Columnist.
Is the realistic aspiration to own a home still central to the American dream or is it fading away like so many other traditional American values? Newly released data from the Census Bureau shows that the overall rate of homeownership in America hit a 20-year low in 2014. Only 64.5 percent of American households lived in a home they owned last year. That was the lowest rate since 1994, when 64.0 percent lived in a home they owned. The overall homeownership rate peaked in 2004, when 69.0 percent of households lived in a home they owned. Each year since then, homeownership has declined.
If federal law enforcement officers apprehended a person who had been using false Social Security number, a federal prosecutor with a heavy caseload dominated by more serious crimes might decide not to indict the person. Whatever its merits, that would be an act of prosecutorial discretion. But what if the prosecutor were to tell this user of a false Social Security number: It is OK for you to continue using that false Social Security number tomorrow. In fact, you may do so with impunity for the next three years. Would that be an act of prosecutorial discretion? Or would it effectively make the prosecutor a co-conspirator with someone using a false Social Security number?
President Barack Obama, who has acted unilaterally on everything from making war in Libya to granting work permits to illegal aliens in the United States, now wants a war authorization from Congress. What Congress should make him do first -- but probably will not -- is embrace a realistic foreign policy that makes sense because it makes Americans safer. When Obama wanted to intervene in Libya's civil war in favor of those seeking to overthrow Moammar Gadhafi, he did not seek an authorization from Congress as required by our Constitution.
The good news is that total net local, state and government spending dropped slightly from fiscal 2011 to fiscal 2012 (the latest year for which full state and local spending numbers are available from the Census Bureau). The bad news is that government spending nationwide still topped $6 trillion in fiscal 2012 and equaled more per earner than the nation's median earnings. There were 157,191,000 workers 15 years old or older in the United States who had earnings in 2012, according to the Census Bureau's Historical Income Table P-43. Their median earnings that year were $31,921 and their average earnings were $45,053.
When should it be legal for a doctor -- or anyone else -- to deliberately take an innocent human life? Politicians in both parties need to listen to the answer Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles gave to this question Saturday as he offered a requiem Mass for aborted babies. "Only God, who is the Lord of our beginning and the Lord of our ending, can make the determination of the beginning and end of life," he said. "The right to life, as we know, is the foundation of every other right and liberty and the true foundation of justice and peace in society," he said. "If the child in the womb has no right to be born, if the sick and the old have no right to be taken care of, then there is no solid foundation to defend anyone's human rights."
President Obama's disrespect for motherhood has manifested itself in policies ranging from support for same-sex marriage to defense of a form of abortion that involves forcing a baby into a drug-induced premature delivery and then leaving that little one to die. When it comes to the most vulnerable and innocent human beings -- those for whom great mothers have great hearts -- Obama has a heart of stone. It is demonstrably true that he does not believe a child has a right to a mother or a need for a mother. If he did, he could not support same-sex marriages in which two men can adopt a child or even hire a surrogate to incubate a baby for them.
How should a free society react when confronted with a subversive movement that seeks to exploit our liberty to destroy it? Matthew Olsen, who was then director of the National Counterterrorism Center, gave a speech at the Brookings Institution in September that pointed to a growing threat to people in the Middle East and to the free nations of the West. Radical Muslim terrorists fighting in Iraq and Syria under the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant had revealed their great vision.
If you thought the lame-duck Congress that met in December -- in which House Speaker John Boehner cut a deal with President Barack Obama to fund almost all of Obama's programs through the rest of the current fiscal year -- was a bad deal for America, wait until the next lame-duck Congress convenes after the 2016 election. That could be the "bipartisan" moment for a bailout of the federal disability program -- and perhaps Social Security with it. The very dry, very long Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of Social Security, released in July, included two crucial predictions. Social Security's Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, which pays Social Security retirement benefits, can survive another 20 years. But the Disability Insurance Trust Fund, which pays disability benefits, will last just two.
From November 2013 through November 2014, the aggregate balance in the federal direct student loan program -- as reported by the Monthly Treasury Statement -- rose from $687,149,000,000 to $806,561,000,000, a one-year jump of $119,412,000,000. The balance on all student loans, including those from private sources, exceeded a trillion dollars as of the end of the third quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. "Outstanding student loan balances reported on credit reports increased to $1.13 trillion (an increase of $8 billion) as of September 30, 2014, representing about $100 billion increase from one year ago," the bank said in its latest report on household debt and credit.
In a year when some of the most exalted public figures in the United States distinguished themselves by advancing unjust causes or cowardly refusing to seriously resist them, a pregnant mother imprisoned in Sudan with her 18-month-old American son set a standard for saintly courage. Meriam Ibrahim is the role model of the year. When a Sudanese court told Meriam she must renounce her Catholic faith and convert to Islam or be hung by the neck until dead, she gave a non-negotiable answer: No. Meriam was born in Sudan to a Christian mother and a Muslim father -- who abandoned the family when Meriam was 6. Her mother raised her a Christian.
Call it the Obama rule. When will our president do something he wants to do that the Constitution or morality prohibits? When he can get away with it. President Barack Obama did not move forward with his unilateral action on immigration before the midterm elections, because he was worried he would pay too high a price. Additional congressional Democrats might have lost, and more Democrats would have blamed him for the losses. He moved forward with his unconstitutional action after the elections because he calculated -- correctly -- that Republican congressional leaders would let him get away with it.
The Census Bureau reported in a study released this week that 65 percent of American children lived in households taking aid from one or more federal program as of the fall of 2011. "Almost two-thirds (65 percent) of children," said the Census Bureau, "lived in households that participated in at least one or more of the following government aid programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Medicaid, and the National School Lunch Program."
As a halfback at Michigan, he ran for 33 touchdowns, threw for 16 more, won the Heisman Trophy and was the first player picked in the NFL draft. But the hardest hits Tom Harmon ever took were not on a football field. They were in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Harmon came out of a big Catholic family in a small Midwestern town -- and was proud of both. "Lou and Rose Harmon were good Catholics, and they were raising their family to have faith in the 'Big Boss' upstairs," he wrote about his parents in his 1944 memoir "Pilots Also Pray."
Take a look at an American family's budget and you can tell what that family values. Many of the nation's most solid and self-sufficient citizens spend a large share of the earnings the government allows them to keep paying down their own mortgages, maintaining their own households and sending their own children to school. What can we tell about the priorities of the people who run our current federal government by looking at the federal budget?
The Constitution is unambiguous about which branch of the federal government has the authority to make laws governing immigration and control all money spent from the Treasury. It is Congress. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4 gives Congress the power to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization." Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 says: "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law."
Can you decipher the unique language used by Republican leaders? Here is a quick test. At his first post-election press conference, House Speaker John Boehner said: "My job is to listen to the American people. The American people have made it clear, they're not for Obamacare. Ask all those Democrats who lost their elections Tuesday night." He also said: "So, the House, I'm sure, at some point next year, we'll move to repeal Obamacare because it should be repealed and it should be replaced with common sense reforms that respect the doctor/patient relationship."
This is the story of how a simple act by Sen. Ted Cruz exposed the hatred many members of the U.S. Senate have for your freedom to speak. The story begins in 2009 in the United States Supreme Court where Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart presented the Obama administration's interpretation of the relevant part of the First Amendment. In case you have not read it recently, that amendment says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Can a pope change Catholic teaching on marriage? When the synod of bishops that Pope Francis has called to discuss the family was meeting in Rome earlier this month, someone not particularly familiar with the Catholic faith might have presumed the answer was yes. The synod, for example, released a midterm report with a section headed: "Positive aspects of civil unions and cohabitation." Yet the Catholic Catechism states: "The Lord Jesus insisted on the original intention of the Creator who willed that marriage be indissoluble." The Catechism cites Chapter 10 of the Gospel of Mark as one source for this teaching.
We have now learned what can happen in this Era of Obama when an American who does not have Ebola vomits near the Pentagon. The first clue was a statement put out Friday by Arlington County, Virginia, where the Pentagon sits. "At about 9:10 a.m. today, Pentagon Police officers identified a woman in the Pentagon South Parking Lot, around lanes 17-19, who was ill and vomiting," said the statement. "Arlington County Fire Department was notified and responded immediately with both emergency medical aid and hazmat response team."
Which will be greater: the burden of student debt on Americans who went off this fall to their first year of college, or the amount of federal debt per full-time private-sector worker when these students earn their degrees and start looking for jobs? There is no doubt: It will be the amount of federal debt per full-time private-sector worker. As of last Friday, the total debt of the federal government was $17,858,480,029,490.28, according to the U.S. Treasury. That equaled $200,258.81 for each of the 89,177,000 full-time private-sector workers that, according to the Census Bureau, were in the United States in 2013.
