Column

This week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis decided to announce his 2024 presidential candidacy on Twitter Spaces, the newest feature on Elon Musk’s Twitter. Musk himself would be co-hosting the event, giving DeSantis access to Musk’s 141 million Twitter followers. Only after the Twitter launch will DeSantis begin the more typical campaigning, embarking on a series of campaign events across the…

WASHINGTON -- Tucker Carlson’s recent travails with the media remind me of the great M. Stanton Evans’ solomonic judgment regarding Richard Nixon. Said Stan: “I never liked Richard Nixon ... until Watergate.” Then he saw the 37th president in a different light. Well, I did not like Tucker Carlson very much until he got fired by Rupert Murdoch. Then, as everyone among the bien-pensants piled on…

This week, the media found its latest iteration of its favorite narrative: white man harms black man. That iteration featured a 24-year-old white Marine from Queens attempting to suppress a 30-year-old homeless, psychotic black man, Jordan Neely, via use of a suppression hold. Neely was apparently threatening people on the subway when the Marine took him down from behind, keeping him in the…

The very term “debt limit” makes a mockery of any kind of responsible budgeting. Each time the government reaches the “limit” it gets raised with the familiar scenarios that include threats of a government shutdown (an idea that increasingly appeals to some conservatives) and the claim that the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. is at stake. We have faith and credit? Who knew?

Some schools are ditching traditional grading. Instead, they use “labor-based grading,” an idea promoted by Arizona State University professor Asao Inoue. Labor-based grading means basing grades more on effort than the quality of work. In addition, Inoue lectured a conference of rhetoric professors “stop saying that we have to teach this dominant English. ... If you use a single standard to…

WASHINGTON -- Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s suave minister of foreign affairs, was recently asked by one of Russia’s ubiquitous billionaires: whom does President Vladimir Putin seek advice from on the Ukraine war? He responded that Putin has only three advisers, though they are renowned. They are Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. By the way, how did Russia amass so many…

This week, a 16-year-old boy named Ralph Yarl -- black -- accidentally rang the doorbell of an 84-year-old white man, Andrew Lester. According to reports, Lester then shot Yarl twice through the door, wounding him in the head and the arm. According to Clay County prosecutor Zachary Thompson, “I can tell you there was a racial component.” This fact pattern immediately sent the salivary glands…

Everywhere one looks these days it appears services and products cost more but deliver less than they once did. That seems especially true when it comes to the federal government. President Biden wants to raise taxes again. Unlikely, given the Republican House majority, but this Tax Day offers us our annual opportunity to explore what we are getting in exchange for what we’re paying Washington…

One can trace former President Donald Trump’s indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg back to the media/Democrat belief that Trump’s 2016 election was illegitimate. Sure, some, like Hillary Clinton, questioned former President Barack Obama’s birthplace. And, after the 2000 Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision, some, for a time, groused and called George W. Bush “president select…

Leaving aside all the sometimes legitimate and sometimes illegitimate responses from defenders of former President Donald Trump following his indictment by a New York grand jury, there is something that would have made all the difference for the 45th president had he focused on it as his top priority, rather than himself. That something is character. Dictionary.com defines the word: “the…

When I swallow, knives cut my throat. I cough and sometimes can't stop. That's frightening. I caught COVID. Dodged it three years. But this week, I suddenly felt lousy, and a home test said: "positive." The thermometer said: 101.8. No big deal, I thought. Almost everyone gets COVID. Lots of people say it's no worse than a cold. I'm multi-vaccinated and boosted. My fever's not super high. I'm…

The legacy media have a preset narrative machine when it comes to mass shootings. That narrative machine takes into account the identities of the shooter and the victims, and then churns out an explanation for the shooting. White shooter, black victims: systemic racism. Black shooter, white victims: alienation caused by systemic racism. Muslim shooter, gay victims: Christian homophobia. On…

Wilmore, KY – The secular and cynical find it difficult to believe not only that “God governs in the affairs of men,” as Benjamin Franklin said, but that He would visit a small town where there are few traffic lights and a decent restaurant is several miles away. Something happened here at Asbury University. Dr. Kevin Brown, the president, is reluctant to use the word “revival” to describe…

This week, as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg considered indicting former President Donald Trump on a flimsy felony charge over a seven-year-old hush-money payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels, Trump placed his focus on the man he perceives as the truest threat to his political dominance: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Trump backers demanded that DeSantis sound off on the looming…