Columnist.
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders represent two sides of the same coin. Both men have tapped into a deep anger — a discontent — in the public mood. Little seems to be going right. America appears in decline under a disengaged president. We can't seem to win wars, or know why we are fighting them. People are afraid of losing their jobs or unable to find one. While the treasury takes in record amounts of money from working people, it outspends its income. Sanders and Hillary Clinton want to spend (and borrow) even more.
If elected president, Hillary Clinton has promised to spend $350 billion to make college "more affordable." The U.S. already has an $18 trillion debt (and growing by the day), but Clinton wants to add to it. That's not affordable. Too many young people are graduating from universities unable to find jobs, or are underemployed. Slate.com references a 2014 study of youth joblessness by the Economic Policy Institute. It found "...roughly 8.5 percent of college graduates between the ages of 21 and 24 were unemployed. That figure is based on a 12-month average between April 2013 and March 2014, so it's not a perfect snapshot of the here and now.
Twenty-four million people tuned in to watch the first primetime debate among 10 Republican presidential candidates. What were they expecting, a love-in? Some conservative critics dumped on Fox News with a vitriol usually reserved for liberal media. David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network said Fox (where I appear as a commentator) should be "utterly ashamed," calling the questions asked of Donald Trump "unethical and downright nasty." "Shame" was a word frequently used by critics of Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. Barack Obama said: "...if somebody wants to build a coal power plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them..." He added that under his now defeated Cap and Trade bill, "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." In 2010, Cap and Trade died in the Senate, but the president's goal of bankrupting the coal industry never waned. Monday he announced that the Environmental Protection Agency will impose new regulations throughout the country limiting carbon emissions from power plants powered by fossil fuels.
When music fans think of "the British Invasion" they are referring to '60s bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Britain today, however, faces a different type of invasion. Thousands of migrants, most from North Africa and the Middle East, are storming an ineffective "barricade" in Calais, France, as they attempt to enter England via the Chunnel, a 30-mile rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent, with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais, in northern France. Some of these migrants hide on top of or inside of trucks or cling to the trains that travel beneath the English Channel. Some have died on the journey.
When it comes to debates the Oxford Union, which bills itself as the "world's most prestigious debating society," remains the gold standard. Begun in 1823, The Union, in modern times, has hosted debates that have included such luminaries as Ronald Reagan and the Dalai Lama. The Oxford Union debates produce useful information. The same cannot be said for U.S. presidential debates. Next week, 10 Republican presidential candidates will gather on a stage in Cleveland, Ohio, behind podiums like "Jeopardy" contestants. With so many candidates having so little time, little useful information will be dispensed. More likely the all-male cast will be looking for ways to squeeze in their rehearsed sound bites, which will be replayed in their campaign ads and, they hope, on major news programs. But not to leave anyone out, Fox News has just announced a prequel to the main debate for all the other GOP candidates who failed to meet the requirements for the primetime event. So now Carly Fiorina, George Pataki and Sen. Lindsey Graham will also get their chance to say little of substance.
NASA has discovered the answer to all of our problems. It is another planet, a possible twin to Earth that could theoretically sustain life. This revelation could be bigger than Columbus "discovering" America, or Lewis and Clark finding the Northwest Passage. It offers the possibility of starting over. Hasn't the thought crossed the mind of every adult of a certain age that if we could time travel back to our youth and know what we know now, we would not have made the mistakes we made? The first step in boldly going where no one has gone before is to re-name the planet. Kepler-452b won't do. How about Krypton? That name is already widely known as the fictional planet from which Superman came, thus giving it cultural standing. Steven Spielberg could make a film about our new second home. ET might even be there to welcome us.
What is most shocking about an undercover video of a conversation between Deborah Nucatola, a Planned Parenthood executive, and two antiabortion activists from the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) posing as employees from a biotech firm is why anyone is shocked.
When I listen to Hillary Clinton speak, as she did Monday at The New School in New York, outlining her "economic policy" should she become president, my first reaction was not to her lack of substance and the predictability of her party line about taxing the rich more and "income inequality," but to how boring she is. I love definitions. They help focus the mind. But not everyone defines a word the same way. Dictionary.com defines "bore" in several ways, all of which fit Hillary Clinton. As a verb used with an object, it says, "to weary by dullness, tedious repetition..." As a noun it is defined as "a dull, tiresome, or uncongenial person; a cause of ennui or petty annoyance." Even the synonyms for "bore" seem to describe Hillary Clinton: "fatigue, tire, annoy."
According to the Wall Street Journal, the last serious attempt to count the number of federal criminal laws appears to have been made in 1982 by a retired Justice Department official named Ronald Gainer. He failed, but the estimate then was "...50 titles and 23,000 pages of federal law." Many more laws have been added since then. One thing is certain: If you violate federal law you are likely to be punished with a fine, imprisonment or both. These laws are supposed to apply to everyone, unless, it seems, you are an illegal alien living in San Francisco, or any of the other sanctuary cities around the country. By now, anyone not preoccupied with stories about shark attacks, the Confederate flag or singer Ariana Grande "maliciously licking" donuts she did not buy, has heard about 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle gunned down by an illegal alien while walking on a San Francisco pier with her father. Her accused killer is Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a felon from Mexico, who had been deported five times but always managed to sneak back in, choosing San Francisco, he reportedly said, because he knew it was a "sanctuary city" that would not deport him.
"If the Supreme Court ... has made things less comfortable for believers, we must ask ourselves why we were so comfortable to begin with."
In her 1985 speech after receiving the Best Actress Oscar for her role in "Places in the Heart," actress Sally Field famously gushed, "You like me; you really, really like me." The latest in a long history of surveys examining the public's level of trust in the news media might paraphrase Field's line this way: "You hate us; you really, really hate us, but we don't care." The 2015 State of the First Amendment Survey, a project of the Newseum Institute's First Amendment Center, has "discovered" what most of us could have told them. According to the survey, "Only 24 percent now think that the news media try to report on news without bias. This represents a 17-point drop from last year and a 22-point drop from 2013. In fact, the 24 percent who now say the media try to report news without bias is the lowest since we began asking this question in 2004."
In the matter of the "culture wars," evangelical Christians are asking, "what do we do now?" The question is being raised in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision striking down state laws reserving marriage for heterosexual couples. The "culture wars," while well-intentioned, were a mistake from the beginning. Evangelical Christians, whose Leader said, "My Kingdom is not of this world," thought they could organize people of like mind and like faith and create a voting bloc to elect people who would impose something resembling that other kingdom on people who do not see themselves as members of that kingdom. Given the number of politicians who seem to have difficulty imposing a moral code of any sort on themselves, such a strategy was doomed from the start. Why didn't they learn from previous "moral improvement" movements that if one wants to change culture, one must first change individuals? For evangelical Christians that can only be done by the transformation of the heart, soul and mind, something that is beyond the power of secular — or even religious — politicians.
Am I allowed to repeat myself when it comes to the negotiations over the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal? Why not, since that is what Iran's leaders are doing. They are repeating themselves by refusing inspections of some of their facilities where only a fool would believe nuclear weapons are not under construction. They are repeating themselves when they demand all sanctions be lifted on the day any deal is signed. And let's not forget Iran's weekly "Death to America" chants at Friday prayer services, though publicly politicians in Tehran are said to denounce them. Why would anyone in his right diplomatic mind believe anything these subsidizers of terrorism say, especially when they appear to believe their religion requires them to build a bomb, obliterate Israel, eliminate America and subject the world to Sharia law?
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." What Winston Churchill said in 1942 following a British military victory in North Africa might also be said about Friday's narrow 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court legalizing marriage between people of the same sex. That the majority threw a bone to religious people, their churches and institutions, saying they could continue to preach and teach that homosexual marriage is wrong, will almost certainly be challenged by gay activists and secularists whose goal is to drive religious people, and especially Christians, out of the public square.
The media and the secular left have a love-hate relationship with the Roman Catholic Church and its popes. When the pope takes positions with which they agree, they applaud him, but when he takes positions with which they disagree, they either ignore or criticize him. Such is the case with Pope Francis' encyclical on "climate change." The Washington Post gave it editorial praise, stating in a front-page headline that it "poses a dilemma for 2016 GOP hopefuls." Since Francis included abortion along with "climate change" in his argument that the environment and life at all stages has value and is in need of protection, one might ask why the secular left and media don't think that's a problem for Democratic presidential hopefuls?
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." —Martin Luther King Jr. It is such a rare act that most do not know how to respond, except in stunned silence. Relatives of the nine people murdered while attending a Bible study and prayer meeting at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, told the accused killer they forgive him. In violent streets we have become used to calls for retribution, appeals for justice, rioting, looting, marches and self-appointed civil rights leaders hogging cameras and microphones with angry people standing behind them and chants of "no justice, no peace."
In her reintroduction speech on Roosevelt Island in New York last Saturday, Hillary Clinton hit all the boilerplate liberal Democrat notes: The New Deal, big government, soak the rich, evil Wall Street ... you know the song because the music is from a familiar score. Speaking of songs, Hillary Clinton made reference to The Beatles' "Yesterday" and tied it to the seemingly outdated ideas of the Republican Party. In light of what the country is facing, yesterday is looking increasingly better, particularly if one considers the foreign and domestic policies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush (minus some of the tax increases). While Hillary Clinton wants to channel The Beatles, there is another song called "Yesterday" that may not be as familiar, but better describes her failed policies, as well as those of President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who appear committed to an unverifiable nuclear deal with Iran.
Upon hearing of the massive data breach of employee information from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) — allegedly by hackers working for the Chinese government — Kay Coles James, the former director of OPM under George W. Bush, told me she was "aghast," adding, "I can't think about the national security implications of a foreign government knowing every single federal employee, where they work, where they live, all of their significant data. Think about what that information can do in the hands of people who want to do us harm." Joel Brenner, a former top counterintelligence official for the U.S. government, has thought about it. He called the hack attack "potentially devastating." Brenner told The Washington Post that personnel files "contain decades of personal information about people with (security) clearances ... which makes them easier to recruit for foreign espionage on behalf of a foreign country."
