A barrage of news headlines on the Solyndra scandal continue to remind us that President Obama made green jobs one of his administration’s priorities. Those headlines also reveal this initiative to have been a costly mistake. The bankruptcy of Solyndra, the solar-panel manufacturer that has collapsed despite receiving half a billion dollars from the federal […]
Suddenly, it seems, President Obama is all about the Pacific. As he put it at a weekend summit of the region’s leaders in Hawaii, “The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay.” Unfortunately, thus far in his presidency, Mr. Obama has caused many of his guests to see America as […]
All three network morning news programs opened recently with the story of the phone call firing of legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno. Hardened newscasters expressed shock that men like Paterno, Penn State president Graham Spanier, and other university officials knew that children were being abused, yet turned their backs. “Who among us,” one […]
G.K. Chesterton, in his noble goal to make the life of a Catholic blogger unbearably easy, said that “the Catholic Church is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.” You might think I cannot possibly add to such a perfectly rounded statement of truth. And in […]
Lately, there has been the labeling of government officials, and Obama in particular, as socialists, and decrying government interventions as socialist per se. Now, I will not deny that Obama is probably a socialist of some sort at heart, and that he has many of the aberrant moral ideas as the socialists. However, the characterization […]
Theodore Roosevelt’s great image of politics as a kaleidoscope hardly captures the present pandemonium over Herman Cain’s alleged sexual misdeeds. For a Republican primary, usually a pretty button-down affair, this is pretty steamy stuff. Compared to Bill Clinton’s escapades-proven, admitted and forgiven by his wife, Hillary — this matter is still in the realm of […]
Although Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been embraced by some as an ideal presidential candidate for mainstream social conservatives, he has at least one strong critic in conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, who says his tax plan would damage society by undermining marriage. In an op-ed for Creators.com, Schlafly wrote that the governor’s 20 percent “flat-tax” […]
Liberals are nervous. They should be. As the 2012 election grows closer a soft rumble builds throughout thousands of Evangelical Christian churches across America. Pastors and churchgoers alike are waking up to the disturbing reality that we as a nation have strayed drastically from our historical Judeo-Christian moorings. Though many may try, none can honestly […]
The question posed in the title might itself be somewhat problematic, since “conservatism” is not one thing, but a rich and often contentious variety of positions. Nevertheless, a sufficiently large portion of conservatism marries a social and religious traditionalism with a more or less pure capitalism. But is this a suitable marriage? For what we […]
For a religion that is perpetually “misunderstood,” the consistency of Islam is remarkable. Consider how ostensibly diverse issues—complaints of “human rights” abuses at an American university and murder in an Egyptian classroom—are interconnected. First, the American story. According to Fox News: The Washington, D.C. Office of Human Rights confirmed that it is investigating allegations that […]
The Arab upheavals of 2011 have inspired wildly inconsistent Western responses. How, for example, can one justify abiding the suppression of dissidents in Bahrain while celebrating dissidents in Egypt? Or protect Libyan rebels from government attacks but not their Syrian counterparts? Oppose Islamists taking over in Yemen but not in Tunisia? Such ad hockery reflects […]
Several mainstream media “fact checkers” piled on to GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain after the latter reaffirmed his statements condemning Planned Parenthood’s eugenic roots. They downplayed founder Margaret Sanger’s eugenicist philosophy and accused Cain of a “pants on fire” lie. In what became one of the highest-profile attacks on the group’s eugenic history in recent […]
With the name of the great author Charles Dickens, titles such as A Christmas Carol or Great Expectations frequently come to mind. Otherwise, Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities will leap to the lips of those more literate. Yet one of his lesser-known works highly deserving of attention is Little Dorrit, written in the […]
In recent weeks, China has been consumed by an unprecedented internal debate concerning a subject bound to make its Communist rulers nervous. At issue is the moral health of Chinese society. Widespread Chinese discussion of this most un-politically correct subject was triggered by the October 21 death of a two-year old girl in the city […]
“Dexia” is not a word familiar to most Americans, and if told that it is a French bank in need of a fresh bailout, the knowledge would likely elicit no more than a yawn. Interest might increase, however, if they were told that the American taxpayer has bailed this bank out before and is likely […]
There’s a widespread impression that the international financial system which the United States and its friends put in place after World War II is breaking down. The old system may of course be patched up and limp along for some time to come, but sooner or later something else will take its place. What that […]
If my email is any indication, the great divide in our nation is not between the haves and the have-nots, but between the literate and the folks who never learned the difference between there, their and they’re. Trust me, they’re out there, spouting off their strongly held opinions and punctuating their diatribes with veiled threats […]
Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011, was a giddy day for European politicians and global investors. European Union officials announced a plan for addressing the EU’s worst financial problems. There would be a partial write-down of Greek sovereign debt—a 50 percent haircut for private bondholders, but no haircut for governmental creditors (the political class looks after its […]
What would have happened if, during the Cold War, Soviet intelligence had been responsible for training Americans charged with countering communist aggression? Surely, we would not have defeated the USSR. Perhaps, instead, Kruschev’s boast that his nation would dance on our graves would have been realized. It should, therefore, be profoundly alarming that, today, the […]
At UN headquarters [last] week, governments dismissed a high level UN bureaucrat’s claim that abortion is a human right and went so far as to scold him for overstepping his mandate. The Special Rapporteur for Health, Anand Grover, presented his report to delegates of the UN Third Committee linking unrestricted abortion with the right to the […]
It has occurred to me that Europe doesn’t give a damn if Greece goes down. The EU concern is not for Greece, but for all the banks that lent all those Euros to Athens and now stand to lose them. The cradle of Western Civilization is expendable, but the vaults of the bankers must be […]
What does Occupy Wall Street want? Last week GOP Presidential candidate, Herman Cain stated, “nobody knows what their cause is. How are you going to assist them with a cause when you don’t know what the cause is?” Well, I’m not sure about the representativeness of the signs carried at camp-outs and marches during Occupy […]
What a myopic view the Western media and its array of “experts” have concerning the so-called “Arab Spring” — a myopia that naturally metastasizes among the general public. Consider the Libyan crisis. As usual, the focus is entirely on the individual, on the tangible — the now dead Gaddafi — whom all the blame can […]
The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners – and clear evidence of a wrongful conviction problem. No one can watch the Oscar-winning 1993 film, The Fugitive, starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, without rooting for Dr. Richard Kimball. We empathize with this skilled surgeon […]
