Columnist.
Talk about March Madness. The 31st is the deadline for signing up for ObamaCare, which has made the buying and selling of health insurance one of the most complicated, deceptive disasters in the history of Big Government. The president could always whip out his Hugo Chavez pen again at the last minute and re-write another rotten plank of his Affordable Care Act. But as it stands now, people will have to enroll in the ACA by the end of this month or most of them will not be eligible to get government insurance until January of 2015.
I disagree with some of Rand Paul's more libertarian positions, especially on social issues. And I'm certainly not endorsing him or anyone else to be the Republican nominee for president at this time. But Sen. Paul of Kentucky did two things recently that won my favor. He showed the 2,500 conservative activists at the CPAC conference last weekend that he understands what the GOP must do if it wants to take the Senate this fall and win back the White House. And then on Monday he wrote a good column for Breitbart.com calling for his fellow Republican presidential wannabes to, as the headline said, "Stop warping Ronald Reagan's foreign policy."
Mr. Putin's quick takeover of the Crimean peninsula was no surprise to me. Neither was the Obama administration's half-butted reaction on Tuesday. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that to show our support for Poland and the Baltic states after Russia's intervention in Ukraine, the we will train more Polish pilots and expand our role in NATO's air policing mission over their territories. I'm sure Comrade Putin is quaking in his combat boots.
Someone better send John Kerry a high school geography textbook. Our brilliant Secretary of State doesn't seem to know that California is about two-thirds desert. Based on his recent statements about the cause of my home state's 13-month drought, Kerry doesn't know anything about California's history or climate, either.
In the darkest recesses of our minds we have always known that monsters exist. It is only when we are involuntarily thrust into an unfolding human tragedy that shocks our senses and devastates our hearts that we truly acknowledge their presence. Our collective eyes have been opened by the discovery of monsters lurking at Penn State University in the form of Jerry Sandusky, in an Ohio house of horrors run by Ariel Castro, and the list goes on. But have we as a society drifted into a false sense of security with the removal of these harbingers of evil or do we realize that the next monster is just waiting to strike? The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that there are currently 617,000 registered sex offenders in the United States, and typically 100,000 of those are unaccounted for.
I admit I dozed off once or twice. And for the first half-hour I thought I was watching a rerun of last year's State of the Union address. But I hung in there and Tuesday night turned out to be one of President Obama's funniest addresses yet. He didn't tell any jokes, not on purpose anyway.
On February 2 of this year, thousands will gather at Met Life Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., to watch the Seattle Seahawks battle the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII. As the athletes take the field and the fans cheer, they will be oblivious to the tragedy unfolding around them in dark hotel rooms across East Rutherford. Sex trafficking has become a stealth parasite that attaches itself to major sporting events, taking advantage of a large number of fans and the demand for illicit sex. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott echoed the stunning revelation, gripping so many with his statement about the 2011 Super Bowl in Dallas: "It's commonly known as the single largest human trafficking incident in the United States."
Let me get this straight. For five years Barrack Obama has been president. For five years he's demonstrated -- with amazing consistency -- that he has no clue what we need to get out of the ditch and back on the road to real economic recovery. He's repeatedly demonstrated that he can't work with a divided Congress and he can't, or just plain won't, lean on Harry Reid to allow the Senate to vote on the stack of jobs bills that has been sent over by the House.
The state of California tossed the conservative media another hunk of red meat last week when its Supreme Court granted an illegal alien a law license. You probably heard plenty of outrage on your favorite talk-radio show about how the liberal Left Coast judges rewarded a lawbreaking immigrant instead of deporting him or throwing him in jail. Mindless outrage is probably all you heard.
Will Republicans ever learn? Will they get their own house in order in time to take control of the Senate in 2014 and the White House in 2016? Will they stop fighting with one another in public over internal family matters and focus the GOP's collective eye on those crucial political prizes before it's too late to save the country? It sure doesn't look like it.
The whole world mourns Nelson Mandela. Rightly. But, as usual, some politically and historically challenged liberals have seen the passing of a great man of history as a chance to take more cheap potshots at Ronald Reagan. One human rights attorney, Gay McDougall, made a fool of herself on "Good Morning America."
Trust ain't what it used to be in America. Back in 1972, when the folks conducting the General Social Survey first asked a sampling of Americans if they trusted their countrymen, about half said they did. Last year, when the same research outfit asked the same set of questions, only a third of our fellow Americans said they trusted one another. The GSS folks found that Americans -- black and white, rich or poor -- are more leery, suspicious and mistrustful of others than ever before.
It's been an up and down, rough and tumble, crazy, sad, frustrating year for America the Beautiful so far. As usual, except for the parade of hurricanes, tornados, fires and floods, most of the trouble and strife in our lives came from the professional nincompoops and evildoers in Washington. The Obama regime and its congressional flunkies and loyal bureaucrats did their best to make our lives worse while the mainstream media pretended, as usual, not to notice.
Come on, Oprah. You're way too smart to be this stupid. When are you going to get off this kick about Barack Obama being disrespected more than previous presidents just because he is a black man? It's getting embarrassing, Oprah.
America finally understands Obamacare. Day after day, the president's signature legislative achievement is proving to be the federal fiasco everyone predicted it would be. Every Democrat -- including the president's liberal cheerleaders in the media, the Democrats in Congress and Bill Clinton -- knows it's become a major political disaster for their party.
Dear Mr. President, Thank you, thank you -- sort of. You have been able to do something my father was never able to do -- bring my sister Patti and me together politically.
While we watch the S.S. Obamacare sink beneath the waves, and while we watch the White House explain why its signature legislative "achievement" is not the titanic disaster we all knew it would be, I have some advice for my fellow Republicans. Shut up. Quit shooting Cruz missiles at each other. And take aim at the real enemy -- the Democrats and their awful agenda for America.
A lot of people are asking what the heck is wrong with the Republican Party. What isn't? That's no joke. Not for the GOP, not for the country. The party of Ronald Reagan is getting weaker by the week.
"Waaaaa! You're not playing fair!" "Waaaaa! You're going to bankrupt America!" "Waaaaa! You guys started it!" The crybabies in Washington are at it again.
Let the crisis continue. Let the standoff between the Democrats and the Republicans over Obamacare drag on for as many weeks or months as necessary to wake up the American people. Let millions struggle daily to sign up online for the government health care that they -- but not their elected representatives in Congress -- are being forced by their government to buy.
