Column

There is an overarching reason we can't move toward a balanced budget, which underscores why we face ongoing stalemates over debt ceilings and continuing resolutions: President Obama doesn't want to balance the budget. I don't say this out of extremism or to be gratuitously controversial or even provocative. It's just that his words and actions lead to the inescapable conclusion that he is…

PLYMOUTH NOTCH, Vt. -- If your disgust over America's crushing debt and the irresponsible leaders who refuse to reduce unnecessary spending has reached the fed-up point, there is an easy solution beyond whatever compromise might be reached in the current standoff between President Obama and congressional Republicans. Vote Republican in 2012. But don't vote for just any Republican, rather vote…

The OK Corral in Tombstone, Ariz., was where Doc Holliday and Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp fought the Clantons and McLaurys on Oct. 26, 1881. At the end of that 30-second showdown, Virgil and Morgan Earp were wounded, and three cowboys were dead. President Barack Obama and House Republicans' showdown over the debt and deficit quickly is turning into Washington's OK Corral. And politicians on…

Is there a health insurance horror story disseminated by the White House and its allies that ever turned out to be true? Obamacare advocates have exercised more artistic license than a convention of Photoshoppers. Now, a prominent sob story shilled by President Obama himself about his own mother is in doubt. It's high past time to call their bluffs.

Ordinarily, I'd have difficulty grasping the magnitude of arrogance driving President Obama in budget negotiations that could determine the survival of our nation, but after several painful years of observation, I've come to expect it from him. Obama's personality type does not well handle opposition, so when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor refused to budge on Obama's unreasonable demand…

Sometimes the most radical ideas are the most sensible For instance, take the recent decision by John Garvey, president of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., to phase out co-ed dorms, returning to single-sex residence halls. Garvey presented a fairly practical case for the move: Not unlike many colleges, there is a drinking problem on campus. And as Christopher Kaczor,…

Some “reality shows” are designed to advertise wanton misbehavior and stupidity for its own sake. There’s no “life lesson,” just an exercise in how you can grade your own moral worth on a “Jersey Shore” curve. That is not the case with TLC’s “Sister Wives.” For TLC (The Learning Channel, a misnomer demanding initials-only), it was the usual slam-dunk oddball premise: Won’t people be curious…

The Constitution is specific when it prohibits a "religious test" for "any office or public trust" -- Article VI, Paragraph III That doesn't mean that voters are prohibited from taking a person's faith (or lack thereof) into account when deciding for whom they will vote. No law could stop them.

Do we need any other evidence that the Kultursmog exists and that it is international — at least in the English-speaking world — than the fact that the biggest news story in the United Kingdom today is also the biggest news story here. I have in mind the story that News of the World reporters in London listened in on private conversations and possibly bribed Scotland Yard. The Kultursmog is…

Some people can spot a slight in every compliment, whereas others — the happy ones — find a compliment in every slight. So last week, as a free-market, low-taxes, constitutional conservative, I happily found an apparently unintended compliment from the liberal New Republic. It is not often that I agree with the central attack line of my sometimes media sparring partner, The New Republic's Ed…

A recent Superman comic book* has the hero saying, "I am renouncing my U.S. citizenship" because "truth, justice, and the American way — it's not enough anymore." Though not addressing Superman's statement, Stanford University professor and Hoover Institution senior fellow William Damon explains how such a vision could emerge today but not yesteryear. The explanation is found in his article "…

A rising chorus of repeal-mongers, outraged at the Obama administration's federal health care power grab, took over Washington this week. Nope, it's not the tea party. It's Democrats Against the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). Yes, Democrats. What's IPAB? A Beltway acronym for subverting the deliberative process.

The political prognosticator Charlie Cook appeared on National Public Radio on July 11 and summarized perfectly the media narrative on the debt-limit battle. Boehner, Cook said, “is not a burn-the-barn-down, break-the-china kind of guy [and] he does not necessarily reflect the views of a majority...of the House Republican Conference, who are of the burn-the-barn-down, break-the-china mold.”…

The depressing debate over the debt ceiling underscores just how recklessly the ruling class has squandered America's sacred heritage — a heritage I had the privilege of revisiting up close this past week on a family vacation. The contrast between the sublime historical locations we experienced during the day and the alarming news we ingested each night about the dire state of our nation's…