Column

Navi Pillay, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, has accused both Israel and Hamas militants of committing war crimes in the Gaza conflict. Her harshest criticism, as well as that of most nations, has been reserved for the Israeli government, charging that it has committed war crimes in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. In the wake of the huge difference in casualties and…

I'm not a psychologist, but I'm intrigued by the work of those who study the mind and behavior, especially when it accurately explains why people do what they do — or can't do what they would like or are expected to do. Case in point, President Barack Obama. In 2008, I wrote a column titled "A Personality Profile of Barack Obama's Leadership." The warnings of mental health professionals then…

It's been reported everywhere -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fox News -- that the William Wilberforce Sex Trafficking Act requires that any non-Mexican children who show up on our border be admitted and given a hearing. (New York Times, July 7, 2014: "Immigrant Surge Rooted in Law to Curb Child Trafficking.") The problem, we've been told, is that a loophole in the sex trafficking…

With his approval numbers sinking to 39 percent a week ago, according to the Gallup tracking poll, President Obama isn't alone in having a bad summer. So isHollywood. Entertainment Weekly calls gross receipts for what should have been a blockbuster July 4-6 weekend "downright terrifying." Writes EW, "Not only were grosses down 45 percent from last year's holiday, according to Boxofficemojo.…

Following the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision, one of the key talking points that emerged from enraged opponents of the ruling was: "My boss shouldn't be involved in my health care decisions." California State Senate candidate Sandra Fluke says on her official website that such a perspective is "common sense." An Ohio Democrat is introducing a "Not My Boss's Business Act" in the state…

When a U.S. president is using the IRS to terrify his political enemies, destroying American health care and opening our southern border to millions of future welfare-collecting, Democratic voters from the Third World, why is a dime's worth of money being wasted on trying to replace the Republican senator from Mississippi with a slightly different Republican? Honestly, I think these deck…

Earlier this month, the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act was celebrated. During the act's legislative debate, then-Sen. Hubert Humphrey, responding to predictions, promised, "I'll eat my hat if this leads to racial quotas." I don't know whether Humphrey got around to keeping his promise, but here's my question: Is it within the capacity of black Americans to make it in this society…

Philip Gara LaMarche is a secretive political operative who funnels billions of dollars from undisclosed donors to nonprofits and astroturf groups. But you won't hear unhinged Harry Reid railing Queegishly about him on the Senate floor. Why? Here's why: LaMarche is a militant leftist philanthropist. He's a protected elite — Columbia University grad, former ACLU leader and Human Rights Watch…

Forty-five years ago, there was a day like few others that rallied Americans and changed America forever. Yet I could find but one or two news stories about that momentous occasion and triumph. Do you remember what it was? It's the type of event that America needs now, maybe more than ever before. If you're old enough, you remember July 20, 1969, when 123 million of roughly 200 million…

Barack and Michelle Obama are quite the diversionary tag-team. He blames everyone else for his problems. She takes credit for progress on his behalf that he doesn't deserve and distracts public attention from his avalanche of failures with endless feel-good photo-ops. While the shirker in chief golfed and grubbed for money at closed-door celebrity fundraisers this week, his East Wing flak-…

The economic data that drives so much political debate is becoming increasingly less reliable in the digital era. That's because new technology makes it hard to compare the 21st-century economy to anything that came before it. How, for example, do you compare the living standards of a middle-income American in the 1970s with a middle-income American today? The 1970s version had no cellphone,…

WASHINGTON — I have been vindicated! For years I have been comparing the Clinton family to the family of Warren Gamaliel Harding, our 29th president and a president of dark memory at least to most liberal historians. For me, Warren was sheer slapstick, as to some degree his modern-day equivalent was, Bill Clinton. And forget not their gruesome wives. I began my historical comparisons in the…

The U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 2012 losses because of personal identity theft totaled $24.7 billion. The money losses from identity theft pale in comparison with the costs of paperwork, time and inconvenience imposed on the larger society in an effort to protect ourselves. According to LifeLock, while the laws against identity theft have gotten tougher,…

It's been fun to watch the media discuss the border crisis in real time, improvising their arguments on the fly. Let's try A, and if that doesn't work, we'll try B. First, they said there was no surge at the border -- it was a phony crisis manufactured by the Drudge Report. The facts on the ground quickly made that argument inoperable.