William Murchison from Creators Syndicate

Do You Care? I Don't for 05/22/2012

Tue, 22 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

All the Facebook tabulation of recent days — whatever it may have meant to Mark Zuckerberg and his brokers — brought to certain others in the great extended American community a certain sense of relief. It is not essential — a matter of destiny — some of us now know, to buy into the whole Facebook thing or for that matter even a sliver of it. We can safely ignore the who ...

Updated: Tue May 22, 2012

Same-Sex Politics for 05/15/2012

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

So how did "same-sex marriage" get to be a political issue in the first place — the kind of issue that draws presidents and presidential contenders into the smoke enveloping this extraordinary battlefield?

Does Barack Obama's opinion on the matter matter in the least? For that matter, does Mitt Romney's? The issue of whether men may lawfully marry men and women women is r ...

Updated: Tue May 15, 2012

The Truth When It Hurts for 05/08/2012

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

What Barack Obama has going for him in 2012 is, well, put it this way: human nature.

Witness the French. Witness the Greeks.

Part of being human is wanting all you can get without paying any more for it than absolutely necessary. In the context of 21st century governance, this translates into a popular plaint heard throughout Europe and the United States: Namely, suffering is for ...

Updated: Tue May 08, 2012

The Perils of Greatness for 05/01/2012

Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The thing about Lyndon Johnson — and you may be sure I kept a close adolescent eye on him while he was one of my two U.S. senators — was that he knew what he was doing.

There was more to it even than that. He knew how to get things done.

The faint breezes from the '50s and '60s rustling the page of Robert Caro's super biography of Johnson — the brand-new volume, ...

Updated: Tue May 01, 2012

The World's Great Prison Escapee for 04/24/2012

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The power of redemption is the one concept a cynical, self-regarding epoch — ours — can't quite get its arms around, especially, perhaps, in the case of the late Chuck Colson. Can the guy have been right in the head? Wasn't he putting us on with all this Sweet Jesus business he performed in prisons all over the world?

If Colson was dissembling about his hard-won faith in Chr ...

Updated: Tue Apr 24, 2012

When It's None of the Government's Business for 04/17/2012

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Most presidential-year debates turn out to be worthless, assuming they turn out to be actual debates. For which dreary datum there's an unbeatable reason. Presidential-year bombast isn't about policy, it's about positioning — finding the most flattering camera angle from which to pose for the voters.

On this account, we need not pay much attention to the non-issue that has arisen o ...

Updated: Tue Apr 17, 2012

Survival of the Fittest and Other Barackian Myths for 04/10/2012

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

As the current president of the United States tells it, his Republican adversaries are launched on a crusade to revive the dog-eat-dog economic philosophy known to our great grandparents as "social Darwinism." Horrors! Loosen dependence on government and there's no restraining the ferocity of the marketplace — "nature red in tooth and claw," survival of the fittest, cu ...

Updated: Tue Apr 10, 2012

A 'Titanic' Obsession for 04/03/2012

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

What remains to be said concerning Royal Mail Ship Titanic and her icy end, just 100 years ago? What hasn't been thought, said or filmed already? Why, then, the ongoing fascination with Titanic — as alive at our own end of the catastrophe's century mark as at the start of it, which was April 14-15, 1912? You could say memories of Titanic haunt us — as maybe they should.

My fa ...

Updated: Tue Apr 03, 2012

Paul Ryan, Crusader for 03/27/2012

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The reason U. S. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan should be president — now, if not the day before yesterday — is the same reason the country may eventually lick its budgetary problems. He bows his neck and keeps acomin' — knowing intuitively that everything hard, from the building of Rome to the taming of the federal budget, requires not merely time but the services ...

Updated: Tue Mar 27, 2012

‘Courting' Disaster for 03/20/2012

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Supreme Court of the United States, whose inveterate habit is telling Americans what's good for them, will do the honors once more after weighing the merits and demerits of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, generally and ominously known as Obamacare.

Formal arguments before the court, commencing March 26, will last three days. In the end, five or six justices will advi ...

Updated: Tue Mar 20, 2012

‘The Vision Thing' for 03/13/2012

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Rick Santorum protests that Mitt Romney "can't close the deal" with GOP voters — a truism that, truth to tell, could apply with equal force to Rick Santorum, not to mention Newton Leroy Gingrich or even, come to think of it, Ron Paul.

The Republican presidential campaign has been dispiriting, all right. With Gingrich and Santorum doing their best to render it more dispir ...

Updated: Tue Mar 13, 2012

He Knows What We Need (He Thinks) for 03/06/2012

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

After Barack Obama regains the presidency — a prospect that seems likelier, the more the Republican candidates slice and dice one another — we can look forward to four more years of statements such as: "You can either stand up for the oil companies, or you can stand up for the American people."

I invite attention to a statement that is remarkable for so neatly packa ...

Updated: Tue Mar 06, 2012

Those ‘Social' Issues for 02/28/2012

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The "social issues" have popped up in the Republican presidential campaign, courtesy of Rick Santorum, causing Democrats to drool, left-wing pundits to twirl their broadswords in the air and various Republicans to turn green, fearful of alienating key voting blocs. The horror, the horror — can't the party's candidates just keep their searchlight trained on the economy?

Pr ...

Updated: Tue Feb 28, 2012

The Illegitimacy Rate and Us for 02/21/2012

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Oh, have we got problems as a country and as a people — not all of them connected with Iranian nuclear ambitions, the eurozone crisis and Mitt Romney's inner feelings about family dogs on the family station wagon roof.

News that the U.S. illegitimacy rate is 51 percent for births to women aged 20 to 30 stuns less by means of the trend's sheer novelty than through the implications & ...

Updated: Tue Feb 21, 2012

Power Vs. Liberty for 02/14/2012

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

"Compromise," in President Obama's lexicon, has a funny meaning. It means — with respect to the row over forcing religious employers to provide health insurance for contraception — "Oh, all right, if you're going to be that way about it, we'll make the insurance companies provide the coverage. Will that make you shut up now?"

It won't, I trust. It manifest ...

Updated: Tue Feb 14, 2012

Planned Parenthood's Grand Delusion for 02/07/2012

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Go the website PlannedParenthood.org.

You know, Planned Parenthood, around whose rippling banner enlightened opinion rallied last week when news broke that Susan G. Komen for the Cure would, in the near future, cease granting it money. PP — just a big-hearted service organization for women, fighting breast cancer and other female afflictions with might and main. One could buy into ...

Updated: Tue Feb 07, 2012

How to Split and Spoil a Party for 01/31/2012

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

What's all this "Republican establishment" vs. "grassroots populist" business; would somebody kindly inform me? I have rarely heard of anything nuttier.

The essence of this widely retailed story is that rebellious men and women of the grassroots wish to prevent the nomination of Mitt Romney for president. If Romney got elected, we are apparently to believe, he would s ...

Updated: Tue Jan 31, 2012

In Search of a Bulldog for 01/24/2012

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

One South Carolina Republican woman said she craved to see a "bulldog" at the top of the GOP ticket. That would describe Newton Leroy Gingrich all right. The next follow-up question went un-posed: Do you want a bulldog heading up the executive branch of government, and if you do, to what end? — so he can leave teeth marks on legs all over Capitol Hill? Or so he can get a few use ...

Updated: Tue Jan 24, 2012

Scott Walker for President? for 01/17/2012

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

While second- and third-rank Republican presidential aspirants snort over front-runner Mitt Romney's liabilities, one of the truly large issues in present day politics emerges in Wisconsin. To wit, can anything be done to corral the excesses of public labor unions?

The Wisconsin unions' answer is a smug no — though of course they don't put it that way. What they say is voters shoul ...

Updated: Tue Jan 17, 2012

Newt, the Democratic Mole for 01/10/2012

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The New York Times' Bill Keller wants Hillary Clinton to replace Joe Biden on the Obama re-election ticket, but a better, likelier choice by far is available — one Newton Leroy Gingrich, reputedly a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination but in fact, an Obama surrogate working for Democratic victory in November.

I have proof. That's to say, Gingrich keeps opening his ...

Updated: Tue Jan 10, 2012