Mona Charen from Creators Syndicate

Spitzer Wants to Focus on Economy. Really? for 05/15/2012

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

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," former Gov. Eliot Spitzer (why do they give him a forum?) offered the Democratic Party's defense of the Obama economy. The Republicans, Spitzer sputtered "want to go back to medieval medicine, the bloodletting, leeches. They want to go back to the very crazy economics that brought us over the cliff and created a cataclysm."

Ah, ABC must ...

Updated: Tue May 15, 2012

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To Bigotry No Sanction for 05/11/2012

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Now that President Obama has "evolved" on the matter of same-sex marriage to the position favored by "enlightened" Americans, this would seem to be a good time for some rhetorical hygiene.

There are modest and civil proponents of same-sex marriage. But the tone of many advocates has been shrill to the point of frothing. The Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, p ...

Updated: Fri May 11, 2012

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Extremism in Defense of the Welfare State for 05/08/2012

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

The theme song of a popular TV show from the last decade featured the lyric "I worry all the time. If you paid attention, you'd be worried, too." It's a wise posture when analyzing the slow-motion crisis that is Europe.

European governments are toppling like clock towers in an earthquake. The Dutch government fell on April 23, when it failed to agree with the opposition on an a ...

Updated: Tue May 08, 2012

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Obama's Disgraceful Abandonment of Chen Guangcheng for 05/04/2012

Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

It's hard to know which is worse: one's grief over Chen Guangcheng's fate or the fury over the Obama administration's abandonment of him to that fate.

Chen was already an internationally known human rights activist when he remarkably showed up at the U.S. embassy in Beijing last week seeking refuge. A blind, self-taught lawyer from Shandong province, Chen had been held prisoner for 19 m ...

Updated: Fri May 04, 2012

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Was the Secret Service Pornified? for 05/01/2012

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

What do you suppose are the chances that the Secret Service agents who embarrassed themselves, possibly endangered the life of the president of the United States, and very likely damaged their marriages and the lives of their children by engaging prostitutes in Cartagena, were consumers of pornography?

I'd guess 100 percent. Not that watching porn completely accounts for the behavior. Bu ...

Updated: Tue May 01, 2012

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Carter Redux? for 04/27/2012

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Every new datum on economic stagnation — such as Thursday's Labor Department announcement that unemployment claims remain at a three-month high — increases the temptation to compare the 2012 presidential race to 1980's. Both years feature a Democratic incumbent, elected on a surge of high hopes, who must face the voters after four years of disappointment. In both cases, the economy ...

Updated: Fri Apr 27, 2012

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Cuddly Symbols Not Cooperating in Climate Panic for 04/24/2012

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

In a better world, debates about science — and nearly everything else — would be conducted without resort to demagoguery, sentimentality, cynical manipulation, or hysteria. In the world we inhabit, those tactics are dismayingly routine. Still, the great weakness of overwrought predictions of doom is that they can be checked.

The past year has not been kind to the most potent ...

Updated: Tue Apr 24, 2012

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If CAIR's Attacking You, You Must be Good for 04/19/2012

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

"Where are all the moderate Muslims?" It's a question often posed by Americans who watch with disgust as the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other apologists for radical Islam hog all of the attention. CAIR, which was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror financing Holy Land Foundation case, and which regularly denounces any effort to combat radical Islam as an ...

Updated: Thu Apr 19, 2012

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Don't be Cowed by The New York Times for 04/17/2012

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

"Romney Camp Stumbles on Pay Equity Question" crowed The New York Times last week. "The Caucus" blog was referring to a conference call in which Romney top aides "seemed uncertain" about how to respond to a question about whether the former governor supported the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

The aide's reply, "We'll get back to you on that," mark ...

Updated: Tue Apr 17, 2012

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You Pay for Warren Buffett's Medicare for 04/13/2012

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The president is barnstorming around the nation hoping to enrage voters at the injustice that the wealthy pay fewer taxes than the middle class. "Now that's wrong," Obama objected, "That's not fair."

It also isn't true. According to the National Taxpayers Union, in 2009, the top 1 percent of earners paid 36.7 percent of income taxes. The top 5 percent paid 58.6 percen ...

Updated: Fri Apr 13, 2012

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Obama's Contempt for Law (Chavismo Comes to Washington) for 04/10/2012

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

Last month the Obamas hosted a White House conference on bullying. It was intended as a show of support for victims, but watching this president in action, it might just as easily have been a tutorial.

We've gotten glimpses of Obama's intimidating instincts from the beginning. Now as his administration flounders, his aggressiveness is becoming less and less veiled.

His first targ ...

Updated: Tue Apr 10, 2012

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Why Not Junk the Nobel Peace Prizes? for 04/06/2012

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

When the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Barack Obama, many, myself included, felt that the Norwegian committee had so embarrassed itself as to devalue the prize permanently. A Dallas service station sign, at the time, captured the sentiment precisely: "Free Nobel Peace Prize with Oil Change."

Jay Nordlinger's masterful new book "Peace, They Say" has changed my ...

Updated: Fri Apr 06, 2012

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If Obama Had a Son for 04/03/2012

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

When he was first sworn in as Attorney General, Eric Holder made one of the more obtuse comments in political history. When it comes to issues of race, Holder declared, we are "a nation of cowards ... we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race." Really? It seems to me that we talk endlessly, and usually unproductively, about race. We love nothing be ...

Updated: Tue Apr 03, 2012

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Trayvon and the Good Victim for 03/30/2012

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Just as Rahm Emmanuel didn't want to let a good crisis go to waste, the national press doesn't want to let a good victim go to waste.

The death of Trayvon Martin is a terrible thing, but the usual suspects are hijacking his death to create a morality play. Whenever this happens, and it happens with some frequency in American life, truth is corrupted.

About 153 young black men are ...

Updated: Fri Mar 30, 2012

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Priscilla Buckley, RIP for 03/27/2012

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

When I see Priscilla Buckley, who died over the weekend at age 90, in my mind's eye, she is roaring with laughter. That's how you would find her much of the time during her 43 years as managing editor of National Review. She so reveled in a good story or a bon mot. Her chin would tilt up, and her sunbeam grin would turn her blue eyes into little half moons of mirth. It was particularly true whe ...

Updated: Tue Mar 27, 2012

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It Does Matter How You Vote for 03/23/2012

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

A recent weeknight found me among a group of about a dozen unhappy parents meeting with the principal of our kids' high school. The issue: An incompetent teacher who we had been promised would not be returning to the school had shown up unexpectedly, and an administrator had told the students that he might indeed be returning in September.

Parents expressed dismay and frustration. The pr ...

Updated: Fri Mar 23, 2012

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Obama and the Future Fallacy for 03/20/2012

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

Speaking to students at a Maryland community college, President Obama indulged one of the left's favorite vanities — the claim to represent "the future." His topic was energy. The president warned against Republicans who want "an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past." He compared today's Republicans who are less enthusiastic than he about gove ...

Updated: Tue Mar 20, 2012

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Is Liberalism Lazy and Immoral? for 03/15/2012

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The best advocates are often converts. So it is with Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute.

Brooks has an important forthcoming book, "The Road to Freedom," which I'll discuss in a minute, but it's worth pausing over the unusual career of Brooks himself because it says much about happiness, free enterprise and the unique American spirit that Brooks ha ...

Updated: Thu Mar 15, 2012

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Thanks President Obama, but I Need More for 03/13/2012

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

Dear President Obama,

As a certifiable member of the female sex, I want to thank you for preventing the Republican Party from conducting a "war on women."

Some cynics might say that you were worried about women's declining support for Democrats. While 56 percent of women voted Democrat in 2008, only 48 percent did so in 2010. And while the percentage of women with a favo ...

Updated: Tue Mar 13, 2012

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Gender Specific Writer for 03/09/2012

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Apple Inc. makes dazzling, life-enhancing products, so God bless them ... to a point.

Having recently upgraded my computer to OS X 10.7.3 or Lion, I discovered that the new operating system no longer supports Microsoft Word, the word processing program I'd been dragooned into using after Microsoft muscled the far superior Word Perfect out of contention. What to do?

Purchasing a n ...

Updated: Fri Mar 09, 2012

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