Column

What economists call an ability to make "compensating differences" is a valuable tool in everyone's arsenal. If people are prohibited from doing so, they are always worse off. You say, "Williams, I never heard of compensating differences. What are they?"  

A guiding principle for physicians is primum non nocere, the Latin expression for "first, do no harm." In order not to do harm, whether it's with medicine or with public policy, the first order of business is accurate diagnostics.

Thanks to WikiLeaks, which has released nearly 20,000 emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee — with promises of more to come — we have proof the party that styles itself as inclusive, diverse and tolerant isn’t. Among the delectable tidbits on which Republicans are feasting are these: one male DNC staffer wrote another male staffer saying “I love you” and added “no homo.” Another…

This week’s Philadelphia convention is playing host to a string of Democratic speakers promising to alter the First Amendment, to give government more control over who can engage in politics. “The Intimidation Game,” tells the story behind those calls.  

The Washington Post “Fact Checker” column is running its critiques of the Republican convention this week, and in the process is trying again to rebuff a figure of $15,000 per household that I employ as a placeholder for the annual cost of federal regulations.  

In 1926, speaking about the Declaration of Independence on its 150th anniversary, President Calvin Coolidge noted the unique philosophy behind the creation of the United States: "We cannot continue to enjoy the result, if we neglect and abandon the cause."

Catholics in Alliance is a front for George Soros, the billionaire who supports abortion-on-demand and other public policy initiatives that are anathema to the Catholic Church. It is run by Christopher Hale, a left-wing activist who works with Catholic dissidents and ex-Catholics to oppose the Church. He has an article posted on the website of Time that explains why Soros greases him: It is…

My 12-year-old son couldn't remember the phrase "take a walk down memory lane" last week, instead describing a stroll through "nostalgia road." I knew it would come in handy. Put on your hiking boots and join me for an educational trip down good ol' nostalgia road. It seems like yesterday when Champion of Wimmin Maureen Dowd, bemoaning the lack of sympathy for anti-war mom Cindy Sheehan, declared…

WASHINGTON — Race is what you make of it. For me I have made race a part of what social scientists once called the "melting pot," by which they meant that differences -- including ethnicity and race -- were all melted down into one great variegated country called America. There might be different heritages and different sub-cultures mixed into the American melting pot, but once mixed together we…

President Barack Obama and his first attorney general Eric Holder called for an honest conversation about race. Holder even called us "a nation of cowards" because we were unwilling to have a "national conversation" about race. The truth of the matter is there's been more than a half-century of conversations about race. We do not need more. Instead, black people need to have frank conversations…

If Black Lives Matter, then why have entrenched members of the Congressional Black Caucus spent more time enriching themselves than taking care of their neglected constituents? Too many social justice protesters are busy throwing shade, rocks, bottles, concrete blocks and vicious death threats at police officers of all colors trying to keep the peace.

In just the last few days, two African-American men were shot and killed by non-African-American police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana and five non-African-American police officers were shot and killed in Dallas by an African-American man who declared he "wanted to kill white people, especially white officers." The gap in our racially divided country has never been wider.

President Obama's knee-jerk reaction to the Dallas shootings brings into clear relief his biases and double standards on racially or religiously motivated violence. Have we ever had a president as blinded by his ideology and as oblivious or dismissive about his own biases and the double standards he invokes?  

FBI Director James Comey has given Hillary Clinton something better than a get out of jail free card. He's protected her from indictment by recommending to the Department of Justice that she not be prosecuted for her and her staff's "extremely careless" handling of emails on private servers that included documents classified as "top secret," "secret" and "confidential."