Columnist.
Did any of the political cognoscenti consult Real Clear Politics last Thursday? Those who did found evidence that Donald Trump's recent charges against Hillary Clinton for spending years as an "enabler" to her husband while committing "very seedy" behavior is irrefutable. Moreover, the evidence alluded to has been contained in a book right under our noses. The book was written by David Brock — now a Hillary Clinton champion — and Brock is still quite proud of the book. He actually has boasted that, "reviewers had found [the book] to be fair, well-balanced, and accurate" — such reviewers as The Washington Post and The New York Times. Why no one has consulted it is mysterious. Is the press really that lazy?
This week, three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Hillary Clinton spent valuable time during an appearance on "Face the Nation" swatting down stories that surfaced Friday. Early on Friday morning when most Americans are asleep, save second-story men, the State Department released thousands of Clinton's emails. In one she seemed to be asking her aide, Jake Sullivan, to send her classified information across a "nonsecure" line. That is to say, across her personal server. She was impatient to read the email's contents and could not wait for it to be sent on a secure line. That strikes a lot of those who follow such matters as a clear breach of the law regarding the handling of classified information, or perhaps I should say another clear breach of the law regarding the use of classified information. On "Face the Nation" Clinton termed the growing imbroglio a "non-issue."
Chicago has always struck me as one of the most affluent cities in the world. Growing up in Chicagoland, I saw little poverty in the city at the foot of glistening Lake Michigan. I am sure poverty was there, but Chicago in the 1960s seemed rich and abundant with opportunity. Alas, that was long ago. Chicago is still affluent at least on its north side and in the environs around Michigan Avenue, the city's Magnificent Mile. Yet, statistics tell us something different when we consider Chicago as a whole. Its poor neighborhoods are desperate.
To those of us who have followed the ongoing Clinton Saga, which now reaches back almost 25 years, Hillary Rodham Clinton's computer server promises to become as historic as Monica Lewinsky's stained dress. That is to say, that her server may indeed become as significant to her presidential prospects as Lewinsky's dress was to Bill Clinton's prospects for impeachment.
It is apparently a little-known fact in the Obama administration that girls are weaker than boys and that grown women are weaker than grown men. Moreover, women training for combat positions suffer physical injuries at twice the rate of men, and they suffer significantly higher rates of mental disorders such as depression and anxiety after exposure to combat. Of course, you probably knew this by simple observation or by reading the sports page and noting that women's athletic records are significantly lower than men's records. But then, you are not in the Obama administration.
Ladies and gentlemen, he has done it again. Donald Trump has, with a few lines uttered in his gamy style, set off a cacophonous controversy that threatens to overwhelm just about every other controversy in this controversy-bountiful nation. It has even overwhelmed global warming or climate change, or whatever they are choosing to call the delusion this time. Last week, Trump called for a 10-year moratorium on Muslim migration into America, and all hell broke loose. In light of Muslim violence around the world this brouhaha caught me off guard, especially when one considers the violence in Texas, Tennessee and most recently San Bernardino, California. In Paris, the violence was against unarmed civilians by Muslims both indigenous and foreign born. In San Bernardino, it was much the same. Is it not time to at least temporarily tighten the immigration laws?
Last week, President Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States and the only one who reportedly leaves no shadow, ventured forth to Paris to join 196 other national leaders on official business. Last month in the City of Light, 129 people were murdered and 352 wounded by crazed Islamofascists. Yet President Obama did not go to Paris to organize the world against Islamofascists, whose headquarters are just a B-52's flight to Syria and Iraq. He did not go to Paris to urge stricter gun control laws on the French, which is his usual response to gun violence. No, he journeyed to Paris with the aforementioned world leaders to devise ways that they might manage climate control.
Truth be told, I once rather admired Vladimir Putin, as George W. Bush rather admired him. I cannot say, as Bush can, that I looked into his eyes and "was able to get a sense of his soul." But his nation has suffered through a long century, when the Western world had achieved so much. True, the Russian despots put the Western world through dreadful travail, but in terms of wealth and happiness, we did OK. The 20th century has been the best, by far, for the West — at least in material terms. Meanwhile, the Russian despots were veritable jailers to their countrymen and they cost them dearly. At the end of the Cold War, Russia was an emerging nation.
I was thumbing through an old magazine over the weekend. It was 47 years old to be exact, and I came across a surprisingly prescient piece entitled wittily, "The Arab, the Jew, and the Pickle." What particularly caught my eye was that the piece was written by me in what is now called The American Spectator. Imagine that. In it, I argued that Israel had no other choice but to resist its enemies. They were all around little Israel and they were hostile to the utmost. Any sign of weakness would put the state of Israel in mortal danger.
So it has come to this. The party that once nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Harry S. Truman to win the presidency — the party that once nominated men of the stature of Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey to contest the presidency — is now left with the Three Stooges vying for the highest office in the land. There they stood on a stage in Des Moines, Iowa last Saturday night. The Republican Party had put up eight plausible presidential candidates on a stage on Nov. 10. They even had a second tier debate a few hours earlier featuring candidates who did not make the cut but who could each trounce any of the Democrats' Three Stooges in the 2016 election. Ladies and gentleman, you heard it first here. The 2016 results are in.
Last week, I wrote in this column that Dr. Ben Carson, a leading Republican candidate for the presidency, was an "American hero." I pronounced him thus even as the roof was falling in on his candidacy. Or was it? His numbers in the polls have held up. As the hullabaloo grew in the media, millions of dollars poured into his campaign from supporters all over the country. A week after it all began, the Carson campaign still appears formidable. Is his campaign really in trouble or has the crafty neurosurgeon-turned-presidential-candidate hit upon yet another tactic to win the election? Is he turning the maniacal nitpicking of the press to his political advantage?
Dr. Ben Carson is an American hero. He is also a frontrunner in the Republican race for the White House. What is more he is black, God-fearing, law-abiding and a distinguished neurosurgeon. Weighing the most important things in life, he is everything you would want in an American man. Yet his road in life has not been without challenges. As a young boy growing up in Detroit, he now says he had temper-management difficulties — curiously, this admission caused laughter among middle-class liberal pundits.
We are told that our political system here in Washington is "broken." The left and the right do not get along, and usually it is because the right is obdurately partisan. Actually, it is not the political system that is broken. It is much wider than the political system. It is the political culture, that is to say: the politicians, the operatives, the financial supporters and the voters (left and right). It is also the commentators, the reporters, the editors; in a word the media (left and right). The left-wing press sees things one way and reports on it. The right-wing press sees things differently and reports on it. Neither side agrees on almost anything.
All patriotic, civic-minded Americans at this point in the electoral cycle have seen quite enough of our presidential aspirants on the debate stage. For a certitude, we have seen enough of the Democrats! One evening of them is enough for me. Yet the question arises: What could possibly motivate them? Why do they call for more federal expenditures on infrastructure and health care and family leave, and weekends with pay or why not overtime pay?
Here we are again with Hillary Rodham Clinton confronted by charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and general improbity. Such behavior has been going on with her for a long time. Some journalists who today chronicle the charges facing the Clintons were not even born when it all began.
Regarding last week's mass murder in Oregon, what is there to say that is new? There was a day in America when such an atrocity was almost unheard of. There were family feuds, mafia murders, and I guess what were called juvenile delinquent murders, though they were comparatively rare and for the most part ignored.
I write as a practicing Roman Catholic. I watched the pope in America last week with pride. All the virtues that he so admirably embodies are virtues I strive to embody, too — though he will have to excuse me on one or two. In the case of chastity, I opted for marriage, admittedly the less celebrated heterosexual type of marriage, but marriage nonetheless. Then there is humility. Frankly, I have never been able to get the hang of it. I mean, what is in it for me? I suppose it is ideal to have a humble pope, but I cannot imagine a humble editor in chief, much less a humble columnist.
Hold on to your toupees, the conservative intellectuals are in a stew. One candidate in the race for the Republican presidential nomination is not playing by the rules. He is rude and crude and having a very good time of it. Oh, and by the way, he is leading the field by a lot. He has 29 percent of the vote among Republicans, according to an NBC online survey the other day. His next closest opponent is Dr. Ben Carson, with 14 percent, and after that Carly Fiorina, with 11 percent. Both, incidentally, are new to politics, as is the target of the conservative intellectuals' wrath, Donald Trump. Interestingly, the intellectuals are markedly out of touch with the conservative rank and file.
My wife and I are concluding our trip through Spain in a grand way. I am bowing to her wish that we see the celebrated Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. The museum is devoted to the most up-to-date modern art, and she likes modern art. I like it, too. It usually shows me how our arty elites have decayed, and how some of our billionaire philanthropists are being taken to the cleaners by conmen and self-promoters. Far better that they should give their billions to the hucksters of art rather than some other category of modern crank, say the urban terrorists or jihadists.
Here I am out in the Spanish hinterland, and John Von Kannon, one of the giants of the conservative movement, has passed on. Known to The Spectator followers as the Baron Von Kannon, he was one of my dearest friends and wisest advisers for nearly 50 years. He will be a loss for me and for the conservative movement, but it was God's call. Today, these 48 years seem fleeting. The Baron went to Washington with what eventually numbered a dozen Indiana University graduates to advance the conservative movement. Many of those students started with me at The American Spectator there in Bloomington, Ind. None was more vital than the Baron. He hawked the magazine on campus, raised money for it and was responsible for more than a few of our greatest gags. Then he went on to raise money for the Heritage Foundation, where he raised more than a billion dollars.
