Column
This Christmas Season Was Different
December 29th, 2016 1:06 PM
WASHINGTON — Around Thanksgiving time, I noticed portents of this Christmas season being different. I noticed it when people unbidden would wish me Happy Thanksgiving. There seemed to be a note of exultance in their greeting. Not everyone would say "Happy Thanksgiving," but enough did that it got me to wondering. Was this Thanksgiving different, and if so, would this Christmas be any different?
More Terror, More Denial
December 28th, 2016 10:47 AM
Recent terrorist attacks in Ankara, Turkey, and Berlin, Germany, add to a growing list of incidents that are becoming increasingly difficult to remember. Does one begin the list with the plane hijackings in the '60s and '70s, or the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, or the USS Cole attack in 2000, or the second World Trade Center attack in 2001, or Ft. Hood, San Bernardino, Orlando, Paris…
Thank You, Professor Sowell
December 28th, 2016 10:42 AM
I first read Thomas Sowell in college -- no thanks to my college. At the majority of America's institutions of "higher learning," reading Thomas Sowell was a subversive act in the early 1990s when I was a student. It remains so today. Why? Because the prolific libertarian economist's vast body of work is a clarion rejection of all the liberal intelligentsia hold dear.
Wealth, Poverty and Politics
December 28th, 2016 10:40 AM
Thomas Sowell has just published a revised and enlarged edition of his classic "Wealth, Poverty and Politics." At the very beginning, he quotes Alexander Hamilton, who said, "The wealth of nations depends upon an infinite variety of causes." The book's 16 chapters apply Hamilton's notion to domestic, as well as international, differences in wealth.

Media Ignore Another Child Sex Abuse Story
December 23rd, 2016 8:57 PM
If a priest is accused of inappropriately touching a minor, it makes the news. When other segments of society—teachers, Hollywood studio executives, therapists—are accused, the media show much less interest, and sometimes practically none at all. The latter is now evident in the way most media outlets treated the story about USA Gymnastics that broke last week.
Thomas and the Nat'l Museum of African American History and Culture
December 23rd, 2016 1:35 PM
WASHINGTON — Recently, a voice of the conservative media did what he is supposed to do, to wit, tell the rest of the story. The mainstream media only tells America part of the story. They tell us how they perceive the world and leave it at that. This is why so much of recent American journalism — and indeed, history — is so unsatisfactory to sentient observers. Journalism and history are told…
Michelle Obama's Christmas Lump of Coal
December 21st, 2016 8:37 PM
Just what we all need to ring in the Christmas season: Un-merry millionaire Michelle Obama belly-aching about the burdens and sacrifices of public life with billionaire Oprah Winfrey. "There's nowhere in the world I can go and sit and have a cup of coffee," Obama lamented. It's a frequent grievance.
Inclusiveness and Diversity
December 21st, 2016 8:34 PM
Sometimes it seems as if every other word from the mouths of academicians is "inclusiveness" or "diversity." How sincere and truthful are these people about their "inclusiveness and diversity" religion? Suppose a group of engineering students do not want to include black or Mexican students in their study group. Should they be permitted to have freedom of association or restrained from freely…
Substantial Numbers of Non-Citizens Vote Illegally in U.S. Elections
December 20th, 2016 4:37 PM
The issue of voter fraud was one of the most heated sources of controversy during the 2016 presidential election, and it continues to be so. After Hillary Clinton’s campaign announced that it was supporting recounts in several states won by Donald Trump, Trump responded with a series of Twitter posts accusing Clinton of hypocrisy for refusing to accept the results of the election after she…
Hope and Humility
December 20th, 2016 2:29 PM
Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) once said that, "Those who travel the high road of humility will not be troubled by heavy traffic." That descriptive and funny line came to mind after I heard what first lady Michelle Obama told Oprah Winfrey last week in a TV interview. Because of Donald Trump's election, she told the former talk show host, "We are feeling what not having hope feels like."
The Mad Search for Pro-Trump Columnists
December 15th, 2016 2:08 PM
WASHINGTON — Over the weekend some pathetic wretch — obviously a casualty of the Nov. 8 election — writing under the pen name Paul Farhi filed a column in the Washington Post lamenting that after an extensive search of the newspapers of this great country, he could hardly find any pro-Trump columnists.
A New Victim in the War on Small-Biz Bakeries
December 14th, 2016 6:17 PM
It is not enough for family-owned pastry shops to bow to the gay marriage mob. Now, they're being targeted by the social justice mafia. At my alma mater, radical Oberlin College in Ohio (which boasts hapless Baltimore mayor and rioters' champion Stephanie Rawlings Blake and bizarro feminist actress and fake rape accuser Lena Dunham as graduates), the operators of a small-business bakery are under…
Please, No More Miracles
December 14th, 2016 6:13 PM
President-elect Donald Trump has warned companies that they are not going to leave the United States anymore "without consequences." He has lived up to his threat by pressuring Carrier to give up its planned move to Monterrey, Mexico, in exchange for a taxpayer handout. It is a safe bet that other U.S. companies will be descending on Washington looking for handouts in the name of "fair trade" and…
Mike Pence Says Trump Has a Mandate
December 13th, 2016 9:57 PM
When Mike Pence becomes the 48th vice president of the United States next month, he will take on the role of a political lobbyist for Donald Trump's activist agenda. In an interview I conducted with Pence in his transitional office next to a sandwich shop in Washington, he said he believed voters gave Donald Trump a "mandate." How can that be when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote? "Trump won…