Column

Every day, we get a new kick in the gut from the Obama administration. Most recently, Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz was caught on video articulating his view of the agency's role in enforcing its regulations. Armendariz said: "It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean. They'd go into a little Turkish town…

The actual Republican Establishment -- political consultants, The Wall Street Journal, corporate America, former Bush advisers and television pundits -- are exhorting Mitt Romney to flip-flop on his very non-Establishment position on illegal immigration. Both as governor of Massachusetts and as a presidential candidate, Romney has supported a fence on the border, E-Verify to ensure that…

When you have a young woman screaming in a hallway about some sort of grievance she has with you, you have a problem. Even a Secret Service agent, surrounded by his buddies, has a problem. I know about this sort of thing from my work in the archives pursuant to my researches as a presidential historian. One thinks back to the late 1940s of Elizabeth Bentley, an American spying for the Soviet…

Who is Rashad Robinson? And why has his fringe, race-baiting organization been able to pressure several major corporations into abandoning a pro-limited-government legislative association — all for a few cheap social-justice brownie points? Conservative consumers need to get informed, get active and stand their ground against free speech-squelching progressive activists who have demonized the…

After Richard Nixon lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy and the California governor's race two years later (when he uttered the immortal line to the media, "You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore") the former vice president knew he must reinvent himself to run for president again in 1968. Thus was born "the new Nixon," an attempt to transform himself from "the old…

Mitt Romney's presidential run could turn out to be a test case to resolve the long-running debate inside the Republican Party as to whether the GOP presidential nominee should run as a conservative or more of a centrist. How often have we heard both Democratic and Republican political "experts" reciting the conventional wisdom that during primary contests, candidates of both parties must…

For many, the term "sheriff" conjures up images of the Old West. A few may consider a sheriff to have some form of outdated and obsolete political office. But for me and countless other patriots across our nation, a sheriff is the epitome of good and necessary county law enforcement. As documented on the Durham County, N.C., website, the position of sheriff originated in England more than 1,…

The Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation does a yeoman's job of keeping track of how much we're paying in taxes and who's paying what. It turns out that American taxpayers worked this year from Jan. 1 to April 17, 107 days, to earn enough money to pay their federal, state and local tax bills. That statistic requires some clarification, and I ask my readers to help me examine it. According to…

Just 49 percent of homeowners in America now believe their home is worth more than they paid for it. Rasmussen Reports has asked that question for years, and it has never before fallen below the 50 percent mark. This represents a sea change in personal finances that challenges core assumptions about the way our economy works.

Dick Clark, who died Wednesday at 82, was called "America's oldest teenager." That's not only because he looked so good late into life, but also because he carried with him the teen memories of those of us who grew up watching "American Bandstand" on glorious black-and-white, small-screen television sets. Every weekday afternoon, I would arrive home from school, say hello to Mom, grab a snack…

Liberals have leapt on the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida to push for the repeal of "stand your ground" laws and to demand tighter gun control. (MSNBC'S Karen Finney blamed "the same people who stymied gun regulation at every point.") This would be like demanding more funding for the General Services Administration after seeing how its employees blew taxpayer money on a party…

It's difficult to be a good economist and simultaneously be perceived as compassionate. To be a good economist, one has to deal with reality. To appear compassionate, often one has to avoid unpleasant questions, use "caring" terminology and view reality as optional. Affordable housing and health care costs are terms with considerable emotional appeal that politicians exploit but have…

Stop the presses: Big-spending Democrats are finally up in arms over a federal boondoggle. Details of the U.S. General Services Administration bacchanalia get worse by the day. We've graduated from overpriced breakfasts in Vegas, friends-and-family junkets galore and in-house videos mocking their own profligacy to extravagant bonuses, alleged kickbacks, obstructionism and bribes. But the…

Of all the myriad scandals of the Obama administration, there is one, largely ignored by the mainstream media, that could actually be its worst. That scandal is the operation run from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, under the Justice Department, known as "Fast and Furious," through which the federal government actually encouraged and even ordered American gun shops to…