Columnist.
It is easy enough for those in the media to recite the words "nous sommes Charlie Hebdo" in solidarity with the victims of Wednesday's terror attack on the editorial offices of a satirical magazine in Paris. But uttering slogans is cheap. In the wake of the killings, most major media in the U.S. have refused to show the cartoons that the terrorists claimed warranted the slaughter of 10 journalists and two police officers. It is possible to see the cartoons online, if one goes to the trouble to search for them. And a few media outlets have published one or more. The Washington Post did so on Thursday -- and perhaps others will follow their lead in the days to come. But a host of media organizations have demurred, including CNN, the Associated Press, Fox News Channel and The New York Times.
The agreement this week between the governments of Iraq and Iran to enter a formal relationship to fight the Islamic State group should be deeply troubling to the United States. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is a grave threat to the region and is responsible for the horrifying beheading of American journalists and an aid worker, as well as the brutal slaughter of countless innocent Muslims and Christians in Syria and Iraq. But as grave a threat as the Islamic State is, Iran is a much greater threat -- especially if it acquires nuclear weapons. In November, the U.S. decided to extend nuclear talks with the Iranians, despite stalling on the part of the mullahs. The practical effect of the decision is to give the Iranians more time to make a bomb.
The week between Christmas and New Year's used to be one of my favorites. It was my end-of-year respite at work. I looked forward to quiet days in my office, with few phone calls, no visitors and a relaxed dress code. Time to clean my desk, pack up books I'd bought but never got around to reading (and never would) and throw out the stack of studies and policy papers that might have made good columns but had grown stale. Not anymore. The first change came a couple of decades ago, when I stopped going into an office -- other than the one a few feet from my bedroom. Now I look forward to dressing up, not dressing down. And as for carving out time to be alone, my bigger challenge is making sure I see colleagues more than a few times a year.
It may not be too early for President Obama to start job-hunting given his lame duck status, and I have a suggestion for the perfect fit. He should look into a job at Sony Pictures. The president and the company are on the same page when it comes to appeasing dictators. This week the president announced he is giving Cuban President Raul Castro pretty much everything the dictator wants in return for the release of an imprisoned American, whose captivity was proof of the tyrannical regime's human rights violations. On the same day, Sony Pictures announced it is canceling the release of a comedy about North Korean President Kim Jong Un in response to threats against theaters scheduled to show the film on Christmas Day. It would be funny if the stakes weren't so deadly serious.
Rolling Stone magazine has now apologized, sort of, for publishing a lurid account of a gang rape at a fraternity at the University of Virginia that -- it has become increasingly clear -- never happened. But the larger story is why so many people -- editors, readers and university officials -- bought the story in the first place. Within three days of publication of the fantastical account, which read more like third-rate pulp fiction than investigative journalism, the university president had suspended all Greek activities on campus. As with the Red Queen from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," it was "sentence first -- verdict afterwards."
The grand jury system -- indeed, the criminal jury system overall -- is not perfect. And while I think the grand jury in Ferguson got it right by not indicting Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown, based on the physical evidence and credible testimony from actual witnesses, the outcome of a grand jury in New York City this week in the death of Eric Garner is another matter. The two cases are worlds apart in terms of the actions of the men who died and the officers who caused their deaths. Unfortunately, on both sides of the argument, proponents seem all too ready to adopt a narrative that fits their politics rather than examining the facts.
Now that President Obama has acted to defer deportation for some four to five million illegal immigrants, all eyes will be on the Republican Party's response. How they handle the challenge may well shape the future of the party and the country. Provocateurs will urge defiance. Retiring Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn even suggested, "You're going to see -- hopefully not -- but you could see instances of anarchy. You could see violence." More likely will be attempts to defund the president's order and legal challenges to his constitutional authority. I would counsel a different reaction: Don't take the bait.
President Obama is expected to act in the next few days to grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, fulfilling a promise he made before the election. Giving legal status to people who have lived and worked in the United States for a decade or more, paid taxes, kept out of trouble, contributed to their local economies, and raised children who are American citizens is the right and moral thing to do. But the right thing to do is not necessarily legal when it means bypassing Congress -- and Obama's decision has as much to do with politics as it does morality.
The GOP victory Election Night was the easy part. Now comes the real work: forging an agenda that will solidify Republican gains over the next two years. Exit polls make clear that dissatisfaction with President Obama drove this election. As the president famously said in October, "I am not on the ballot this fall. ... But make no mistake: These policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them." The president's words came true, but not quite in the way he intended. Come 2016, however, Republicans will have to run on what they've accomplished legislatively and what a different agenda a Republican would bring to the White House. But the electorate will be significantly broader than the one that went to the polls on Tuesday.
As Colorado goes Election Night, so goes the nation -- maybe. The Centennial State is clearly a barometer of Barack Obama's falling popularity. The man who began his meteoric rise as the Democratic presidential nominee in Denver's stadium in 2008 has lost much of his luster with Colorado voters and appears to be bringing down other Democrats with him. Polls show Republican Cory Gardner ahead by seven points in his race to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, and GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez is neck and neck with sitting Gov. John HIckenlooper. But before Republicans pop the champagne corks, it is worth considering the big wild card in this election.
One of the surprising and welcome shifts in the political landscape this election cycle is that high-profile Republican candidates, by and large, have not made opposition to immigration reform a major focus of their campaigns. With the exception of incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts in Kansas and challenger Scott Brown in New Hampshire, most GOP candidates haven't been beating the anti-illegal immigration drum to drive their base to the polls. But even these notable exceptions suggest that immigration doesn't carry quite the punch it once did. Both Roberts and Brown invoked the specter of illegal immigration when they became desperate to turn around flailing campaigns -- a tactic Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes has also tried in Kentucky, claiming Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is pro-amnesty.
It's time to take a deep breath. Ebola is an awful disease that has tragically infected a handful of Americans. Though it deserves the full attention of our medical community -- most importantly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- it should not be dominating our news, preoccupying our president and other political leaders, and frightening Americans into believing an epidemic on U.S. soil is just around the corner. A Washington Post poll this week showed that two-thirds of Americans fear an epidemic in the U.S., and 4 in 10 said they are somewhat or very worried that a family member may contract the disease. This is simply not going to happen.
It should come as no surprise that Turkey so far refuses to put boots on the ground to fight the ISIS takeover of Kobane, a beseiged Kurdish town across Turkey's border with Syria. While there is much to criticize about our erstwhile NATO ally's government, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has clearly made a calculation that he can't trust the United States -- or more accurately, that he can't trust this administration. And why should he? The level of confusion, incompetence and lack of will President Obama has demonstrated in dealing with the multiple crises that face us in the Middle East is mind numbing. He has ordered airstrikes against ISIS, too late and too few, but he has refused to allow the military to do its job well. Without Special Forces spotters on the ground, an air campaign cannot be entirely effective.
It's easy to ignore, rarely making headlines or causing the average American lost sleep, but North Korea deserves our attention. This week, the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University released a report showing satellite images of construction of what appears to be an intercontinental ballistic missile launch site. The facility was previously used to launch an orbiting space satellite, but images now show heavy construction at the site, which analysts believe are consistent with plans to launch an ICBM now in development. The progress on North Korea's nuclear program is remarkable given the general state of deprivation in the nation. A famine devastated the country in the mid-1990s, and it never fully recovered. North Korea's 25 million people must still rely heavily on foreign assistance for basic food staples, mostly from China. One 2011 study of North Korea's energy consumption shows that the entire country consumes less energy than Washington, D.C., a point made famous by nighttime satellite photos that depict a black hole on the northern end of the Korean peninsula, while the prosperous south shines brightly.
What a difference a year makes. In September 2013, President Barack Obama bragged to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, "The world is more stable than it was five years ago." This week, the president again addressed the U.N. delegates, but claims that the world is somehow more stable thanks to his leadership were, understandably, missing. It is difficult to know whether President Obama has finally learned his lesson or not. The man's hubris knows no bounds. Perhaps now he thinks he can vanquish Islamic extremism on his terms -- a few bombs here, a cruise missile there, a shipment of small arms to pro-Western fighters on the ground elsewhere.
Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson's arrest on child abuse charges has sparked a huge debate about corporal punishment, one that exposes deep cultural rifts. I have to admit I've been surprised -- no, shocked -- at those who've jumped to the 217-pound football player's defense. Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity said on his show this week, "I don't want to see this guy get a felony. I don't want to see this guy lose his job. ... He deserves parenting classes." Hannity followed up his defense by taking off his belt and slapping the desk to show how he was beaten as a child, and also described being punched in the face by his dad. "I deserved it," he said.
I'm not much of a football fan, never have been, but I've lived most of my life in households where games dominated family schedules during football season. My father was a Notre Dame and Denver Broncos fan. My husband and three sons are diehard Redskins fans, and at least one of them wouldn't miss a University of Maryland game for anything. But try as they might, they've never managed to get me to sit down and watch with them, at least not an entire game, not even the Super Bowl. But I'll gladly sit through basketball and baseball games, and I even like attending Washington Nationals games when I get the chance.
President Obama, in the past, has demonstrated a way with written words, and he's done so again, this time in a joint op-ed with UK Prime Minister David Cameron for the London Times published on the eve of this week's NATO meeting in Wales. Promising that "we will not be cowed" by ISIS, the Islamist group that has beheaded two American journalists, the president and prime minister declared: "Those who want to adopt an isolationist approach misunderstand the nature of security in the 21st century. Developments in other parts of the world, particularly in Iraq and Syria, threaten our security at home." But the question is whether Obama has the will to live up to those words --even on his own, if our allies, including his co-author, will not join us. But to do so, the president would have to possess characteristics he's shown he lacks over the past five and a half years: an interest in and understanding of foreign policy, the humility to know what he doesn't know and the leadership to forgo partisanship in the national interest.
After weeks of national angst generated when a white police officer shot an unarmed black man on the streets of Ferguson, Mo., perhaps it is time we have an honest discussion about race in America. But if we do so, the voices should not be restricted to those who carry a sense of racial grievance and blame racism as the root cause of all the problems that afflict the black community. Jason Riley, a Wall Street Journal editorial board member and author of "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks To Succeed," is certainly one man who should be listened to.
Words matter -- and never more so than when race is involved. For more than a week, we have been repeatedly told that a white police officer shot and killed an "unarmed black teenager" on a street in Ferguson, Missouri. The words conjure the image of a kid gunned down because of the color of his skin by a trigger-happy white cop. And now we have the highest law enforcement official in the nation reinforcing this narrative. After visiting Ferguson this week to initiate a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting, Attorney General Eric Holder declared that he understands the distrust of police that many blacks feel.
