July 23, 2016

President Half-Staff

Riding a bike around Annapolis, I note that the flags at the Old State House, the Naval Academy, and the library are at half-staff again. This time for Nice, France. Or is it Dallas? Or Baton Rouge? I confess I lose track. It seems the flags have...

May 28, 2016

Clinton vs. Trump: The Worst Choice Ever!

Hillary Clinton was serving as the United States Secretary of State in 2011 when word came of Muammar Kaddafi’s bloody lynching by a Libyan mob. The death followed upon the heels of Madame Secretary’s visit to Libya. That prompted her to ...

May 24, 2016

‘None but Honest and Wise’

In 2000, on the two-hundredth anniversary of the White House, President Bill Clinton invited some of his many friends to a reception and reading. John Adams biographer David McCullough was asked to offer a portion of his forthcoming book for the edif...

April 14, 2016

The Trump of the Will

Every year when I was at University of Virginia, I attended the screening of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. This classic propaganda movie was produced in 1934 to showcase the party rally in Nuremberg. Riefenstahl’s filming techni...

February 17, 2016

Why Cruz will lose

"Machine Gun Bacon."  It's Ted Cruz's humorous take on breakfast.  Just click here.  The selfie video shows the long tall Texan wrapping bacon around the muzzle of his high-powered rifle and firing at a target.  ...

January 23, 2016

Ronald Reagan’s Lesson for Rubio (and Cruz)

In this election cycle, I’ve been happy to support Marco Rubio over Ted Cruz. Both men have solidly conservative records. Both are very smart and very strong. But only Marco has the qualities I saw in my political hero, Ronald Reagan. I...

January 15, 2016

Rubio or Cruz?

The first Republican candidate elected president was Abraham Lincoln. And Lincoln had to walk through the minefield of immigration politics as gingerly as today’s GOP contenders. Lincoln realized he would get few votes from Irish immigrants -- ...

November 24, 2015

Dissing the doctor

It’s interesting to see how many people feel free to “dis” Dr. Ben Carson.  You can certainly disagree with the good doctor.  I do, on a number of points.  And he won’t be my choice for president this time (alth...

November 19, 2015

Churchill v. Obama: How to <em>win</em> our wars

President Obama is not interested in winning any wars.  He is interested in ending them by withdrawing from them.  While many conservatives complain he never utters the word Islamist to describe our enemies, we might be equally concerned th...

November 2, 2015

Hillary: Watch out for Deval Patrick

Conservatives who breathed a sigh of relief with Vice President Joe Biden’s removing himself from the 2016 race should stop, look, and listen. There are other potential presidential candidates on the horizon. Former Massachusetts Governor De...

November 1, 2015

Jeb! already has said that Marco Rubio is qualified to be President

In 2012, Jeb Bush said that Marco Rubio is qualified to be president. Sen. Rubio has had three years’ experience since then. How, did Jeb! make this claim, you ask? He publicly urged Mitt Romney to make the young Florida senator his running mat...

March 5, 2015

Abraham Lincoln: 'The Judgments of the Lord'

Some might say he was clinging to his guns and religion. On March 4, 1865, Abraham Lincoln began his Second Inaugural Address with a reference to the military situation. Gen. Grant’s powerful army then held the rebel Gen. Robert E. Lee’s ...

January 17, 2015

Kerry in Paris

Secretary of State John Kerry managed to pull himself away from more pressing business to arrive -- five days late -- for high level talks in Paris. Other “world leaders” had linked arms last Sunday to lead a crowd of marchers in solidari...

August 30, 2014

I've Already Seen a Beheading Video

Like most Americans, the sight of reporter James Foley kneeling before his slayer enrages me. I am revolted by this barbarism. Whatever “message” ISIS thinks it is sending to us by such savagery is lost on me. I will back President Oba...

August 11, 2014

On the Right Side of History?

Sculptors, put down your chisels. Painters, stow your brushes. We don’t need any artists to do the official State Portrait of Secretary of State John F. Kerry. He has created a work of art far beyond your poor power to add or detract. Just l...

June 23, 2014

Windmills of Faith, Family, and Freedom

I took my family to Tulip Time, in Holland, Michigan, recently. There we saw endless fields of colorful spring blooms and toured the reconstructed De Zwaan (The Swan), the last authentic Dutch windmill to be disassembled and shipped from the Netherla...

April 25, 2014

Gramsci at Grove City College

In early 2013, I had the honor of speaking at Grove City College in Pennsylvania as part of its Ronald Reagan Lecture Series. The lecture series is an annual event at this excellent small Christian college. Grove City College gained a deserved measur...

January 3, 2014

Obama, the Confidence Man, and the Virtues of Humility

One thing that neither Barack Obama nor his acolytes in politics and the media lacked was confidence. DAVID BROOKS:  So there's a lot of very smart people [around Obama], and it's a testament to Obama's confidence. You know, there was a great ...

October 4, 2013

Tom Clancy Departs

I was saddened by the news that Tom Clancy had died. And it was ironic that he died in October. His first great hit was the novel, The Hunt for Red October. My Navy commander wife brought me this short book to read as I was recuperating from a near-f...

September 28, 2013

What Men Choose with Choice

Demographer Judith Blake was most influential in persuading abortion advocates to go through the courts rather than through the legislatures to achieve their goal of abortion-on-demand. Her 1971 Science magazine article, "Abortion and Public Opinion,...

November 25, 2012

Rubio and Rotation

In a recent interview with GQ magazine, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was asked about the age of the earth.  Well, if you're going to start commenting on $16 trillion in federal debt, you'd better be prepared for probing questions from the press. ...

November 14, 2012

That Tangled Web

January 21, 1998: The Washington Post headline shouted at me. I could read it in the pre-dawn light on our front porch. Standing there in my underwear, I let out a whoop. I ran up the stairs to my wife, still in bed. I had snow on my bare feet, but I...

October 31, 2012

The Old [Electoral] College Try

The howls were heard from coast to coast in 2000. Let's junk the Electoral College, liberals cried. It's outmoded. It's outrageous. Why? Because in the first election of the New Millennium, the Electoral College had produced one of its very rare inst...

October 16, 2012

Egyptian Sheikhdown?

A popular revolt overthrows a ruler whom we claimed as an ally for thirty years. The Egyptian regime of Hosni Mubarak was quickly brought down after President Barack Obama gave a green light to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in a speech he delivered in ...

August 13, 2012

Into the Storm

Bobby Kennedy loved to quote Aeschylus, or some such, to the effect that "ships are safe in harbor, but that is not why men build ships."  Both Bobby and Aeschylus should have known this: ships are not always safe in harbor.  When the storm...

March 10, 2012

Whoa, Rick Santelli, on Term Limits!

Rick Santelli, CNBC business reporter, should be considered the "Father of the TEA Party."  His impassioned plea in 2009, on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, gave birth to the TEA Party movement.  It was "the rant heard 'round ...

February 3, 2012

Dining with History in France

Ah, Paris in the springtime. How delightful. It was so good to leave my Washington office to go to France for lunch yesterday. I teased my colleagues about heading out to Le beau Pays for a meal and conversation. "The Concorde's been grounded," one o...

December 17, 2011

President Obama's Mideast Carmagnole

Christians are being murdered throughout the Arab Mideast and in Muslim lands across the bloody crescent and into Asia. Nearly a thousand have been murdered in Iraq. Tens of thousands live a precarious existence as refugees in riot-torn Syria. When B...

November 12, 2011

Gov. Perry Should Be Glad

Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) grinned and said it was a good thing he had his boots on. That's because he definitely "stepped in it" during the GOP debate at Oakland University in Michigan this week. He's being widely lampooned for "going blank" for 53 s...

October 12, 2011

Bill Bennett's Finest Hour

He did it again.  Bill Bennett strode into Washington's Omni Shoreham hotel on Saturday and taught us all a lesson in American history and civics.  He drew the sharpest line between acceptable political opposition and ugly religious bigotry...

September 23, 2011

Simple, but Not Easy

Campaigning against Richard Nixon in 1960, John F. Kennedy puckishly spoke of an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that took the Republican nominee to task: "That's like L'Osservatore Romano criticizing the Pope."  He was pointing to the fact...

September 18, 2011

Please, Mr. Netanyahu, Don't Make Trouble!

I used to hang out with the kids in Young Judea -- a Jewish youth group -- when I was growing up on Long Island. I was welcomed as a non-Jew. I remember the endless Jewish jokes. They all had a serious point. Two men in Tsarist Russia were being led ...

September 11, 2011

September 11, 1777: The Stars and Stripes First Go Into Battle

At the time of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon ten years ago today, there was endless speculation. Our friends in the media asked over and over what we did to offend the jihadists. And many asked about the significance of Septem...

September 8, 2011

Seeing Red at the Reagan Library

Fortunately, I had my shoes off last night. So I couldn't throw them at the television when NBC's insufferable Brian Williams and Politico's John Harris came on. They are a perfect illustration of what Roger Mudd said decades ago: We in the media can...

September 6, 2011

The New Libyan Regime Protecting the Lockerbie Bomber

Dick Cawley was a friend of mine at the University of Virginia.  I still remember his crooked grin and his offbeat sense of humor.  Sitting in French class one day, he offered to show us his appreciation of French art.  The wacky redhe...

September 3, 2011

Pope Albert Issues a Bull

President Lincoln famously told some overeager Evangelical pastors that he could not issue an Emancipation Proclamation in 1861.  It would be premature and it would very possibly set back the cause of Union and Liberty.  "It would be like t...

August 26, 2011

Deep-Sixing the 'Furnace Doctrine'

News Note: Chairmen Fred Upton (R-MI) and Greg Walden (R-OR) of the House Energy and Commerce Committee are pleased to share the good news that the FCC has finally eliminated the Fairness Doctrine from the Code of Federal Regulations. They have been...

August 14, 2011

Jesus Behind Bars

 I looked forward to the day eagerly. My friend Phil, an international businessman, and I would make the trek north to see Jim, a prisoner. We've done it repeatedly over the years. It's always a chance for me to learn from Phil during the eight ...

June 15, 2011

The Deep Dish Debate

CBS's almost Anchorman, Roger Mudd, years ago let the cat out of the bag.  He told us: We in the media cannot tell you what to think, but we can tell you what to think about. This side of the Berlin Wall, we could hardly find a better example of...

May 21, 2011

The Prince of Wales's Speech

His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales slipped into Washington just days after the Royal Wedding. He came to Georgetown University to address a high level conference on "the future of food." The speech got relatively little attention, since...

May 10, 2011

'I Felt As If I Were Walking With Destiny'

Winston Churchill became Prime Minister on this date in 1940.  He often said he would not call those dark days, but stern days.  OK, how stern were they?  The German army, the Wehrmacht, had just overrun Belgium, the Netherlands, and L...

April 14, 2011

They Snooze, We Lose

I was scheduled for one of those sleep tests -- overnight, away from home, strange bed, stranger people.  I was dreading it.  What if I can't get to sleep?  Will I have to come back and do it all over again?Not to worry. My test was sc...

April 10, 2011

Vanity Fair: Red All Over

Joseph Stiglitz has created a frisson of excitement among the chattering classes with his recent piece in Vanity Fair.  Stiglitz thinks that maybe the uprising on the Arab street will come here.  His article decries the fact that in America...

March 30, 2011

President Obama: 'Mosques Destroyed'

The President finally addressed the nation and the world nearly two weeks after initiating military action against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Boiling down his speech, he claimed a moral imperative to intervene with force because Gaddafi had kil...

March 26, 2011

It's About Time Those Kinetians Stepped up to the Plate!

It's not a war we're fighting in Libya, Ben Rhodes assures us, it's a kinetic military action. Rhodes, the president's deputy national security adviser, is nothing if not reassuring. I was afraid they were going to call it a "police action....

March 19, 2011

'Nothing Stamped in the Divine Image'

A news item from Oklahoma caught my eye recently: "The measure by Rep. George Faught of Muskogee makes it a misdemeanor crime to conduct destructive research on a human embryo or to sell, receive or transfer a human embryo knowing it would be su...

March 14, 2011

Why Would Mitch 'White Flag' Daniels Dis Rush Limbaugh?

It was one of those curious moves that they note in the chess columns with a "?" and a "!" Why, if you were a Republican even thinking about running for president, would you begin with a wholly gratuitous swipe at Rush Limbaugh? D...

March 13, 2011

Moby Bob on the Beach

It was my first doctor's visit outside of Navy medicine in over thirty years. I wasn't looking forward to my dermatology appointment. But now that I've passed the great meridian, I'm eligible for Medicare. I never dreamed I'd actually live to collect...

March 12, 2011

President Obama Passes Over Lincoln and Cuccinelli

My good wife and I had the privilege of joining some three hundred participants in the Lincoln Inaugural Sesquicentennial Commemoration in the Capitol last weekend. Historian Harold Holzer set the stage. As a noted Lincoln scholar, and co-chairman of...

March 6, 2011

Towering Illusions

My grandson, at two, recognizes the Eiffel Tower. Our daughter called us to report his new words and to say: "We know where he got this from." I confess. I taught the lad. The Eiffel Tower has a strange appeal to me. That's not surprising. ...

March 4, 2011

The Queen's Speech, 1991

The hit movie, The King's Speech, garnered top honors at the Oscars Sunday night. The feel-good flick surely shows the indomitable human spirit rising above adversity.  For that, at least, it's a fine antidote to much Tinseltown product. My wife...

March 1, 2011

President Obama's Yawning Heights

Aleksandr Zinoviev wrote a book under the old Soviet Union called The Yawning Heights. He used it to describe, almost obscenely, the speeches of Communist Party boss Leonid Brezhnev. The Russian words for "glistening" and "yawning...

February 26, 2011

Toasting the Father of Our Country in Washington

Under a large painting of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, Dr. David Bobb offered a spirited toast this week-to George Washington. This shouldn't  be unusual. After all, the entire city is named for George Washington. There's a 555-foot obe...

February 6, 2011

Celebrating Ronald Reagan's Birth Day

Grindl's mother was worse. That was the joke, from Beowulf roughly, that explained our cat's name. Grindl didn't like me one bit, but he loved to curl up in my wife's lap on cold winter evenings and sleep by the fire. He was there when we settled in ...

February 3, 2011

How Pacifism Led to the Great War -- and Could Lead Us into the Next One

When then-Sen. Barack Obama made a short video for the "peace caucus" delegates to the 2008 Iowa Caucuses, he captured the enthusiastic support of his party's pacifist wing.  It was enough to propel him to the Democratic nomination....

January 30, 2011

Thus Spake FDR

January 30th is the birthday of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. With this morning's screaming headlines from Cairo, with the Mideast once again erupting, it's a good time to consider how we got here. Our biggest concern in the Mideast is the dread prospec...

January 29, 2011

' ... without the pat-down'? Whoa, Mr. President!

Wait a minute, Mr. President.  Did we hear you correctly in your State of the Union address?  Did you really say your new high-speed trains would be "faster than flying...without the pat-down"?  Your administration is said to...

January 19, 2011

No Stronger Friend...than France?

Even for an unapologetic Francophile like me, President Obama's latest diplomatic gaffe was too much to swallow.  Mr. Obama greeted the president of the French Republic with this comment: "We [Americans] don't have a stronger friend and str...

January 17, 2011

Dr. King and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

We have two January holidays to celebrate.  They are coming back-to-back, January 16 and 17, and they are connected.  January 16 is Religious Freedom Day.  It's hardly noticed, much less celebrated at large.  The Rev. Martin Luthe...

January 10, 2011

Executive Order 0?

The January 22, 2009 signing ceremony was...well, ceremonial.  The newly installed president of the United States sat at his desk in the Oval Office.  He was flanked by the wise and grave counselors who had enthusiastically supported his hi...

December 18, 2010

Bill Clinton in Lifeboat No. 1

"Unlike Bill Clinton, who is a survivor, Obama is an adapter, says Democratic pollster Peter Hart. 'If Clinton were on the Titanic, he'd be in Lifeboat No. 1,' says Hart, recalling how Clinton, who grew up with an alcoholic stepfather, did whate...

December 10, 2010

That Shrinking Violet, Narcissus

When it comes to self-absorption, we thought Narcissus wrote the book. Or, rather, the father of psychiatry wrote the book about Narcissus. But Dr. Freud, you never met Barack Obama! If President Obama were not the most anti-Israel president in our h...

December 3, 2010

Finally, A Correct Opinion from John Paul Stevens!

Thank God for Al Gore inventing the Internet. Without it, we'd all have to watch Sixty Minutes waiting for that rare moment when (tick-tick-tick) something important happened on that show. Now, with the `Net, we can relax, play tennis or bounce the g...

November 21, 2010

Throwing Money at Suicide Bombers

The Obama administration astonished economists all over the world with its claim to have created "or saved" millions of jobs with its gusher of stimulus money. The $780 billion that kicked off the Niagara of spending was only the beginning ...

November 6, 2010

President Obama's Own Brezhnev Doctrine

In his post-election news conference, President Obama promised to work with the new House majority to achieve common goals for the American people. He was subdued, that's certain. "Some election nights are more fun than others," he said, ob...

November 4, 2010

What President Obama Didn't Learn at Harvard

If President Obama had gone to Harvard Business School, instead of Harvard Law School, he might have learned this amazing lesson about American enterprise. It comes from Jill Jonnes' excellent history, "Eiffel's Tower."The greatest problem ...

October 30, 2010

Jimmy Carter: You Lie!

There you go again. Jimmy Carter, you promised us that "I'll never lie to you." But you certainly are lying when you go on MSNBC and tell Chris Matthews that the reason you lost in 1980 was because of "an independent candidate." T...

October 23, 2010

What Are They Teaching Our Best and Brightest?

It was a golden autumn afternoon. Several hundred people, including companies of U.S. Naval Academy Midshipmen and the USNA Band, had gathered on the grounds of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. They had come together to pay tribute to unkno...

October 8, 2010

America's Biggest Loser Advises Obama

How bad have things gotten for President Obama? This bad: He's even getting political advice from Fritz Mondale. The former Vice President lost forty-nine of fifty states to Ronald Reagan in 1984. That was after he got the bright idea of putting Rep....

September 23, 2010

Remembering the Blunder Years

In the Gospel of Luke (18:11), we read the words of Jesus: "The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican." Jesus did not say t...

September 16, 2010

New Hampshire's 'French-looking' Winner

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm a Francophile. That's a terrible confession for a conservative, I know. I had to contend with dear friends of mine running around in 2002 and 2003 shoving "freedom fries" at me. Another good friend started a company...

August 4, 2010

Happy Birthday, Mr. President

Today, August 4th, is your forty-ninth birthday, Mr. President. You share your special day with the U.S. Coast Guard. When I served in the Coast Guard as a Russian interpreter, I learned this birthday greeting: Sto lyet. May you live a hundred years!...

July 5, 2010

Citizens or Subjects?

Not since Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died--both on July 4, 1826--have we had such a stunning development. It took days, sometimes weeks, for Americans then to learn that the two great Signers of the Declaration of Independence had died on the sa...

June 15, 2010

Before the Tea Party

Today, the 15th of June, is the 795th anniversary of King John of England's signing of the Magna Carta. He didn't do it willingly. His leading nobles, those discontented barons, had brought him to the field at Runnymede with a simple choice: sign or ...

June 12, 2010

More Croaking from Prince Charles

Poor Princess Diana. She would have been better off kissing a frog. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales has been croaking again. This time, he hopped up to Oxford University to tell his  audience, some of whom seemed obviously bored, how the ...

June 4, 2010

5,113

Five thousand, one hundred thirteen. That's the number of nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal. President Barack Obama has told the world. I'm reminded of the cynical French foreign minister Talleyrand at the time of the Congress of Vienna. Talleyran...

June 3, 2010

Sir Paul McCartney's Churlish White House Comment

It was one of those nice events at the White House that was supposed to make everyone feel good. President Obama presided as Beatles great Paul McCartney was given the Library of Congress' Gershwin Award. Certainly, McCartney merited the award for th...

May 28, 2010

Obama the Abject

President Obama promised us we would make history. We certainly have. Last week, he invited Mexican President Felipe Calderón to the White House. There, in the presence of his foreign guest, President Obama humiliated himself and us by his att...