolf-whistling in the Oval Office. How could you get sy...

May 6, 2010

Obama's Supreme Court Choice: No Evangelicals Need Apply

When Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court last year, the media was full of stories of an historic first, a barrier broken. The first Latina to serve on the high court is certainly something to note. Justice ...

March 24, 2010

T.R.'s Worst Mistake

Backers of the health care takeover are hailing its passage as "historic." They are saying that President Obama's advocacy of socialized medicine harkens back to a nationalized health care plan first put forward by Theodore Roosevelt. They'...