SAN ANTONIO, Texas, DEC. 12, 2011. A letter to migrants dated Dec. 12, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, was signed by 33 Hispanic Catholic bishops in the United States. In it they expressed their solidarity with the many illegal immigrants living in the country. “We recognize that every human being, authorized or … Read more
Can Congress make legal something that is inherently wrong, and can Congress take a freedom that is a part of our humanity and make its exercise criminal? If there were no First Amendment, would we still have the freedom of speech? The answer, like many in the law, depends on what values underlie the legal … Read more
MANCHESTER, N.H. — “We’re not going to lose in New Hampshire.” So says Mitt Romney’s state coordinator, Jason McBride. Stuart Stevens, the Romney campaign’s TV ad-maker, expresses similar confidence. Asked if Romney might finish second in New Hampshire, his answer is an unhesitating “no.” Whether that confidence is well founded may determine the fate … Read more
Moscow is not a city of ghosts, but on Saturday, tens of thousands of figures were seen marching in the Russian capital chanting, “We exist! We exist!” That might seem like an exercise in the obvious. But the crowd thought a reminder was in order for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has generally regarded … Read more
The first time Newt Gingrich disgusted me was in 1995, when the freshly installed speaker of the House proposed the death penalty for drug smugglers. Fifteen years later, I had a similar response when Gingrich demanded government action to stop Muslims from building a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center. From … Read more
The media elite and the Republican ruling class are remarkably similar in their political projection for the coming year. Journalists spent the entire year savaging every fast-rising challenger to Mitt Romney. The GOPs power pundits became equally agitated at the sniff of a conservative anywhere near the top of the GOP pack. It’s the … Read more
The most prevalent theme in President Barack Obama’s Dec. 6 Osawatomie, Kan., speech was the need for greater “fairness.” In fact, though the president never defined the term fair(ness), he used it 15 times. Explaining his new hero, Teddy Roosevelt, Obama said: “But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a … Read more
Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to veto Germany’s demand for a new European fiscal union will define his premiership. More than that, Cameron has raised a banner for patriots everywhere fighting to retain their national independence. With his no vote on fiscal union, Cameron declared to the EU: “British surrenders of sovereignty come to … Read more
Washington gridlock may turn out to be the salvation of the Obama administration. Not only does gridlock allow the president to blame Republicans for not solving the financial crisis that his own runaway spending created, the inability to carry out as much government intervention in the economy as when the Democrats controlled both Houses … Read more
It was a week of risk-taking in the 2012 presidential race. Barack Obama, his job approval languishing in the low 40s, delivered a much heralded speech in Osawatomie, Kan., framing the choice between the parties in class-warfare terms. That’s a risky strategy. Democrats haven’t won a presidential election on class warfare since 1948, when … Read more
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has a new TV spot accusing President Obama of waging “war on religion.” It’s a reckless, overstated spot that exploits prejudice against gays while deliberately distorting major issues. But here’s the surprise: Perry has a point. The First Amendment forbids any law “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion. It’s a … Read more
In August 2008, as the world’s leaders gathered in Beijing for the Olympic games, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, hot-headed and erratic, made his gamble for greatness. It began with a stunning artillery barrage on Tskhinvali, capital of tiny South Ossetia, a province that had broken free of Tbilisi when Tbilisi broke free of Russia. … Read more
Someday, when today’s adults are old and gray, their grandchildren will sit down and ask, “What did you do in the class war?” You may not have noticed, but it seems we are in the midst of one. On this point, Republican candidates and officeholders are in agreement. Newt Gingrich accuses President Barack Obama … Read more
Has Barack Obama’s Democratic Party given up on winning the votes of the white working class? Thomas Edsall, the longtime Washington Post reporter now with The Huffington Post, thinks so. Surveying the plans of Democratic strategists, Edsall wrote in The New York Times on Nov. 28 that “all pretense of trying to win a … Read more
Time magazine didn’t mind ruffling feathers in religious America with a cover this summer that asked “Is Hell Dead?” Never mind that America is overwhelmingly Christian. Then Time found only one letter worth plucking out to feature in large, bold type from a man in Dallas: “Hell is easy to define. It would be … Read more
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column titled “Free to Die” (9/15/2011), pointed out that back in 1980, his late fellow Nobel laureate Milton Friedman lent his voice to the nation’s shift to the political right in his famous 10-part TV series, Free To Choose. Nowadays, Krugman says, “‘free to … Read more
Moving quietly under the cover of the presidential debates and the enormous publicity given to the Republican nomination race is a plan to change how U.S. presidents are elected. It would bypass the procedure spelled out in the U.S. Constitution, which has been used successfully for over two centuries. The Constitution prescribes how we … Read more
The joys of Christmas do not include coping with crowds at shopping malls or wracking your brains trying to figure out what to get as a gift for someone who already seems to have everything. Books are a way out of both situations. You don’t even have to go to a bookstore, with books … Read more
Here are a couple of things to keep in mind about Newt Gingrich, as he leads in polls for the Republican presidential nomination nationally and in Iowa and South Carolina, and may be threatening Mitt Romney’s lead in New Hampshire. One is that he is an autodidact. A second is that he has incredible perseverance. … Read more
It’s not hard to understand why so many conservatives spurn Mitt Romney. He’s had to slink away from past liberal positions on one major issue after another: health care reform, abortion, gun control and climate change. Many on the right are not reassured. They want a true conservative who’s been with them all along. … Read more