Column

If only every 16-year-old had the courage and grit of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban last year for advocating girls' and women's education. Last Friday, she spoke to the United Nations and said education could change the world, Reuters reported. I would add that it is an absolutely essential ingredient to establish and maintain any free people and…

FT. WILLIAM, Scotland -- The power of television to shrink the world has always amazed me. Eating lunch on the road to Ft. William, a man at the next table recognizes me and introduces himself. Keith Farrington says he spent 15 years working as an assistant director of finance for the South East Thames Regional Health Authority, part of the National Health Service. He has strong warnings for…

This week, instead of attacking a Hispanic senator, Marco Rubio, I will defend a Hispanic citizen, George Zimmerman, on trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin. (Zimmerman would make a better senator.) It's becoming painfully obvious why no charges were brought against Zimmerman in this case -- until Al Sharpton got involved. All the eyewitness accounts, testimony, ballistics and forensics…

World Crisis Alert: Guantanamo Bay detainees don't want to eat. Muslim rapper Yasiin "Mos Def" Bey is so worked up about their appetite plight that he videotaped himself being force-fed to build support for closing Gitmo. Cry me a river. This latest round of hunger strikes isn't an international human rights tragedy. It's another manipulative act of Jihad Theater.

Could the boondoggle we call "Obamacare" be a bigger disaster? Is there any better example of the arrogance, incompetence and remorselessness of top-down central planning? The very name of the law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is a deceptive euphemism, as it neither protects patients nor makes health care more affordable.

As if more evidence were needed about the tragedy of black education, Rachel Jeantel, a witness for the prosecution in the George Zimmerman murder trial, put a face on it for the nation to see. Some of that evidence unfolded when Zimmerman's defense attorney asked 19-year-old Jeantel to read a letter that she allegedly had written to Trayvon Martin's mother. She responded that she doesn't read…

Last week, I highlighted four little-known facts about the Declaration of Independence. Here are a few more facts to add to those oddities: 5) There are at least 26 surviving paper copies of the Declaration of Independence of the hundreds made in July 1776 for circulation among the Colonies. After Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, the Committee of Five, which was appointed…

As one who supports traditional values and a conservative political agenda, I'm more worried about the right wing's erosion of resolve and moral courage than I am about the left's relentless assault on our values and ideas. Surely, no one can dispute that the political left has been tirelessly chipping away at America's foundational values for years and ruthlessly demonizing conservatives.…

On Dec. 1, 1955, a churchgoing woman of character refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala. Many credit Rosa Parks' courageous action that day with launching the civil rights movement. While I have great respect for what Ms. Parks did that day, however, she did not start the civil rights movement. The movement began long before, and public opinion led the way. Rosa Parks' role…

There's a move on to prohibit Washington's football team from calling itself "Redskins," even though a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision said that it has that right. Now the name change advocates are turning to the political arena and intimidation. The NCAA has already banned the University of North Dakota from calling its football team the "Fighting Sioux." This is the classic method of…

After the bad news on gay marriage out of the Supreme Court this week, here's some good news for conservatives: Demographics are on our side! As M. Stanton Evans has recently pointed out, "Believers in religious doctrine, the traditional family and pro-life attitudes on abortion are systematically outperforming their secular-liberal opponents in the demographic sweepstakes -- having…

Being about a week away from Independence Day, I was doing a little reflecting upon the history surrounding the Declaration of Independence. And I thought it would be of equal interest to many of my readers to look at some often-overlooked aspects of the declaration's production and legacy. Several historical websites hold some fascinating facts about this national treasure — including the…

Well, of course the government is spying on Americans! Look at the havoc caused by American citizens engaging in terrorism. There's "American citizen" David Coleman Headley, who conspired with Pakistani military officers to commit the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, that left more than 160 people dead.

Though deadbeat dads and high-school dropouts might pervade some communities, there are still far more models than mess-ups across our country, and some stand head and shoulders above the rest. Let me tell you about a few stellar examples. I understand that the fact that 1 in 4 U.S. students do not receive a regular high-school diploma is not good enough, with that number increasing to 1 in 2…