Columnist.
In a December 4 speech, President Obama declared income "inequality" to be "the defining challenge of our time." It is time for me to come clean; to own up to a dark secret I have been hiding most of my life. It is embarrassing to admit it, but I suffer from income inequality. Yes, there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people who make more money than I do and it has affected my life in ways too numerous to recount.
When John Lofton of The Washington Times and I were granted an interview with Nelson Mandela inside Pollsmoor Prison near Capetown, South Africa, in August 1985, it was a rare occurrence, personally approved by then-South African President P.W. Botha over the objections of his foreign minister. Mandela gave us a tour of the prison. The guards, apparently, allowed him to roam almost at will. He showed us a small garden he tended of which he seemed proud.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes has ruled that Detroit, Mich., may seek to protect itself from its creditors under Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy protection, thus making this once proud city the largest municipality in American history to go bust. The city is $18 billion in the hole thanks to its debt and long-term liabilities, such as pensions it could not afford and people abandoning the city in droves, which led to an erosion of the tax base.
"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace." -- John Lennon "Black Friday" was a metaphor beyond the merchants' bottom line. Headlines on last Friday's Drudge Report reflect a culture that is being trampled by the greed and me-only attitude of a growing number of us...
For some, Thanksgiving is difficult enough with abrasive relatives gobbling up your food without a scintilla of gratitude. Now President Obama comes along with a proposal that could cause turmoil in even the happiest of homes. The president wants us to discuss politics, immigration reform and Obamacare at our holiday tables. Imagine the scene. One of your kids is home from college, having been indoctrinated by liberal-leaning professors with politics mired in the '60s, and he or she begins lecturing Grandpa Joe or Aunt Marie about the necessity of visiting the Obamacare website (if they can get on) and buying health insurance.
Seeking to create an analogy with the deal the United States negotiated with Iran to supposedly limit further production of its centrifuges, Secretary of State John Kerry chose to recall disarmament agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union. A better analogy would be the 1938 Munich Pact, which gave Hitler part of Czechoslovakia in the vain hope that war could be avoided. It is worth noting that several of the nations that were signatories in Munich, namely Germany, France and Britain, are also part of the current deal with Iran.
My parents voted for Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. I had not yet developed a political worldview, but as a freshman at American University in Washington, D.C., I stayed up late to watch the election returns slowly trickle in before going to bed at 2 a.m. with the outcome still undecided. The following year I was hired as a copyboy at NBC News, delivering wire service "copy" to news reporters in the network's Washington bureau. White House correspondent Sander Vanocur invited me to accompany him to observe the swearing-in of Adlai Stevenson as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Fed up with Washington? Angry that elections don't seem to matter when it comes time to solving problems? Disgusted by the polarization that puts politicians' careers ahead of taxpayer interests? Frustrated because you don't think anything can be done about it? Indiana State Senator David Long (R-Ft. Wayne) has experienced all of these feelings, but has chosen not to accept the status quo. He has a plan for returning power to the people where the Founders wanted it to reside.
Three famous men died on Nov. 22, 1963. The one getting the most attention, understandably, is John F. Kennedy. Less so the other two: Aldous Huxley, author of the futuristic novel "Brave New World," and Clive Staples Lewis. Of the three, it was Lewis who not only was the most influential of his time, but whose reach extends to these times and likely beyond. His many books continue to sell and the number of people whose lives have been changed by his writing expands each year.
In Geneva, Switzerland, The United States and other major powers appeared close to a deal with Iran to curb its nuclear program in exchange for lifting some economic sanctions against the terrorist-sponsoring state. Negotiations, however, fell apart at the last minute when France and Iran balked at the final wording on the interim draft. Talks are expected to resume within a few weeks, but it is worth pausing to consider what was nearly agreed to and what the outcome could likely be.
With all the spying the United States has been doing on foreign leaders, possibly including the pope, why is Jonathan Pollard, a former American civilian intelligence analyst, still in prison nearly three decades after being sentenced to life in prison for taking classified documents he believed contained information important to Israel's self-defense? Prominent individuals support Pollard's release. They include former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, George P. Schultz, former CIA director James Woolsey (who initially was against Pollard's release), former Representative Robert Wexler (D-FL), and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, among others.
Last August before a closed meeting of Republican leaders in Boston, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey said, "We are not a debating society. We are a political operation that needs to win." Tuesday night, Christie won. Big time. In one of the nation's bluest states, Christie got 60.5 percent of the vote. His Democratic opponent, Barbara Buono, claims she lost because "Democratic political bosses" made a deal with Christie "despite him representing almost everything they're against. ... They did it to help themselves politically and financially." In other words, they voted out of self-interest. Imagine that. Self-interest in politics.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments this week about prayers in public life, this latest deliberation revolving around a case from Greece, N.Y., and the recitation of prayers during town board meetings. The board used to begin each of its meetings with a moment of silence. When that moment of silence was replaced by spoken prayers, they turned out to be overwhelmingly Christian, and a suit was filed. Last year a federal appeals court ruled, according to The Washington Post, "...that such a 'steady drumbeat' of Christian invocations violates the Constitution's prohibition against government endorsement of religion."
When the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan is completed next year what will happen to Afghan women? Will a resurgent Taliban return them to wearing burqas, withdraw them from schools and force them to live behind painted glass in their homes, permitting them to leave the house only when accompanied by a blood relative?
"Bye Bye Birdie" is an old musical that survives in high school productions and in some people's memory bank. It debuted on Broadway in 1960 and was made into a film in 1963. One of the songs from the show might serve as an inspiration, if not a theme, for Republicans in the winter of their discontent over President Obama and congressional Democrats: "Put on a Happy Face." A problem Republicans have had since the "glory days" of Ronald Reagan is that too many have forgotten how to be positive and affirming. Nobody likes to be around a sourpuss.
The more President Obama talks about the supposed joys of his Affordable Health Care law, the more he resembles a political Mad Hatter, devoid of reason, absent logic and ignorant of facts. At a Rose Garden event Monday, the president's theatrics were on full display. With a chorus of supporters behind him, Obama blamed the "slow, wonky" rollout of health insurance enrollment on too many people trying to log on to the government's new marketplace website at the same time. He labeled the false start "glitches." This isn't a glitch; it's a disaster.
The fiasco in Washington over the partial government shutdown, raising the debt ceiling and deepening animosity between Republicans and Democrats (and Republicans and Republicans), has left many asking if there is any way out of this bitter, endless cycle. There may be. The Financial Times recently suggested that America's largest foreign creditor -- China -- might want to reduce the size of its loans financing our debt. China, which holds 8 percent, or $1.5 trillion, in U.S. Treasury securities, is mocking our inability to reduce debt. The Washington Times reports that Chinese Commerce Minister Mei Xinyu called the shutdown and the congressional politicking over the debt limit "monkey business" that degrades the U.S. image worldwide. FRANCE 24 reports that a Chinese ratings agency recently downgraded its U.S. sovereign credit rating, and warned that "fundamentals for a potential default remained unchanged."
Can something as tragic and immoral as slavery become, if not less tragic, then noble, even righteous, in the telling? It can and it does in the capable hands of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., whose brilliant and compelling new six-part series for PBS called "The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross" premieres Oct. 22 (check local listings). Gates, whose previous series, "African American Lives," chronicled the heritage of some famous and notable African Americans, takes us on a new journey that begins 500 years ago. While some of the history is familiar, Gates re-tells it in a way that will sound new to many people, especially the young. What I admire most about Gates' approach in this series and the previous one is that he is not a polemicist. He doesn't dwell on blame so much as he conveys documented history, leaving it to viewers to draw their own conclusions.
A new Associated Press-GfK poll reveals some troubling statistics for members of both major political parties, if they can be troubled, given what looks to be their lack of concern for what they are doing to the country. The poll finds fewer people approve of President Obama's job performance (confirmed by a new Gallup Poll, which shows a 37 percent approval rating), but that Republicans score even worse at 5 percent approval. The AP-GfK poll "finds few people approve of the way the president is handling most major issues and most people say he's not decisive, strong, honest, reasonable or inspiring." It looks like hope has vanished. We can't say we weren't warned.
It's the 40th anniversary of Erica Jong's "Fear of Flying," which some have described as a breakthrough book for women and for modern feminism. Reduced to its common (and I do mean common) denominator, the book, which was written in the appropriately named "Me" Decade of the '70s, encourages women to behave like promiscuous men, having meaningless sex without fear of consequences. "Fear of Flying" gleefully encourages women to engage in the so-called "ZF." Don't know what that means? Look it up.
