Terence Jeffrey from Creators Syndicate

A Gold Nugget as Big as the White House for 05/16/2012

Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote a story about a family that discovered a diamond as big as the Ritz-Carlton Hotel sitting beneath a mountain in a remote corner of Montana.

The big rock presented a great dilemma. Selling off tiny pieces could yield a massive fortune. But if the world uncovered its existence, diamond prices would plummet.

To maintain their secret — and an art ...

Updated: Wed May 16, 2012

Obama's Stimulus: A Documented Failure for 05/09/2012

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

What does President Barack Obama know about the economy and what the government can and cannot do to create jobs?

A fair measure is the economic stimulus plan Obama pushed through Congress in his first month in office. Did it work?

On Jan. 9, 2009, less than two weeks before Obama's inauguration, Christina Romer, who would chair Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, and Jared Be ...

Updated: Wed May 09, 2012

Will News Reporting Die? for 05/03/2012

Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Were you to show up at a football game and see one team had players who, on average, were 6 feet, 5 inches tall and weighed 240 pounds, and the other team had players who, on average, were 5 feet, 1 inch tall and weighed 120 pounds, you might hope the smaller team was very quick and very clever.

You also might expect to see a blowout.

Leaving aside for a moment the issue of libera ...

Updated: Thu May 03, 2012

Does Comedy Central Have a Right to Freedom of Speech? for 04/25/2012

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Does Comedy Central have a right to free speech?

Some congressional Democrats believe no association of human beings formed in the manner Comedy Central has been formed ought to have freedom of speech. Accordingly, they have sponsored constitutional amendments to incorporate this principal into our basic law.

This is no joke.

The First Amendment says: "Congress shall ...

Updated: Wed Apr 25, 2012

Obama's Fraudulent Investment for 04/18/2012

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

President Barack Obama last week visited Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. — a small city of 15 golf courses — so he could preach to some of his humble campaign contributors his vision of American frugality.

"So if all of you are willing to invest in the future the same way that our parents and our grandparents and our great-grandparents invested in the future, I'm confident Amer ...

Updated: Wed Apr 18, 2012

Electronic Liberation? for 04/11/2012

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Years ago, the monks at Saint Catherine's Monastery, which sits at the foot of Mount Sinai, maintained a dormitory for visitors. It was a rustic place, where a noisy, gas-powered generator provided the only electricity.

Not long after nightfall, the monks would shut the generator down, converting the Sinai desert into the darkest place on Earth.

Yet it was a different sort of dark ...

Updated: Wed Apr 11, 2012

Electronic Liberation? for 04/11/2012

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Not long after nightfall, the monks would shut the generator down, converting the Sinai desert into the darkest place on Earth.

Yet it was a different sort of dark ...

Updated: Wed Apr 11, 2012

Romney's Royal ‘We' -- and ‘Personal Responsibility' for 04/04/2012

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

When Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, he saw a problem he believed government should solve. Ninety-three percent of the people in the state had health insurance — including private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid — but 7 percent did not.

Romney wanted to do something about this 7 percent — some 460,000 people.

"Because right now in my state, and p ...

Updated: Wed Apr 04, 2012

What Will Obama Give Russia If He's Re-elected? for 03/28/2012

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

President Barack Obama would like to do some things for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and President-elect Vladimir Putin that he does not want American voters to know about before they decide whether to re-elect him in November.

That was the intended-to-be-secret message Obama gave Medvedev in South Korea on Monday. But Obama was caught delivering the message on tape — and, no ...

Updated: Wed Mar 28, 2012

Tattooed Scholars for 03/21/2012

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

You can attend an entire season of eighth-grade basketball games and never see a 14-year-old boy adorned with a tattoo.

Turn on the NCCA basketball tournament, now down to the Sweet Sixteen, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a game where at least one player on each team is not to some degree tattooed.

Sometime between his early teens, when he was in middle scho ...

Updated: Wed Mar 21, 2012

‘All the Israeli Cities:' Saddam's Taped Order for Targeting WMDs for 03/14/2012

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

It was January 1991. Half a million U.S. and allied troops were deployed in Saudi Arabia ready to roll north.

Backed by a vote just taken — or about to be taken — in Congress and a U.N. Security Council resolution, President George H.W. Bush had delivered an ultimatum to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein: Withdraw your forces from Kuwait by Jan. 15 — or else.

The wee ...

Updated: Wed Mar 14, 2012

Obama's Driving Americans out of Cars for 03/07/2012

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Barack Obama is now achieving a vision that environmentalist ideologues could only dream about in the 1970s: He is driving Americans out of their cars.

In the three decades since American voters threw Jimmy Carter out of office, there have been only two years when Americans did not drive their cars and trucks more miles than the year before.

The first, according to the Federal Hig ...

Updated: Wed Mar 07, 2012

Would Suicide-Bomb Suspect Have Won ‘Prosecutorial Discretion'? for 02/29/2012

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The would-be suicide bomber who allegedly tried to attack the U.S. Capitol two weeks ago is living proof the people who run our government are not serious about enforcing our immigration laws.

Amine El Khalifi was born in 1983. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he had been in the United States illegally for more than a decade when he attended an inopportune meeting in the ...

Updated: Wed Feb 29, 2012

Department of Education: Catholic Schools Beat Public Schools for 02/22/2012

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

When two schools meet in a basketball game, the winner is indisputable. One team outscores the other.

The same is true in certain types of academic competition. When students take standardized national tests, students from some schools outscore students from others.

In the most recent round of National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, which are administered by the U.S. De ...

Updated: Wed Feb 22, 2012

Can Obama Order Grocers to Give Away Bread? for 02/15/2012

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

In October 2009, I published a column titled, "Can Obama and Congress Order You to Buy Broccoli?"

Now I need to ask a follow-up: Can Obama order grocers to give away bread?

I wrote the broccoli column after Sen. Orrin Hatch raised serious questions in the Senate Finance Committee about the constitutionality of President Obama's proposal to force people to buy health insu ...

Updated: Wed Feb 15, 2012

Did Mass. Constitution Authorize Romney to Mandate Health Insurance? for 02/08/2012

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

You can now divide Americans into two groups: Those who believe government rightfully has the power to force people to purchase goods and services they do not want and those who don't.

Among the former are two subgroups: Those who believe only state governments have this coercive power and those who believe the federal government has it, too.

President Barack Obama is in the latte ...

Updated: Wed Feb 08, 2012

Romney Told Catholic Hospitals to Administer Abortion Pills for 02/01/2012

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

A defining moment in Mitt Romney's post-pro-life-conversion political career came in his third year as governor of Massachusetts, when he decided Catholic hospitals would be required under his interpretation of a new state law to give rape victims a drug that can induce abortions.

Romney announced this decision — saying it was the "right thing for hospitals" to do — ...

Updated: Wed Feb 01, 2012

Obama Creates Unconstitutional Monster at Fed for 01/25/2012

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Did President Barack Obama's appointment of Richard Cordray to be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without a Senate confirmation vote violate the Constitution? The answer is plainly yes.

Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution says the president "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint ... Officers of the United States ...

Updated: Wed Jan 25, 2012

Missing From Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial: God for 01/18/2012

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Four days after police arrested Rosa Parks for refusing to surrender her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus, the young Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. explained the Christian foundation of the civil rights movement he was about to lead.

"I want to say that we are not here advocating violence," King said in a Dec. 5, 1955, speech at the Holt Street Baptist Church.

Updated: Wed Jan 18, 2012

The Mythical Middle in American Politics for 01/11/2012

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Why did the Democrats run Bob Casey Jr. in Pennsylvania in 2006 against Sen. Rick Santorum?

Why did President George W. Bush win a higher percentage of the African-American vote in Ohio in 2004 than he won nationwide?

Why did Proposition 8 win in California in 2008, while Sen. John McCain was losing the state in the presidential election?

The answer: The middle in American ...

Updated: Wed Jan 11, 2012