Column

WASHINGTON — We call it Kultursmog, "it" being that collection of attitudes, ideas, tastes and personages that are polluted by the politics of the left and predominate on both coasts. And who are we? We are the freethinkers who are immune to the Kultursmog by virtue of our natural skepticism and reliance on empiricism, which is to say, reliance on evidence. 

Are you freaking kidding me? Thirteen-term Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Beltway barnacle permanently affixed to USS Government, is now the fresh-faced "rock star" of the Democratic Party. "Auntie Maxine" is stoking the resistance, inspiring millenials, combating hate, crusading against corruption and invoking the counterinsurgent cry to "stay woke!" I do not have enough guffaws to give…

Each year, Earth Day is accompanied by predictions of doom. Let's take a look at past predictions to determine just how much confidence we can have in today's environmentalists' predictions. In 1970, when Earth Day was conceived, the late George Wald, a Nobel laureate biology professor at Harvard University, predicted, "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken…

As is almost always the case, signs of trouble preceded the latest shooting in Paris, which left one police officer dead and wounded two bystanders before police killed the gunman, later identified as French national Karim Cheurfi, a known criminal with a long, violent record. ISIS claimed to be behind the attack. According to police, a note praising ISIS fell out of Cheurfi's pocket when he fell…

There was a moment at Press Secretary Sean Spicer's White House briefing Monday that was significant. Asked by a reporter about North Korea's missile launch last weekend, Spicer said the administration was aware of the launch and that "it failed." End of story. Next question, please.  

WASHINGTON — There is hope! I am speaking of the envisioned memorial of Dwight D. Eisenhower here in Washington, D.C. Admittedly, its design by the crank architect, Frank Gehry, has been pretty much accepted by the memorial commission, and the chairman of the House committee that has control of the funding, Ken Calvert, seems to be going along.

Thirstier than an ultra-marathoner lost in Death Valley in mid-July. Hyping the entertainment magazine's latest cover, Co-Editor-in-Chief Claudia Eller gushed this week, "How cool does Chelsea Clinton look on our Power of Women, NY, cover?" Welcome to the liberal media's manufacturing of "cool." Leather jacket? Check. Overzealous airbrushing? Check. Humanizing grin? Check. Democratic…

As a group, black Americans have made the greatest gains -- over some of the highest hurdles and in a very short span of time -- of any racial group in mankind's history. What's the evidence? If one totaled up the earnings of black Americans and considered us as a separate nation with our own gross domestic product, we would rank among the 20 richest nations. 

Thanks to the beneficence of the federal government (and the calendar), we Americans have until midnight on April 18 to file our income taxes. It's too bad filing taxes wasn't an easier process. President Trump has pledged to reform our tax code, which, to most people, currently reads like a foreign language.

As most readers may know by now, one of the biggest Trump-haters in Hollywood is television producer Shonda Rhimes, a fanatical progressive who has created the highly successful prime time soap operas Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal for ABC. Rhimes is now admitting she is in a “trauma” as a result of her candidate in Hillary Clinton, losing the 2016 presidential election.   

Before this story recedes into the distant past of more than a couple weeks, let’s take one more look at that encounter on CBS between Fox’s Sean Hannity and Ted Koppel. And oh yes, my own version of the liberal mania coming at me, as William F. Buckley described it, with “lance cocked.”

It looks like former President Obama's national security adviser Susan Rice will get a reprieve. With all the hullabaloo from President Donald Trump's military action last week in Syria's ... do we call it Syria's civil war or a massacre? ... it now appears that Rice's mishandling of surveillance is going to subside from the headlines temporarily. 

Springtime may be in bloom, but snowflakes never go out of season at America's most prestigious colleges and universities. Quivering students at the University of Notre Dame launched a protest last week against the school's decision to invite Vice President Mike Pence as commencement speaker. 

The average American has little knowledge of the extent to which our institutions of higher learning have been infected with a spreading cancer. One aspect of that cancer is akin to the loyalty oaths of the 1940s and '50s. Professors were often required to sign statements that affirmed their loyalty to the United States government plus swear they were not members of any organizations, including…