Columnist.
When Chief Justice John Roberts upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare, he didn't just betray conservatives. His twisted legal logic also betrayed the American people by opening the door to the largest expansion of federal power since Social Security was enacted. Roberts and his new liberal soul-mates decided it's OK for the federal government to tax us if we don't do what Washington's bullies and nannies want us to do -- or think is good for us. Lord knows, the feds have already taxed us to death -- and after death, too -- on everything from capital gains to booze. If they can "penalize" us for not buying health care insurance, what's next? Tax us if we don't buy a smaller house? If we don't buy an electric car? How about if we don't buy exercise equipment? Or eat broccoli? Or wear Earth Shoes or condoms? There'll be no end to it.
"Rubio, Rubio, Rubio." You hear the chants all across the country. On talk shows, on cable TV, on blogs and in op-ed columns, everyone with a conservative bone in his body is urging presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney to choose the smart and dashing Marco Rubio as his vice president. The conservative crowd's clamor for Rubio is beginning to worry me. It could backfire. For one thing, it's setting up Romney for a disaster. If he doesn't choose Rubio -- and I would agree with that decision -- it's going to disappoint a lot of Republican voters who think Rubio is the key to de-electing President Obama. And when voters are disappointed, they don't show up to vote. Don't get me wrong. Rubio is great, maybe the best young talent in the Republican draft pool. The first-term Florida senator is already a superstar and ready for the big leagues -- and that's the biggest problem I have with picking him.
If you don't like something or want to get something done, you don't let little things like the Constitution get in your way. For more than three years Emperor Obama has been behaving as if the separation of powers is a pesky fly to be swatted away whenever it becomes too annoying. If Congress doesn't pass the legislation he desires, he uses his executive powers and regulatory agencies to get his way. If he doesn't like a law or thinks it's unconstitutional, he tells his minions and bureaucrats not to enforce it. In the past Emperor Obama used the EPA to create new cap-and-trade laws and the Department of Health and Human Services to force Catholics and other religious groups to go against their own consciences and provide their employees with abortion and birth-control coverage in their health care packages.
Everyone in the Washington-New York Axis of Evil knows that's why there has been a string of White House national security leaks. Each of the leaks has been a transparent attempt to pump up President Obama as a tough warrior who deserves re-election because he's been intimately involved in the killing of Osama bin Laden, the cyber-sabotage of Iran's nuclear program, and choosing which specific terrorist gets blasted to heaven by a U.S. drone. Everyone also knows the leaks have damaged our ability to operate our future military and counter-terror operations, and they put our intelligence agents and commandos at risk. And everyone but Obama press spokesman Jay Carney knows exactly where the leaks were authorized -- the White House. The only big mystery left to solve is who the happy leaker is.
No wonder Republicans can't even get 40 percent of Latino votes in a presidential election. When Mitt Romney made his first big push to appeal to Latinos earlier this week in Texas, he hammered the "Obama economy" for being "particularly hard on Hispanic businesses and Hispanic Americans." He pointed out the grim statistics -- an unemployment rate for Latinos of 11 percent and a poverty rate of 30 percent. And he stressed that the Obama regime's economic policies are hostile to the small businesses and entrepreneurs that traditionally provide many of the jobs in the Hispanic community. Everything Romney said was true. But he delivered the wrong message in the wrong place. Texas is a Republican stronghold. Romney couldn't lose the Lone Star State this fall if he promised on Day One of his presidency to outlaw cattle, oil and gas.
We'll never know what Ronald Reagan would have done with WhiteHouse.gov, the official website of the White House But I know my father wouldn't be abusing it the way Barack Obama is. WhiteHouse.gov is owned and operated by the federal government, but the incumbent gets to run it and design it to his own political tastes. Like nearly anything the federal government touches, the White House website is a decent idea gone bad.
Sheep and chickens. That's what America's greatest corporations have become.
The only person I know who is better off today than he was four years ago is President Obama. He's making more money, living in a bigger house and playing more golf. And when his wife goes on a shopping spree with her girlfriends, it's to Spain on the taxpayer's dime. If you asked President Obama if he's better off today, he'd say, "Hell, yeah! And we don't want it to stop!" Meanwhile, as the president skates through the Great Recession, his failure to get the economy back on track has turned a country known for its optimism and belief in a better future into a nation of pessimists.
Cuba is a one-party state. North Korea is a one-party state. California is a one-party state. I'm not trying to draw any false parallels. But I've noticed bad things happen when one political party has complete control of a government for too long, whether it's the Communist Party that's wrecked Cuba for 50 years or the Democrat Party that's wrecked California for 40. So far, the Democrat monopoly in Sacramento has done nothing to cause Californians who seek greater freedom, lower taxes and a better business climate to begin taking rafts to Oregon or Mexico. But give the Democrats time.
don't know if it's Dodd-Frank. Or if it's Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd themselves. Or if it's just the big bankers. But the reality is, our banking system is completely screwed up when it comes to getting a home loan. The problem used to be that the banks, in collusion with a federal government, made bad loans to bad people. That's what helped bring us the housing bubble and the inevitable bust that followed.
Who should we tar and feather for the scandalous spending spree at that General Services Administration "conference" in Nevada two years ago? Whose fault is it that a bunch of GSA bureaucrats wasted money on $44 breakfasts, a clown and a $75,000 bicycle-building exercise? Not the GSA's bosses. Not the Obama administration. I pin the blame on Watergate and Congress.
You told some newspapers editors last week that if Ronald Reagan were running for president today "he could not get through the Republican primary." I know what you were up to. You were trying to enlist Ronald Reagan in your tireless effort to get the GOP's presidential candidates to violate their principles. You want them to defect to your side and come out in favor of raising taxes to reduce the record budget deficits you've created for our grandchildren with your reckless spending.
President Obama wants his dear friend Vlad the Russian not to worry about the details of how the American missile defense system in Europe will be designed and implemented. Once he gets re-elected, the president said, he'll have more "flexibility" to deal with Moscow's concern that the missile system, which is intended to guard Europe from attack by rogue nations like Iran, is a threat to Russia's strategic security.
I don't know about you, but watching the Republican primary season is making me feel like a judge on the "The Gong Show." I watched or listened to all three candidates after Tuesday night's Illinois primary. I'm still crying. If Mitt, Newt and Rick had given those uninspiring speeches on Chuck Barris' twisted 1970s amateur talent show, the celebrity panelists would have gang-gonged them in 30 seconds.
In less than 50 years they ruined my home state. They over-taxed it, over-regulated it and bankrupted it. They strangled its vibrant economy, destroyed its education system and let its infrastructure crumble. Who are these people who've turned the Golden State into Greece? Not Big Business. Not the rich. Not the poor. Not millions of immigrants from Des Moines or Juarez. "They" are the career politicians in Sacramento. Their excessive lawmaking, taxing and spending have transformed California into a European welfare state with a grim future.
We all need to calm down and watch our mouths. Last week Rush Limbaugh referred to a Georgetown University law student who had testified to Congress about contraception as a slut. Rush did the right thing. He apologized. Last year Ed Schultz referred to talk-show host Laura Ingraham as a slut. Ed also did the right thing. He apologized. Last year political "funnyman" Bill Maher of HBO referred to Sara Palin as a "c...." Maher, of course, didn't do the right thing. He didn't apologize then -- and he swears he never will.
When will they stop asking Republicans like me about our party's choice for vice president? In every presidential election I've been involved in, the press and ordinary people are always asking, "Who will it be? Who will the presidential nominee choose for VP?" It happened again Tuesday when I appeared on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" with Morgan and Andrew Breitbart, the commentator and boss of the news aggregator Breitbart.com.
Another tremendously talented American who had riches and fame beyond most people's dreams has killed herself with drugs. Whitney Houston's life was wrecked and cut tragically short at 48 because she became mired in the self-destructive hell of drug use. In the late 1970s my birth brother was living in L.A. and working as a writer on "Laverne & Shirley," the number one-rated TV show in the country. It was pretty heady stuff for a 21-year-old kid from Ohio.
I am an adopted son. I am a very lucky adopted son. And as an adopted son I want all adoptees like me to have the same wonderful adoptive parents I was lucky enough to have. My biological mother was an unmarried young woman from Ohio who had an affair with a married man. It was 1945 -- my biological father was in the Army and was shipped off to France to fight in the war while my mother went to California to give birth to me. My mother made the painful decision to put me up for adoption. Thankfully, I was adopted by none other than the actor Ronald Reagan and his then-wife Jane Wyman. No youngster ever had more loving parents, despite their divorce.
