Fifteen years ago this week, my beautiful daughter Veronica entered the world. She didn't make a sound. As I stretched out my arms to hold her in the delivery room, furrow-browed doctors and nurses instead whisked her away. I shouted after them in panic:
This year is the 10th anniversary of a book called "The Republican War on Science." I could just as easily write a book called "The Democratic War on Science."
The political left has come up with a new buzzword: "micro-aggression."
Professors at the University of California at Berkeley have been officially warned against saying such things as "America is the land of opportunity." Why? Because this is considered to be an act of "micro-aggression" against minorities and women. Supposedly it shows that you don't take their grievances seriously and are therefore guilty of being aggressive toward them, even if only on a micro scale.
Lyndon Johnson used to say that some of his colleagues were so politically inept they couldn't find their posteriors -- actually, he used a coarser word -- with both hands. Last week Barack Obama showed that, as a legislative strategist, he belongs in that category.
You've seen it in movies: Gangsters are going to kill a guy. But before they do, they force him to dig his own grave. Who would go along with that? Why, during their final moments alive, doesn't the victim avail himself of the chance to die defiantly, with dignity, going to his death with the small pleasure of knowing that his assassin will at least be inconvenienced by the disposal of his body?
Another election, another surprise. Actually, two elections, in two countries last weekend, with surprisingly pleasant surprises. And in two very large countries: Turkey (population 82 million) and Mexico (119 million), both very important to the United States.
Constitutional conservatives don't like it. Trade unions abhor it. Obama critics hate it. Environmentalists despise it.
Outside the Beltway bubble, a broad coalition of voters from the left, right and center opposes the mega-trade deal getting rammed through Congress this week by the Republican establishment on behalf of the White House. Here's why.
The Buckeye State, long recognized as perhaps the nation’s premier presidential swing state, deserves its status. In the 30 presidential elections since 1896, Ohio has correctly picked the winner 28 times.
Ohio has company at the top though -- it beats out another top presidential swing state, New Mexico, by only a hair. Like Ohio, the Land of Enchantment has also only been incorrect twice, but because statehood arrived in 1912, its record is just 24-2, and thus it has a slightly lower batting average (92%) than Ohio (93%).
It's increasingly difficult to tell the difference between Teach for America -- whose leaders are at the forefront of inflammatory anti-police protests in Baltimore, Ferguson, and now McKinney, Texas -- and left-wing activist groups such as Organizing for Action (President Obama's partisan community organizing army).
Millions go to SeaWorld to learn more about sea life and get closer to killer whales. But fewer go now because the documentary "Blackfish" exposed what one reporter called "the darker side" of SeaWorld.
The movie, which CNN bought and ran over and over, tells how greedy businessmen take baby whales from their mothers and imprison them in small aquariums, where the frustrated animals are a threat to each other and their trainers.
After the pro-Western government of China was forced to flee to the island of Taiwan in 1949, when the Communists took over mainland China, bitter recriminations in Washington led to the question: "Who lost China?" China was, of course, never ours to lose, though it might be legitimate to ask if a different American policy toward China could have led to a different outcome.
Despite everything, the often interesting analyst Jamelle Bouie writes in Slate -- "everything" includes "the email controversy, foreign donors and the Clinton Foundation" -- "Hillary is in good shape." Good enough to leave her party "still positioned for victory."
Marketed as pro-privacy reform of the rancid Patriot Act, the USA Freedom Act is about to become law. Though nothing could be further from the truth, many Americans will believe that the NSA is being reined in, and move on another issue.
The Freedom Act has been characterized as another vindication of Edward Snowden -- and, considering the fact that we wouldn't be discussing the balance between individual privacy rights and national security if he hadn't made the NSA's spying against us public, it is.
Let's set aside whether Cameron Crowe's new movie, "Aloha," is a good or bad movie. Whatever the flick's merits or demerits, it has inadvertently helped expose the arbitrary, capricious and ridiculous demands of militant identity politics.
Are we seeing a reversal of the 20-year decline in violent crime in America? A new nationwide crime wave?
A stellar group of American historians and academics released a milestone open letter yesterday in protest of deleterious changes to the advanced placement U.S. history (APUSH) exam. The signatories are bold intellectual bulwarks against increasing progressive attacks in the classroom on America's unique ideals and institutions.
Which candidate will emerge from the crowded Republican presidential field next year? Can anyone stop or at least slow down Hillary Clinton’s seemingly inevitable march to the Democratic nomination? Will Democrats be able to match the GOP in Super PAC spending? And will there be new revelations about Clinton’s e-mails or the Clinton Foundation’s fundraising practices?
These are some of the questions that are dominating discussion of the 2016 presidential election in the media and among Washington political insiders. What you need to know is that the answers to these questions, interesting as they might be, will have almost no bearing on the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
Protestors demand "social justice." I hate their chant. If I oppose their cause, then I'm for social "injustice"? Nonsense.
Baltimore is now paying the price for irresponsible words and actions, not only by young thugs in the streets, but also by its mayor and the state prosecutor, both of whom threw the police to the wolves, in order to curry favor with local voters.
Now murders in Baltimore in May have been more than double what they were in May last year, and higher than in any May in the past 15 years. Meanwhile, the number of arrests is down by more than 50 percent.
The competent Loretta Lynch can no doubt handle the job of cleansing professional soccer of widespread corruption. But why is that the U.S. attorney general's job? One must ask.
