Columnist.
Most campaigns have a musical theme. Rick Santorum, who "suspended" his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday, might have selected the song "The Impossible Dream." Santorum's dream seemed improbable, if not impossible, from the start. He lost his last Senate race and had been out of office -- and out of mind -- for the last few years; not exactly a platform on which one usually runs for president. Political "experts" believed his chief foe, Mitt Romney, was unbeatable. Santorum played an important role by exposing some of Romney's weaknesses, but early enough that it will help Romney in the general election campaign.
BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Here, where Titanic, the massive White Star Line luxury liner, was built -- the joke for years has been, "It was fine when it left here." This year marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the ship "Not even God himself could sink...." and the centenary is being observed in diverse ways. There are solemn remembrances. A "Requiem for the Lost Souls of the Titanic" is scheduled for St. Anne's Cathedral and there's a Titanic Commemoration Service and Unveiling of the Titanic Memorial Gardens at City Hall.
Next week the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans (www.horatioalger.org) will celebrate its 65th anniversary. I confess I did not know of its existence until I read their ad in an airline magazine. I am familiar with Horatio Alger, the man, who inspired generations of boys, and later girls, with stories of people overcoming difficult circumstances to succeed, but I was ignorant of the association that carries on his vision.
The debate isn't new, but as the country awaits the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, suppose the conversation switched from a health care system devoted primarily to caring for the sick to one that gives top priority to finding cures for disease? A healthier public would sharply reduce expenses associated with catastrophic illness. There is also the issue of prevention so that while cures are pursued through research, people might order their lives in ways that give them the best chance of avoiding sickness altogether.
Politicians and presidents of both parties have occasionally suffered from open-mic syndrome, saying something when they thought the microphone was turned off they wished had not been made public. The latest to fall prey to that amplification of the mouth is President Obama. The president told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during their Monday meeting in Seoul, South Korea that once re-elected, he would have "more flexibility" to deal with missile defense. The president asked Medvedev to relay to incoming President Vladimir Putin his request for "patience" and "space."
If you watch the news in any large city you are probably desensitized to stories about crime involving young black men. Most nights there are reports about several of them getting shot; often, more than one dies. It might be a gang fight, a revenge killing, robbery or a drive-by. Someone is likely killed for their cellphone, or simply because they talked to the wrong girl at a party. Tragedy has become routine. Too many young black men die on our streets; too many rot in our prisons. Two weeks ago, the Chicago Tribune reported that at least 10 people, including a 6-year-old girl, were killed in weekend shootings in Chicago.
Are there no limits on government's power, no place where it cannot go? New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a former (thankfully) Republican, but in name only, has decided to limit food donations to city charities, including homeless shelters, because the government is unable to measure the nutritional value of the food.
Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear three days of oral arguments in the healthcare lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, otherwise known as "Obamacare." We now know the law was based on phony predictions about its cost. After promising the price would be under $940 billion over 10 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has issued a correction of its initial estimate, which appears to have been based on sleight of hand accounting tactics by congressional Democrats and the White House. CBO now projects the measure will cost taxpayers at least $1.76 trillion over a decade.
Rick Santorum deserves credit for his impressive primary victories in Mississippi and Alabama. Newt Gingrich led us to believe he would win both states. He didn't, but he has vowed to fight on as the "real" conservative candidate, as opposed to Mitt Romney who only "says" he is a conservative. Romney still has a substantial lead in delegates, but lags in one vital category: enthusiasm. If candidate Barack Obama gave his supporters the political equivalent of a sugar rush in 2008, Mitt Romney is broccoli. It's his Mormon faith; it's his perceived liberal tendencies while governor of Massachusetts; it's his inability as a very wealthy man to connect with average voters; it's all of the above and probably more.
You've got to hand it to Democrats and the Obama re-election campaign. Like a quarterback who looks left to draw the defense away from his intended target on the right, Democrats have managed to divert our attention. Instead of debating President Obama's dreadful record on just about everything, Democrats have managed to get Republicans talking about sex and morality. Rather than figuring out what to do about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, Democrats have put Republicans on the defensive over the use of vulgar words applied to liberal women. For their use of equally offensive or similar words applied to conservative women, they mostly get a pass, because this isn't about the words; it's about politics.
The first apology by Rush Limbaugh, posted on his website over the weekend, sounded forced, qualified, almost defensive. The second, broadcast live on his Monday show, sounded sincere and heartfelt. Rush Limbaugh did something not usually associated with either himself or bombastic talk radio. He apologized for calling a woman a "slut" and a "prostitute." The woman, 30-year-old Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown University, wants the Catholic school to pay for contraceptives in its insurance policy because, she says, she and her friends cannot afford the cost otherwise. Apparently Fluke is not aware that contraceptive pills, according to John McCormack of The Weekly Standard, "can be purchased for as low as $9 per month at a pharmacy near Georgetown's campus." Or that some places dispense them for free, along with condoms.
"Seeing is believing" is an ancient idiom. It teaches that a dispute can often be resolved by presenting physical evidence. Opponents of the ultrasound bill passed last week by the Virginia legislature and expected to be signed soon by Governor Bob McDonnell, thought they could stop the measure because they said it would require an invasive vaginal probe to determine the age of the fetus in an early-stage pregnancy. The bill passed after it was modified to mandate only a non-invasive procedure.
Most wars have a turning point that either signals the road to victory or the ditch of defeat. In Vietnam, the 1968 Tet Offensive by communist troops against South Vietnamese and American forces and their allies is regarded as the turning point in that conflict. Though communist forces suffered heavy losses, which would normally define defeat, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite and others in the U.S. media, portrayed the operation as an allied loss, thus encouraging not only the anti-war movement, but North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops who believed all they had to do was hang on until America grew tired of the war and quit.
There have been many "gaps" in modern politics. There is the gender gap, the generation gap and now the God gap, which is the gulf between people who take God's instructions seriously and those who don't. Which side of the gap you're on could influence your vote. The God gap is growing wider.
Pat Buchanan might have seen the end of the line coming at MSNBC when last month network president Phil Griffin commented on his latest book, "Suicide of a Superpower," by saying, "I don't think the ideas that (Buchanan) put forth are appropriate for the national dialogue, much less on MSNBC." When Buchanan was let go last week after 10 years as a commentator on the network, no one was surprised.
Black History Month honors the achievements of African Americans throughout history and that is a good thing. Unfortunately, a reliance on family and faith, which allowed many African Americans to survive the horrors of Reconstruction, racial injustice and violent acts of discrimination, has become a casualty of the modern welfare state, which has contributed to the destruction of family cohesion, supplanted faith in God with faith in government and fashioned many African-Americans into a Democratic voting bloc that has not improved the lot of the impoverished among them.
When one writes about moral convictions, it's probably a good idea to consistently live up to them. That way people can still disagree with your convictions, but they have a difficult time accusing you of hypocrisy. Last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, I failed to live up to one of my highest principles. Here's the background. The story about the Obama administration's attempt to force Catholic and other faith-based institutions to offer employees free contraception in their health care coverage was still fresh. I was asked to be on a panel before what looked like a crowd of about 1,000 conservatives, hungry for "red meat."
"Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?" -- Thomas Jefferson "The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." -- Patrick Henry Liberty is always tenuous. Those who enjoy it seem to be a minority in the world. That's why liberty must not only be preserved by those who currently benefit from it; it must also be fought for and constantly renewed for future generations, because there are always those who wish to restrict or eliminate our freedoms.
The Obama administration is touting the latest unemployment numbers released last week by the U.S. Department of Labor as proof its policies are working. But a closer look at the actual number of able-bodied people who are willing to work, but are not, reveals a different picture. As economist John R. Lott has written, not only is the drop in the unemployment rate from 8.5 percent to 8.3 percent still half a percentage point higher than when President Obama took office three years ago, the number of unemployed is higher. Compared to January 2009 when 11.6 million Americans were jobless, today, writes Lott, "there are 12.8 million unemployed and 43 percent have been out of a job for more than six months. The average length of unemployment has increased dramatically since the recovery started. Back in June 2009, 'only' 29 percent of the unemployed had been unemployed longer than six months."
For 60 years the National Prayer Breakfast has been a nonpolitical event where speakers put aside their earthly biases and focus on a Higher Authority. Last Thursday, President Obama departed from that tradition to claim the endorsement of Jesus for raising taxes. It beat the endorsement of Mitt Romney by Donald Trump.
