To those with family members who rely on medical marijuana to relieve chronic pain, the federal government's crusade against the use of the drug is an outrage. According to a 2005 Gallup poll, 78 percent of Americans support allowing doctors to prescribe medical marijuana. Yet only one of the three major presidential candidates, Sen. Barack Obama, ...

It's probably no secret to anyone who reads my column regularly that I will not be voting for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton for president. But I also will not be voting for John McCain. I could tell you all the reasons and have expressed them already in a number of columns in recent months. But this time, I'll let someone with whom I seldo...

"Sen. Obama, you also oppose Bush tax cuts, and claim that they take money away from the Treasury. But President Kennedy signed across-the-board tax cuts in the 1960s and said, 'It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low — and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates...

Barack Obama, stubbornly clinging to his right to be charismatically shallow, at first complained that Hillary Clinton was unfairly criticizing him for being all flair and fluff with no substance. Now he's upset that Clinton and the media won't let him discuss substance. Based on some of his speeches lately, I'm thinking he ought to be grateful for...

WASHINGTON — In the aftermath of Sen. John McCain's capture of the Republican nomination, allow me to offer a quiz. When McCain was being dismissed in the media last summer as a has-been, who laid down the following observation in his/her syndicated column: "Call me a contrarian if you will, but the gloomy media mood shrouding the McCain...

If America is not careful, soon it could see one-seventh of its gross domestic product nationalized — the biggest step toward socialism this country ever has taken. That's what will happen if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton is elected president and the Democrats control the Congress. (Heck, it might even happen if John McCain is elected.) The...

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day, America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." — Norman Thomas, American socialist I've been thinking deeply about those famously prophetic wor...

Why do so many Republicans pound the table and shout, "I'd rather vote for a Democrat than the 'insufficiently conservative' John McCain!"? Are these the same Republicans who cheerfully voted for then-Gov. George W. Bush in 2000? Ronald Reagan, in 1980, campaigned to shut down the Department of Education. Bush, however, promised to be &qu...

There are elements in the Republican Party who are trying to turn the GOP into the victim party. No matter how much they've won, they want to see themselves as losers. An e-mail I received from a reader summed up the resentment that has been bubbling up all over the GOP. She had liked Fred Thompson and Duncan Hunter as GOP hopefuls and didn't know ...

Some suggestions for the next Democratic debate moderator: 1. Sen. Clinton, you oppose the Bush tax cuts because they unfairly benefit the rich. Since the top 1 percent of taxpayers — those making more than $364,000 annually — pay 39 percent of all federal income taxes, don't all across-the-board tax cuts, by definition, "unfairly&...