Columnist.
Since the Motown sound went silent -- except on oldies stations -- and General Motors and Chrysler (but not Ford) required life support from Washington, there has been little to recommend Detroit, Mich., to visitors, much less its residents. The recent conviction of Kwame Kilpatrick, the former mayor of Detroit, on multiple charges, including racketeering, fraud and extortion, adds another insult to the city's injury, increasing its misery. During the mid-20th century, Detroit was a vibrant city with a population of almost 2 million. Today, it stands near ruin. The number of residents has now been estimated at just over 700,000. According to the Chicago Tribune, "The city has a crushing debt of $14 billion, and a budget deficit of as much as $327 million. The pay and benefit structure of public employees can't be sustained. ... The city could run out of cash in a matter of weeks." And yet the city's main courthouse reports having $280 million worth of uncollected fines and fees.
Given his track record on marital fidelity, former President Bill Clinton is not the person I would consult about "committed, loving relationships." Clinton used those words in a Washington Post op-ed last week, urging the Supreme Court to overturn the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman, which he signed into law. In his column, Clinton said that 1996 "was a very different time." No state recognized same-sex marriage and supporters of DOMA "believed that its passage 'would diffuse a movement to enact a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which would have ended the debate for a generation or more.'" Clinton says he now supports same-sex marriage based on justice, equality and the Constitution.
The Broadway musical "Annie" is enjoying another revival on Broadway. The show opened during the Carter administration when America was in need of some optimism. "The sun'll come out tomorrow," sang Annie, and with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, for a while, it did. Now we're back in "Hooverville," the name given to shanty towns that popped up during the Great Depression. It isn't that bad yet, though the Obama administration is forecasting gloom and doom if Republicans don't cave on another tax increase.
It's a safe bet that most conservative Republicans would rush to support a political leader with the following record, especially in a traditionally Democratic state: -- Reversed a $2.2 billion deficit and brought it into balance without raising taxes, largely by reduced spending and eliminating wasteful and unaffordable programs, allowing for a projected fiscal 2014 budget surplus of $300 million. -- Bipartisan pension and benefits reforms, saving the state $120 billion over 30 years. -- Streamlining government by eliminating 5,200 government jobs. -- Vetoing tax increase bills three times while cutting taxes for job creators. -- Reforming the nation's oldest teacher tenure law by making it conditional on teacher performance in the classroom. -- Reduced property tax increases to a 21-year low and capped them at a maximum 2 percent. There's more, but shouldn't conservative Republicans be ecstatic by this record compiled by New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie?
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is looking beyond Friday and the beginning of the sequestration. In an interview I conducted with him on Capitol Hill Tuesday, Ryan told me he believes a majority of Americans will come to understand how bad the debt is after the rhetoric gives way to reality. "Mitt (Romney) and I shadowboxed against the theory of big government," he says, "while (President) Obama made all the great promises of what it delivered and used soaring rhetoric to sell it, but that will be different in a second term (when) the results start materializing."
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Gov. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) was one of those tea party stars whom voters believed had the courage of his convictions when he promised, as recently as last summer, to block The Affordable Care Act in his state. But last week, writes the Orlando Sentinel, "Scott made an abrupt about-face, embracing a three-year expansion of Medicaid coverage for about 1 million low-income Floridians that will be paid for by the health care law." Scott said, "I think this is a common-sense solution to dealing with this for the next three years where it will give us the time to think about how we can improve the system." Sounding like a Democrat, he added that the state is obligated to help "the poorest and weakest among us." No, governor, charities and religious bodies are obligated to help the weak and poor. State and federal governments have no such obligation. To claim they do empowers bureaucrats and politicians who are having a difficult enough time fulfilling their constitutional responsibilities. It also undermines the work ethic.
At the end of 1995 and stretching into January 1996, the federal government "shut down" because of an impasse between President Bill Clinton and House Republicans led by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The issue was increased taxes vs. less spending. Sound familiar? The government re-opened when a bipartisan agreement was reached to balance the budget by 2003. It wasn't for reasons that included, but were not limited to, two wars. Now the national debt is racing toward an unsustainable $17 trillion. This time around it isn't about closing government. It's about "sequestration," which President Obama, the Democrats and their big media toadies are styling as economic Armageddon.
Just as Lenin's body remains on public display in Russia, because one never knows when he might be useful to rally the masses, so, too, does the ghost (but thankfully not the body) of the late Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) remain a useful symbol for Democrats in Washington. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) are the latest to summon McCarthy's ghost. After Sen. Ted Cruz, (R-Texas), asked defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel whether he had been compensated by foreign interests hostile to the United States for speeches he made in which he seemed to favor their aspirations, Boxer said of Cruz's tenacious questioning, "It was really reminiscent of a different time and place, when you said, 'I have here in my pocket a speech you made on such and such a date,' and of course nothing was in the pocket. It was reminiscent of some bad times."
President Obama's approach to so-called "climate change" appears to include recycling old ideas. In his State of the Union address, the president recycled the idea of spending more on education, though we are still getting unsatisfactory results. A fact he inadvertently acknowledged by saying we're not keeping up with other countries in science and math. He maintained there are tens of thousands of jobs available but companies can't fill them because public schools aren't teaching students what they need to know. We spend huge sums on education already, so money and achievement must not be related.
Our politics have become so polarized and corrupted that a president of the United States cannot even attend an event devoted to drawing people closer to God and bridge partisan and cultural divides without being lectured about his policies. Last Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., Dr. Ben Carson, director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and a 2008 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, broke with a 61-year-old tradition and publicly disagreed with some of the president's policies, such as "Obamacare," taxation and the national debt. Disclosure: I have attended this event since 1971 and host a dinner the night before for members of the media. Several in the audience of 3,000 applauded Carson's remarks, which must have made the president feel even more uncomfortable.
An unsigned and undated Justice Department white paper, obtained by NBC News, reports The New York Times, "...is the most detailed analysis yet to come into public view regarding the Obama legal team's views about the lawfulness of killing, without a trial, an American citizen who executive branch officials decide is an operational leader of Al Qaeda or one of its allies." The proviso is they must pose "an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States." If "an informed, high-level official" of the government decides they are a threat, the paper says, and if capture is not feasible, they may be killed. There hasn't been a huge outcry from those on the left who attacked President Bush for his doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against terrorists. Recall, too, the vitriol directed at Vice President Dick Cheney for defending "enhanced interrogation" techniques on suspected terrorists in order to obtain information that might prevent new attacks against Americans.
Under pressure from religious and conservative groups, the Obama administration has offered another compromise on the issue of birth control coverage within the Affordable Care Act. While exempting churches and some religiously affiliated institutions, such as hospitals and universities, from supplying the coverage, the new proposal calls for their employees to receive stand-alone private insurance policies providing birth control coverage at no cost. Insurance companies will foot the bill, but only the naive can possibly think the cost won't find its way back to the institution in the form of higher health premiums. Numerous lawsuits filed against this and other portions of "Obamacare" will proceed and for good reason: the federal government seems intent on setting rules on matters of conscience and worse, defining what constitutes a church, or religious institution.
In the days of the late Mike Wallace, "60 Minutes" was known for hard-hitting, aggressive journalism that asked the questions viewers wanted answered and held the powerful accountable. The Jan. 27 program on which Steve Kroft interviewed President Obama (at his request, no less) and outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fell far short of that high standard. It was the kind of softball toss you might have expected if Oprah Winfrey or Barbara Walters had conducted the interview. The president said of Clinton, "...a lot of the successes we've had internationally have been because of her hard work." Kroft should have asked if one of those successes included Russia, a nation with which Clinton promised to push the "reset button." Yet, as the Washington Post reports, "A poisonous unraveling of U.S. relations with Russia in recent months represents more than the failure of President Obama's first-term attempt to "reset" badly frayed bilateral relations. It threatens pillars of Obama's second-term foreign policy agenda as well." And how about the Middle East, which is not exactly headed toward peace and stability?
Some political commentators are dancing on what they believe to be the grave of the Republican Party, claiming that the only way the GOP can have a viable future is for them to behave like Democrats. Last weekend, National Review magazine sponsored a "conservative summit" in Washington. They should have held it elsewhere. Prior to speaking at that event, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal addressed the Republican National Committee's annual winter meeting in Charlotte, N.C., where he proposed a new strategy for Republicans and conservatives that begins, not in Washington, but at the state level. Jindal said the Republican Party loses when it plays on the liberal Democrats' turf, allowing them to set the agenda.
Bill Clinton isn't often wrong when it comes to politics, but his assertion in his 1996 State of the Union Address that "the era of big government is over" was a bit premature. In light of President Obama's Second Inaugural Address, the era of big government has just begun. The reliably liberal columnist Dana Milbank of The Washington Post exhibited refreshing honesty when he wrote of Obama's speech, "...it failed to rise to the moment." The president's address was more campaign rhetoric than visionary. He even lowered himself to reference Mitt Romney's inelegant remark about "takers" versus makers. Obama's comment was petty and beneath the grandeur of the moment.
At last week's signing of "executive actions" designed to combat gun violence in America, President Obama, flanked by schoolchildren, said, "...when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable among us, we must act now." There's no doubt that children, especially schoolchildren, are vulnerable to all kinds of threats, but are they "the most vulnerable," as the president claimed, or is there another category of human life that qualifies for that designation? Forty years after a Supreme Court majority opened the door to legalized abortion, the number of aborted babies has reached roughly 55 million. Think of that. Fifty-five million potential what -- doctors, athletes, mothers and fathers who would add branches to family trees?
Baseball great Stan Musial died over the weekend. He was 92. He will be missed. In September 2007, I was invited to make a speech to a civic group in St. Louis. I told the person who invited me I would come on one condition: that I could meet baseball great Stan Musial. "That's no problem," he said. "We are members of the same sports club." I forget what I said in the speech -- and the audience probably has long forgotten, too, -- but I will always remember having lunch with Stan Musial. Stan regaled me with baseball stories.
One definition of "imperial" on dictionary.com is, "of the nature or rank of an emperor or supreme ruler." At his news conference Monday, a petulant, threatening and confrontational President Obama spoke like an emperor or supreme ruler. All that was missing was a scepter, a crown and a robe trimmed in ermine. This president exceeds even Bill Clinton in his ability to evade, prevaricate and dissemble. I didn't think that possible. Not only did he supply long answers to relatively easy questions, but much of what he said bore no relation to reality.
If laws were enough to deter criminal behavior prisons would be empty. The latest effort to "control" guns in America is as likely to deter someone intent on breaking the law as outlawing lust would affect one's libido. What's in a heart can't be controlled by restricting what's in a hand. Following the Newtown tragedy, President Obama vowed to seek the passage of an assault weapons ban and hastily assembled an administration-wide gun control task force, an effort that amounts to little more than a political act designed to impress what Rush Limbaugh calls "low-information voters." Government must be seen doing something to keep mad men from shooting children and moviegoers, even if that something will likely prove ineffective.
Biography isn't policy. President Obama's choice for secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel, former Nebraska Republican senator, has a resume most politicians can envy: a clean senatorial record, no ethical lapses and two purple hearts from a war many opposed and many more tried to avoid. Some think Hagel's 2006 comment about "the Jewish lobby" should disqualify him, believing it a code word for anti-Semitic sentiments. There is nothing wrong with criticizing the policies of any Israeli government. Israelis likely do this more than foreigners. It's just that Jews are rightly sensitive to the use of words like these because it may mean the person using them wishes to put the nation and policies of Israel on an equal footing with Israel's enemies who have vowed to destroy it.
