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Harrison Butker is right about men and women (5/21/24)To judge by the internet reaction, Kansas City Chiefs place-kicker Harrison Butker is guilty of a dreaded double-doink — a missed field-goal attempt that embarrassingly hits both uprights — with his commencement address the other day. ...
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Biden has disastrously misplayed the politics of Gaza (5/18/24)It’s bad enough that President Joe Biden is playing politics with the war in Gaza, but even worse — at least for his purposes — that he is doing it so poorly. Biden may imagine that he is maneuvering with incredible skill — subtly balancing geopolitics, alliance management and domestic imperatives — when he is really upsetting all sides in the course of further undermining his already-rickety presidency.
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A presidency in its dotage (5/15/24)Is anyone surprised that Joe Biden is caving? It’s what he does. In a disgracefully craven move, President Biden has paused weapons shipments to Israel to try to prevent the Jewish state from launching a full-scale offensive against the remaining Hamas military stronghold in Rafah.
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The Columbia University push to elect Donald Trump (5/9/24)"Let’s finish what they did in 1968," a Columbia protester said the other day. In political terms, that would mean electing Donald Trump. The disorder of 1968 — when LBJ declined to run again and Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon and George Wallace faced off — played right into the hands of Nixon, who rode his opposition to the riots and campus unrest into the White House.
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No, Columbia isn’t complicit in ‘genocide’ (5/7/24)As Morningside Heights goes, so goes the Levant. This is the childishly self-dramatizing conceit that’s been driving the pro-Hamas protests at Columbia University, with similar ideas playing into protests elsewhere. It allows students living privileged lives at elite universities to believe that they are on the front lines of fighting so-called genocide, and what happens at their schools — and to them — is exciting, dangerous and determinative of geopolitical events half a world away.
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No, don’t rush the Trump J6 case (5/1/24)When the Supreme Court said it would hear Donald Trump’s immunity claim in the Jan. 6 case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, the former president’s enemies erupted in anger. It was delay for delay’s sake. It was a rank political favor for an ally. It was utterly gratuitous in legal terms, since it’s a slam dunk that a former president doesn’t enjoy immunity for acts during his time in office.
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Nothing good comes from Columbia University's radicalism (4/25/24)Columbia University is once again the center of the radical universe. More than 50 years after anti-Vietnam War demonstrators roiled the Columbia campus in 1968, anti-Israel agitators are disrupting the school’s operations, and inspiring similar actions at other universities around the country.
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Alvin Bragg makes history -- preposterously (4/24/24)Alvin Bragg is to be commended for getting to trial on the Trump hush-payments case. Lesser prosecutors would have been daunted by the prospect of creating a national melodrama and a norm-breaking prosecution of a former president over what is, in essence, a misdemeanor business-records charge.
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The anti-Israel delusion (4/20/24)Surely, you’ve heard of the brutal conflict that has displaced millions of people and killed more than 14,000, while aid convoys have trouble getting where they need to go? No, the Sudanese civil war hasn’t been on your radar screen?
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No one cares about Joe Biden’s lawlessness (4/17/24)Here we go again. President Joe Biden has, once more, claimed to find astonishingly wide-ranging authority to forgive student loans hiding in minute places deep in the federal code. Biden has already been rebuked for this practice by the Supreme Court, yet he remains undeterred.
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Marjorie Taylor Greene’s case against Speaker Johnson (4/13/24)The first time that Republicans toppled their own speaker during this Congress, it wasn’t a particularly edifying spectacle, but Marjorie Taylor Greene is reaching for new lows. To paraphrase Marx: first as a farce, then as a more preposterous farce.
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Yes, fight anti-white racism (4/10/24)Is there anything more poisonous or ridiculous than insisting that corporations and the government treat people fairly regardless of race? Apparently not. An Axios report on the Trump team’s intention to use civil-rights laws to target diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies discriminating against whites has occasioned sneering and denunciations.
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The Bible is America's book (4/6/24)Of all the objectionable things Donald Trump has ever done, selling a Bible would seem to rank pretty far down the list. Yet his marketing, along with Lee Greenwood, of a God Bless the U.S.A. Bible for $59.99 has occasioned a couple of news cycles of outrage. The Bible has an American flag cover and accompanying American historical documents, including the Declaration of Independence, as well as the words to Greenwood's iconic patriotic song.
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Colorblindness is America's most transgressive idea (4/4/24)Writer Coleman Hughes went on "The View" and was greeted almost as though he had shown up wearing a white hood. Hughes, a soft-spoken black intellectual who is a political independent, was talking about his new book, "The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America."
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Thank God for the internal combustion engine (4/3/24)One of Joe Biden's notable digressions when getting deposed by Special Counsel Robert Hur was about driving his beloved 1967 Corvette Stingray convertible. Which wasn't surprising — the president genuinely loves his car. And why not? It's a thing of beauty and, for its time, was a splendid feat of engineering.
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The absurd four-day workweek (3/27/24)Karl Marx would be proud. Bernie Sanders has proposed taking another step toward the philosopher's envisioned utopia by proposing to mandate a four-day workweek. Marx wrote how in communist society, workers would be liberated to "hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, raise cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic."...
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Joe Biden should be angry and anxious (3/23/24)Who knows if Joe Biden is as "angry and anxious" about his reelection prospects as a new NBC News report portrays him. It could be that it's ordinary ill-temper from a politician prone to shouting in private (an Axios headline not too long ago dubbed Biden "old yeller"), or exaggerated reports from meetings where typical salty language is used by old political pros hashing out strategy and tactics...
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Democratic leadership send signal to left-wing base (3/19/24)The uncommitted voters of Michigan say "jump," and Chuck Schumer asks "how high?" The Senate majority leader gave an extraordinary speech flaying the democratically elected leader of an ally engaged in fighting a defensive war against a hideous terrorist enemy...
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No, illegal immigrants didn't build America (3/16/24)Joe Biden doesn't have a problem with illegal immigrants. He's made that clear in his shamefaced retreat from his impromptu use of the term "illegal" during his State of the Union address. He regrets using the offending word, doesn't want to disrespect illegal immigrants and believes that they are absolutely essential to the success of the United States...
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Joe Biden will never be normal again (3/13/24)Joe Biden won the normality test in 2020. There wasn't anything remarkable about him. He just seemed like a steady hand who had been around for a while, who didn't look or sound like a radical, and who knew how Washington worked. He wasn't the leader of a movement, wasn't charismatic and wasn't particularly witty or well-spoken. He was, in fact, completely uninteresting and utterly conventional. He was just the most normal guy in the room...
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The day Joe Biden blew up the border (3/6/24)Joe Biden was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2021. Less than two weeks later, on Feb. 2, he issued the executive order that began the unraveling at the border in earnest. The border crisis isn't something that happened to President Biden. It's not a product of circumstances or understandable policy mistakes made under duress. No, he sought it and created it, on principle and as a matter of urgency...
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Joe Biden's inane war on packaging (3/2/24)Joe Biden has met the enemy, and it is smaller packaging for foodstuffs. The White House is targeting the practice known as "shrinkflation," or companies keeping the nominal price of a product the same while decreasing the amount. This, naturally, is just another way of charging more. If the price is the same, but you're getting only 14 ounces of Wheat Thins instead of 16, you are paying more for your whole-wheat crackers...
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The un-American campaign against Donald Trump (2/28/24)Donald Trump has a $355 million judgment against him, and we're just getting started. The judgment in the civil fraud case, which reaches $450 million including prejudgment interest, is the handiwork of an elected Democratic judge in a case brought by an elected Democratic prosecutor who pledged to pursue Trump in her election campaign...
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It makes no sense to abandon Ukraine (2/27/24)Millions for defense, but not one cent for Ukraine. That's the rallying cry of opponents of a new $60 billion tranche of aid for Ukraine led by Ohio's Republican senator, J.D. Vance. Vance deserves credit for taking his perspective directly into the belly of the beast at the Munich Security Conference, where he rowed against the tide by advocating for abandoning the embattled Western ally...
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Russia is a civilizational adversary (2/20/24)The poet Robert Frost once said that a liberal is someone too broad-minded to take his own side in a fight. What would he say about those on the right who seem to be confused about the same question? Over the last few days, Donald Trump told a rally about how he'd supposedly warned the leader of a NATO nation that he'd encourage the Russians "to do whatever the hell they want" against countries that weren't spending enough on defense, while the former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson broadcast videos from Moscow praising its grocery stores and subways as superior to those in the United States.. ...
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The elderly-man-with-a-poor-memory presidency (2/14/24)Joe Biden is the first official ever to be cleared by a special counsel for reasons of mental incompetence. The president might have been better off if special counsel Robert Hur, investigating his mishandling of classified documents, had simply recommended indicting him instead of spelling out why a jury would not convict someone so clearly out of it...
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Kids shouldn’t be on social media at all (2/7/24)Mark Zuckerberg is very sorry. His apology at a Senate hearing to the families of victims of online child sex abuse was dramatic, and the human thing to do in the moment, although he was pressured into it under persistent questioning from Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri. Zuckerberg’s contrition — whether real, fake or somewhere in between — doesn’t really matter one way or the other, though. The key question is why we are subjecting our children to a vast, real-time experiment in exposure to a radically new medium that evidence suggests is harmful to their emotional and mental health. This dubious venture is unquestionably a boon to the bottom line of Meta and its peer companies, but it’s doubtful that any parent in America has ever thought it was good for their kid. “Gosh, how can I get my tween to spend more time on Instagram?” is, needless to say, a thought most parents don’t have. Social scientist Jonathan Haidt has been on this case for some time now and points out a marked increase in teen depression and anxiety that coincides with the rise of social media, particularly among girls. It is, to be sure, difficult to nail down with absolute certainty a direct relationship between social media and these distressing outcomes, but many studies find a connection, and the lived experiences of families is, overwhelmingly, that the takeover of adolescence by social media hasn’t been a healthy phenomenon. At the very least, social media is addictive and represents an opportunity cost compared to time that could be spent talking with friends, going outside or even reading a book. Congress should press the brakes on the revolution that has given Mark Zuckerberg and other tech titans an outsized role in raising our kids and require that users of social media be age 18 or older. Surely, it’s not too much to ask that Zuckerberg and Co. make their fortunes exclusively off adults. Congress has already imposed an age limit, just in the wrong place. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act prevents the companies from collecting personal information from children under age 13, effectively prohibiting them from social media. But 13 draws the line much too young. Regardless, the companies have been happy to make a mockery of the rule. About 40% of kids age 8-12 use social media, while usage by teens age 13-18 is nearly ubiquitous. For social-media companies, these kids are just another market. According to a Wall Street Journal report a couple of years ago, “Inside the company, teams of employees have for years been laying plans to attract preteens that go beyond what is publicly known, spurred by fear that Facebook could lose a new generation of users critical to its future.” Let’s say the research and everyone’s intuition is wrong, and social media isn’t driving worse outcomes for kids. What’s the harm in staying off social media until they’re older? That kids will miss out on the latest absurd and perhaps dangerous TikTok trend? That they won’t get to envy people posting photos on Instagram to make themselves look more interesting and beautiful than they really are? That they will talk to their families and friends more and engage in more activities in the real world? As Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute points out, there are ways to put teeth in a more stringent age restriction, create a reliable mechanism for age verification, and give those parents who desperately want their young kids on social media a way to opt in. Once every teen isn’t on social media, it becomes easier to stop teens from using social media. Perhaps, over time, it will become clear that the teen mental health crisis wasn’t driven by social media and — more improbably — being on TikTok is good for 15-year-olds. If so, we can go back and repeal the age-18 restriction — and apologize, if we must, to Mark Zuckerberg.
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'Masters of the Air' does a public service (2/1/24)Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks have once again done a public service. Like "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific" before it, the new series "Masters of the Air" is a profound act of devotion to the memory of the men who won World War II, this time focused on the air war in Europe...
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Will Margot Robbie survive? (1/30/24)Sometimes the universe has a sense of humor. Could there be a more amusing coda to the "Barbie" phenomenon than the Ken doll, played by Ryan Gosling, getting a best supporting actor nomination, while Barbie herself, played by Margot Robbie, got snubbed?...
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Joe Biden's confounding failure to address border (1/27/24)There's a lively internal debate in the GOP about the politics of a potential immigration deal with Joe Biden. Should Republicans, as Donald Trump is arguing, steer clear and let President Biden continue to bear the political costs of the border crisis? Or should they move the ball on policy as much as possible, even if it somewhat alleviates Biden's difficulty going into the election?...
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John Fetterman cracks the code (1/25/24)John Fetterman, as someone put it, is doing a Bulworth in reverse. Bulworth was a fictional California senator in the 1990s movie of the same name who suddenly abandoned his establishment politics for an outspoken leftism, and all ended happily ever after...
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Jack Smith is an arsonist (1/24/24)Jack Smith is a threat to American democracy. He is blatantly seeking, as a prosecutor, to influence the outcome of the 2024 election. This is not his role and, in fact, is against Justice Department guidelines. If Smith succeeds, the consequences will be long-lasting -- the special counsel will have delivered a devastating blow to the legitimacy of our electoral system, in the name of defending it...
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What Democrats will never do to defend democracy (1/20/24)Joe Biden went to Valley Forge to give a big speech telling us how much he cares about defending democracy against the threat represented by Donald Trump. How much does President Biden care? Enough to give a speech defending democracy, one of what's sure to be many if Trump is his opponent...
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The AWOL Defense Secretary (1/13/24)Anyone following how weak and passive the U.S. has been in the face of provocations from our adversaries in the Middle East might conclude that the secretary of defense has gone missing. And, at least for a few days last week, he literally was. In an age when it's nearly impossible to go off the grid, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin managed it. ...
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Why Republicans have the upper hand on the border (1/10/24)The White House is losing the immigration debate. There hasn't been any question that it has deserved to lose this debate from the beginning. But for the longest time, there wasn't much focus on the border, except on the right. Now the negotiations between the White House and congressional Republicans over a package of immigration provisions and new funding for Ukraine have put the border at the center of the political discussion, and the White House is faring poorly...
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The left can't handle a Trump victory (1/9/24)We are about to embark on what might be one of the wildest years in the history of American politics, and it may end up merely as a prelude. If 2024 is set to be tumultuous and unpredictable, just wait until 2025 if Donald Trump wins the presidency again later this year...
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Confession of a public-health expert (1/6/24)The public-health officials are getting around to admitting the fallibility of public-health officials. The former head of the National Institutes of Health during the pandemic and current science adviser to President Joe Biden, Francis Collins, has noted that he and his colleagues demonstrated an “unfortunate” narrow-mindedness. This is a welcome, if belated, confession. Not too long ago, anyone who said that epidemiologists might be overly focused on disease prevention to the exclusion of other concerns — you know, like jobs, mental health and schooling — were dismissed as reckless nihilists who didn’t care if their fellow citizens died en masse. Now, Francis Collins has weighed in to tell us that many of the people considered close-minded and anti-science during COVID were advancing an appropriately balanced view of the trade-offs inherent in the pandemic response. “If you’re a public-health person and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is,” Collins said at an event earlier this year that garnered attention online the last couple of days. This is not a new insight, or a surprising one. It’s a little like saying Bolsheviks will be focused on nationalizing the means of production over everything else, or a golf pro will be monomaniacal about the proper mechanics of a swing. The problem comes, of course, when public health, or “public health,” becomes the only guide to public policy. Then, you are giving a group of obsessives, who have an important role to play within proper limits, too much power in a way that is bound to distort your society. Francis Collins, again: “So you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never quite recover from.” True and well said, but that’s an awful lot of very important things to attach “zero value” to. He also admitted to having an urban bias, driven by working out of Washington D.C. and thinking almost exclusively about New York City and other major cities. If Francis Collins and his cohort got it wrong, the likes of Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Georgia governor Brian Kemp — and the renegade scientists and doctors who supported their more modulated approach to the pandemic — got it right. It’s always worth remembering that the pandemic was a once-in-hundred-years event and initially, we had very little information and very few means to prevent and treat the disease. It is inevitable that decision-makers are going to make mistakes in such a crisis, and adjust as they go. That said, the scientists who were in positions of authority could have shown more modesty. They could have welcomed debate. They could have distanced themselves from — or better yet, denounced — the campaign of moral bullying carried out in their name. Many people wanted to outsource their thinking to the experts and then, with a great sense of righteousness, rely on arguments from authority to demonize their opponents and shut down every policy dispute. Francis Collins, one of the most eminent scientists in the country and a subtle thinker who dissents from the orthodoxy that science and faith are incompatible, would have been an ideal voice to counter the propaganda campaigns that aimed to suppress unwelcome views and even unwelcome facts. Instead, he stuck with his tribe. It’s progress, though, to realize that scientists, too, are susceptible to group-think, recency bias and parochialism; that the experts may know an incredible amount about a very narrow area, while knowing little to nothing about broader matters of greater consequence; that point of views considered dangerous lunacy may, over time, prove out, so they shouldn’t be censored or otherwise quashed. It’s not just that the scientists acted like blinkered scientists during the pandemic; they tolerated, or participated in, agitprop that was inimical to the scientific spirit and to good public policy.
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Trump's opponents not playinig strictly by the book (12/20/23)You might have heard that Donald Trump is going to be a dictator if he wins the presidency next year. Among other things, he's threatening to target his political opponents. Let's stipulate that Trump is a provocateur who freaks out his opponents even when he's on relatively good behavior. And his conduct after the 2020 election was genuinely alarming and deeply wrong. He shouldn't talk about going after his political enemies, let alone actually do it if he takes power again...
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Where's the big immigration debate? (12/16/23)Do you remember the big national debate on whether the United States would adopt a policy to make the foreign share of the population the highest it's ever been? Neither do I. For the simple reason, of course, that there wasn't one. That doesn't mean that the policy wasn't adopted, through inertia and the Biden administration's imposition of a de facto open border for a large swath of asylum-seekers...
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The dumbest betrayal (12/14/23)It's possible that Congress can't find a way, despite the support of bipartisan majorities, to continue funding Ukraine in its fight against Vladimir Putin's Russia. This would have to rank, not necessarily as the worst, but perhaps the stupidest, most senseless abandonment of a U.S. ...
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No, Henry Kissinger was not a war criminal (12/4/23)Henry Kissinger, the great American statesman who has died at age 100, stands accused by his critics of many things, but perhaps the most outlandish is that he bears responsibility for the killing fields of Pol Pot's Cambodia. Implementing a radical communist vision drawn from Mao and especially the Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot and his comrades killed roughly a quarter of the country's population through execution and starvation resulting from forced collectivization and population transfers...
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Was Napoleon a dullard? (11/29/23)The figure of Napoleon has long been an object of fascination, but the new Ridley Scott biopic makes one wonder why. The film, perhaps inadvertently, partakes of the spirit of the times. The so-called Great Man theory of history — that it is exceptionally talented men who bend events to their will — is out of favor. Accordingly, the movie renders the stereotypical great man, Napoleon, as doltish and uninteresting...
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The new Arab street is here at home (11/25/23)The old conventional wisdom was that the U.S. couldn't be too pro-Israel for fear of inflaming "the Arab street." The new conventional wisdom will have to be that we can't be too pro-Israel for fear of inflaming "the Western street." The Arab street, a hoary cliche of commentary on the Middle East for decades, was a reference to public opinion in the Arab countries, with the strong implication that if we offended it, the result would be massive anti-Western demonstrations and perhaps violence...
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In Praise of the Pilgrims (11/22/23)The Pilgrims were, to use the hostile term applied to Israelis in the debate over Palestine, unquestionably "settler colonialists." As such, they are increasingly out of favor as Thanksgiving begins to suffer some of the erosion that has drastically diminished Columbus Day. Thanksgiving is too big a holiday to get dethroned, at least anytime soon, but it's worth sticking up for the Pilgrims now accused of myriad sins...
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Trump's immigration policy is a necessary corrective (11/18/23)Let the panic over Donald Trump's immigration policy begin. The New York Times ran a piece the other day headlined, "Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps, and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump's 2025 Immigration Plans." The reaction has been shock and outrage...
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Ta-Nehisi Coates is a moral idiot (11/16/23)The celebrated author Ta-Nehisi Coates is not reliable regarding things he's spent considerable time thinking about here in the U.S., so it's presumably a mistake to put much stock in his newly formed opinions about matters he barely knows anything about...
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The kidnapped posters aren't an affront (11/9/23)There are many things in American life considered offensive or controversial that never would have been before. Now, kidnapped posters have to be added to the list. There's an ongoing struggle in our streets over whether it's legitimate to post flyers about people kidnapped in the Hamas terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, or this is a provocation that warrants the posters being torn down...
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There's one easy trick to winning in 2024 (11/4/23)Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has a history, and a present, of promoting wild conspiracy theories. His independent bid for the presidency is quixotic at best. And yet a new Quinnipiac poll has him getting an impressive 22% in a three-way contest with Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and with a narrow lead among independents...
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The Left's tiki torch brigade (11/2/23)It's been a disquieting time for well-meaning liberals who have been suddenly confronted with the realization that their own side is rife with fanatics and haters. The explosion of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish feeling on campuses and the streets after Oct. 7 has shaken left-of-center people who didn't know, or want to know, who their allies were...
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Anti-Israel demonstrators hate the West (10/31/23)The cataract of anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses has been shocking, but it shouldn't be surprising. It is the poisoned fruit of teaching a generation of college students to despise their own civilization. Jesse Jackson famously led a chant at Stanford University in 1987, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go." He was talking about the college course, but he might as well have been talking about the thing itself...
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A deficit of good sense (10/28/23)Joe Biden has been so good at cutting the deficit that it clocked in at $2 trillion last year. The president likes to boast about how much he's reduced the deficit -- and, in his more careless moments, the debt itself -- but he's really presiding over a historic period of fiscal profligacy...
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The shameful gag order on Donald Trump (10/25/23)If you've always thought that federal judges ought to determine what presidential candidates can and can't say about political matters, you should love Judge Tanya Chutkan's partial gag order against Donald Trump. Chutkan is hearing the Jan. 6 case against Trump brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith and has decided to partially muzzle Trump with an order that is nonsensical and possibly unconstitutional...
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The Trump doctrine (10/18/23)Luck is the residue of design, they say. Might it also be the residue of frightening and confusing foreign adversaries? Donald Trump's relatively crisis-free presidency in foreign affairs has created a sense, perhaps an accurate one, that he cowed enemies into not challenging the U.S. ...
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The superpower that can't arm itself (10/16/23)No matter how much we'd like to believe in the inevitably of human progress and the spread of enlightened norms, we've learned the past couple of years that we still need artillery shells — lots of artillery shells. The Hamas terror attack, together with the ongoing Ukraine war and the looming Chinese threat to Taiwan, is putting a spotlight on the pitiful state of our capacity to manufacture the weapons necessary to the defense of our allies and ourselves...
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Israel is not a colonial state (10/12/23)It doesn't take long to read or listen to anti-Israel advocacy before the word "colonial" or "colonialism" is hurled at the Jewish state. After the spasm of Hamas murder, rape and kidnapping over the weekend, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network exclaimed, "Our people are waging an anti-colonial, anti-occupation, and anti-Zionist liberation struggle!"...
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Trump's courtroom campaign (10/7/23)Donald Trump is getting indicted and tried all the way into a third Republican presidential nomination, and perhaps a second term in office. Trump's court dates and legal entanglements aren't a distraction from his campaign, as some observers predicted; in large part, they are the campaign...
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A bomb thrower targets his own (10/4/23)(Editor's note: The House voted 216-210 Tuesday afternoon to vacate the speakership. It was unclear Tuesday evening how the House would proceed.) The Matt Gaetz moment is upon us, and unless you enjoy politics as absurdist theater, you might want to skip it...
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Skipping the debates has worked for Trump (9/30/23)Woody Allen said 90% of life is showing up. Donald Trump is proving that he overshot the mark considerably. The former president has paid no discernible price for skipping the Republican debates. Arguably, he's been winning them by diminishing the rest of the field through his absence, while his polling has held steady or gone up a little...
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The worst vice-presidential pick of the last 50 years (9/28/23)Poor Kamala Harris. The alleged misogyny that is tearing at her vice presidency apparently extends to highly partisan Democratic leaders such as Jamie Raskin and Nancy Pelosi. Both of them caused ripples when their praise for Harris in recent TV interviews was notably cool, as if they were at a high-end fundraising dinner and hated the escargot but had to try to convince the hostess that they really loved it...
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Fetterman makes the U.S. Senate safe for slobs (9/20/23)John Fetterman's Senate legacy is now set -- he's the guy who made it possible to dress like a slob. What the Missouri Compromise was to Henry Clay, what the Second Reply to Hayne was to Daniel Webster, what the Civil Rights Act of 1957 was to Lyndon Johnson, Carhartt sweatshirts and baggy shorts will be to John Fetterman...
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Yes, Joe Biden is corrupt (9/16/23)The memo went out from the White House that there's no evidence President Joe Biden did anything wrong regarding his son's business dealings and, sure enough, the media is repeating the line. To the contrary, we already know that Biden was complicit in an inherently corrupt enterprise that centered on selling access to him when he was a high government official...
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Joe Biden's Mariel boatlift (9/14/23)"Worse than Jimmy Carter" is an epithet Republicans often throw at Democratic presidents. It's a label, though, that Joe Biden clearly deserves on immigration, an area where -- along with inflation and the Afghan debacle -- there are echoes of the Carter years...
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The electric car sham (9/13/23)Joe Biden has seen the future, and it is electric cars. Lots of electric cars. Electric cars -- or else. Donald Trump has seen the future, and it is a backlash against the mandate for the mass adoption of electric cars. The former president is promising to "stop this Madness, IMMEDIATELY!"...
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No, we aren't Rome (9/7/23)An op-ed in The New York Times warns, as the headline puts it, that "America is an empire in decline," and finds a precedent in imperial Rome. The piece, written by the co-author of a new book, "Why Empires Fall: Rome, America, and the Future of the West," shows that the cottage industry in comparisons between the United States and Rome is as robust as ever...
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Vivek Ramaswamy's Jan. 6 charade (9/5/23)Vivek Ramaswamy thinks Mike Pence failed. The former vice president is a MAGA villain for doing his constitutional duty on Jan. 6, so Ramaswamy has to find a way to wiggle out of endorsing his conduct on that day, no matter how convoluted or inane. On "Meet the Press" the other day, he went with an alternative-reality critique of Pence. ...
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Yes, President Harris is a legitimate issue (9/1/23)Kamala Harris is one of the most prominent people in the United States, with the potential that at any moment she could inherit some of the most fearsome powers on Earth, but no one is supposed to notice. Republicans are deemed unhealthily fixated on Harris for saying that a vote for the increasingly rickety President Joe Biden is a vote to make Kamala Harris president...
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Trump creates a spin-off (8/26/23)Just how dominant is Donald Trump in the Republican Party? He's so far ahead in the polls that he felt comfortable skipping the first GOP presidential debate in Milwaukee, while on the actual debate stage, his epigone, Vivek Ramaswamy, soaked up an outsized portion of the attention...
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The GOP race is not quite as over as it looks (8/23/23)If it "got late early" in the old majestic Yankee Stadium with its long shadows, as the famous Yogi Berra quote had it, it's gotten late before about the fourth inning in the Republican presidential race. In 2016, Donald Trump loved to pump out the results of unreliable online polls that showed him trouncing his competitors by ridiculous margins...
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How Eric Adams vindicated immigration restrictionism (8/17/23)The public intellectual Irving Kristol famously said that the definition of a neoconservative is "a liberal who has been mugged by reality." By the same token, the definition of a convert to immigration restrictionism is a big-city mayor dealing with a surge of illegal immigration in his city...
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The honorable Mr. Pence (8/12/23)Mike Pence, after about seven years of campaigning with Donald Trump, serving with Trump, and showing as much deference as could possibly be expected to Trump, is now officially "liddle." Donald Trump finally issued a complete denunciation of his former vice president, who now has been downgraded all the way to Marco Rubio-circa-2016 territory...
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Most Americans want nothing to do with Hillary's 'village' (8/9/23)Hillary Rodham Clinton can't say she didn't warn us. In a new 3,500-word essay on "The Weaponization of Loneliness" in The Atlantic, the former secretary of state and presidential candidate says her jejune 1996 book, "It Takes a Village", forecast the country's current crisis of loneliness and offered still-relevant solutions...
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The fear factor (8/5/23)Donald Trump has gotten indicted yet again, and, as usual, most of the other Republican candidates have been sympathetic, if not outright deferential, to him. It's another episode that raises the question: Can someone who is afraid of Trump defeat him?...
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Joe Biden is Donald Trump's best friend (8/3/23)Donald Trump doesn't look, at the moment, like he needs any help winning the Republican nomination, but he's getting an assist from President Joe Biden. The incumbent president -- rather than being the indispensable political antidote to Trump that Democrat imagine him as -- may well prove the key to his predecessor's return to the White House...
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The Florida slavery smear (8/1/23)There have been so many poisonous and stupid lies about Florida since 2020, it's almost hard to keep track, but the latest may be the most outrageous. As you might have heard thanks to the vice president of the United States, Florida allegedly wants to teach its students that slavery benefited slaves...
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Thank you, Dr. Oppenheimer (7/29/23)The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki aren't depicted in the movie "Oppenheimer," but they haunt the film -- literally. The eponymous physicist and "father of the atomic bomb," J. Robert Oppenheimer, is plagued by visions of the terrible destruction wrought by the weapon he helped create...
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The military doesn't need diversity, equity and inclusion (7/19/23)House Republicans voted to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs and personnel at the Pentagon, and one wonders whether the U.S. military will ever be the same. The provision was one of a number of anti-"woke" measures in the House-passed National Defense Authorization Act -- including reversing the Pentagon's new abortion-enabling paid travel and leave policies -- that have occasioned sputtering outrage...
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The Biden debacle waiting to happen (7/19/23)Mika Brzezinski, co-host of the MSNBC program "Morning Joe," is very cross with the White House staff. It isn't, she believes, doing a good enough job protecting Joe Biden from the effects of being 80 years old and increasingly frail. She insists that it needs "to clear a pathway" whenever he is walking somewhere, and make sure it is "there and telling him what's next" when he's at an event and going from Point A to Point B...
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The joy of minor league baseball (7/15/23)The Portland Sea Dogs won, but that's not why, fundamentally, the fans went home happy. The Double-A minor league affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, the Sea Dogs play in a cozy ballpark in Portland, Maine, and are having a pretty good year -- their 2-1 victory over the Binghamton Rumble Ponies was their fourth in a row and they're in first place in the Northeast Division of the Eastern League...
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The myth of Native American innocence (7/13/23)Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream wants the United States to return the Blacks Hills to the Lakota. Which raises the question: Once this transfer takes place, will the Lakota turn around and give the Black Hills back to the tribes they took them from? It's never a good idea to get history lessons from an ice cream maker with a hippy vibe that sold out to a multinational conglomerate long ago, but the Ben & Jerry's July 4 condemnation of the United States as "founded on stolen Indigenous land" is a common enough hostile interpretation of our past that it's worth dwelling on.. ...
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Justice Jackson's abysmal affirmative action dissent (7/6/23)Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissent in the Supreme Court's affirmative action case achieved instant legendary status in certain quarters. Vice President Kamala Harris called it "probably one of the most brilliant dissents that any justice of the United States Supreme Court has ever written."...
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The tragedy of Russia (6/28/23)On the one hand, events in Russia this past weekend were stunning — the leader of a mercenary group declaring against the country's military leadership and, for 24 hours, marching on Moscow. On the other, they were about what you'd expect in a Russia that, across the long centuries of its existence, has never managed to achieve Western standards of self-government...
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The Titan disaster shows the allure and terror of the sea (6/27/23)The submersible Titan is now confirmed lost. There's a tragic poetry to the debris of the vessel being found 1,700 feet from the bow of the Titanic, the watchword for disaster at sea that has been the object of fascination since it went down in the North Atlantic in 1912...
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Barack Obama v. Tim Scott (6/24/23)Barack Obama doesn't want America validated, at least not by the wrong people. In taking a shot at Republicans Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, Obama told his former campaign manager, David Axelrod, in a podcast interview, "I think there's a long history of African American or other minority candidates within the Republican Party who will validate America and say, 'Everything's great, and we can make it.'"...
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There should be no "woke" in baseball (6/17/23)It's not unusual for prayer to play a role in sports. "Spahn, Sain, and pray for rain!" was the famous refrain of Boston Braves fans in 1948, when they wanted their exceptional pitchers Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain to start as many games as possible...
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Against the pride flag (6/16/23)It's June, when one can be forgiven for thinking we live in the United States of LGBTQIA2S+. Old Glory is, at best, supplemented with, and sometimes supplanted by, the pride flag in all its varieties. The flag, which has become more and more unsightly, is ubiquitous. Its increasingly elaborate jumble of clashing stripes -- whether seen shopping, at a ballgame or on U.S. government buildings -- is a reminder to get with the program, and that the program is always changing...
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Don't erase the Anglo-Saxons (6/10/23)It's official. The Anglo-Saxons are getting canceled. The move comes more than 1,000 years too late for the previously ascendant Romano-British who couldn't resist these Germanic peoples who showed up on the shores of England beginning in the fifth century, but surely, they would appreciate the gesture...
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Trump is wrong about "woke" (6/8/23)Donald Trump hasn't been known for his scrupulously correct use of language, but now wants to police the use of "woke." "I don't like the term 'woke' because I hear, 'woke, woke, woke,'" he said the other day. "It's just a term they use, half the people can't even define it, they don't know what it is."...
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Democrats are making a crazy bet (6/7/23)President Joe Biden's fall at the end of the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony was a brief event. He tripped, got helped up, and walked off under his own power. Sometimes, though, a small thing is fraught with meaning — and with peril. Biden's stumbles are not minor incidents, or a laughing matter. ...
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The Bud Light meltdown is good for America (6/5/23)We should all be grateful to Anheuser-Busch. Some corporation had to show how "woke" marketing could cost an iconic American brand dearly in terms of its image, its sales and its market capitalization. Through its special beer can produced for transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, Anheuser-Busch, in effect, volunteered for duty...
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The NAACP's stupid anti-Florida smear (5/31/23)The NAACP is on high alert — a Republican governor, with an unabashedly conservative agenda and some chance of winning, is running for president. It has duly sprung into action with a travel advisory warning people what they're getting into if they take the risk of visiting Florida's sunny beaches or world-class attractions...
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The bussing of migrants has worked (5/25/23)"Build the wall" hasn't been a sentiment often heard in South Side Chicago. But someone held a sign calling for the barrier, while other residents shouted, "Close the border" and the like, during a community meeting in South Shore about a former high school potentially getting turned into a facility for immigrants lacking permanent legal status...
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Daniel Penny wasn't a vigilante (5/24/23)Pretty much everything you need to know about the Daniel Penny case you can learn from the "Death Wish" movies. Or so you might conclude if you took seriously the left's analysis of the tragic incident in a New York City subway car last month that led to Penny, a former Marine, getting charged with second-degree manslaughter...
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New industrial policy, same as the old industrial policy (5/20/23)Bidenomics is not just about spending money anymore. No, it's about a new economic paradigm, according to a recent speech at the Brookings Institution by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. He describes the Biden approach as a "modern American industrial strategy."...
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Donald Trump body-slams CNN (5/15/23)A viral video that caused outrage a few years ago had Donald Trump body-slamming the cable network CNN personified as a professional wrestler. This "MAGA" fantasy was all but made a reality at a CNN townhall with the former president in New Hampshire last week...
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The absurd 14th Amendment option on the debt (5/10/23)The position of the White House on the debt limit may be shifting from, "President Joe Biden doesn't want to compromise," to "President Joe Biden doesn't have to compromise under the U.S. Constitution." The heretofore fringe idea that Section 4 of the 14th Amendment empowers the president to keep borrowing and spending as usual even if the debt limit isn't extended is getting a respectful hearing...
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It's wrong to censor RFK Jr. (5/6/23)ABC News did a wide-ranging interview with Robert Kennedy Jr. the other day. The ABC reporter asked him a number of challenging questions, notably about the lack of support from his own family for his presidential run. It was interesting stuff and good journalism -- having on the heterodox, newly minted presidential candidate, allowing him to make the case for his candidacy, and forcing him to think and reflect out loud...
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An inconvenient test (5/3/23)The long era of the dominance of the SAT in college admissions is coming to an end. The test is increasingly being shelved not because it failed but because it succeeded in all the wrong ways. According to a survey from an anti-testing outfit, more than 80% of four-year colleges won't require standardized tests for admissions this coming fall. ...
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Why isn't Joe Biden a threat to democracy? (4/29/23)Joe Biden's video announcing his reelection bid makes much of his supposed defense of democracy. If it weren't for that, it strongly implies, he'd be happy to decamp to Rehoboth Beach to a content retirement rather than stay on the job until age 86, guarding against threats to the republic...
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Joe Biden prepares his next basement campaign (4/26/23)Joe Biden is going to run for reelection. One question this raises: How is anyone going to tell? The basement presidency is about to embark on another basement campaign. Biden's political genius turns out to be not provoking strong negative emotions because no one particularly thinks of him as being in charge or as having anything interesting to say...
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The moderate dominating the 2024 race (4/22/23)Back in 2016, the most moderate Republican candidate in the race was Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who lost everywhere except his home state. Perhaps the most moderate candidate in the field as of this moment is Donald Trump. If you want a Republican who won't cut spending or start foreign wars, Trump is still your man...
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DeSantis presidential campaign far from over (4/19/23)The Ron DeSantis presidential campaign sure was good while it lasted. The conventional wisdom has turned so decidedly against the Florida governor that he's getting buried a couple of months before he even announces. There's flaming out on the launch pad, and there's flaming out while you're drinking a cup of coffee early in the morning at your home before getting in a car to drive to Cape Canaveral to check in for your mission. It's the latter that's supposedly happening to DeSantis...
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Bragg is already losing (4/8/23)You don't know what's in the indictment. That was the line that progressives repeatedly threw at conservatives dubious about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case over the last couple of weeks. Well, we've seen the unsealed indictment, and we still don't know the other crime besides falsifying business records that's being alleged, because Bragg didn't specify it in a shocking prosecutorial failure and abuse of the process...
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There is no trans community (4/5/23)"Community" is one of those words that have been hijacked and ruined like "preferred," "appropriation," and "equity," among many others. In the wake of the Nashville shooting, we heard much about the aftershocks that affected the "trans community." "Fear pervades trans community amid focus on Nashville shooter's gender identity," NBC News reported...
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Don't valorize Jan. 6 (4/4/23)The philosopher Eric Hoffer famously wrote, "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." What he evidently didn't count on was great outrages becoming causes. From the perspective of the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6, it was hard enough to believe that Donald Trump would survive the event, let alone make it a plank in a powerful comeback bid just a few years later...
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Yes, we are making kids trans (3/29/23)We are going to look back years from now and wonder how we failed young girls so badly. Between social media and fashionable gender theories, we are making teenage girls depressed, anxious and trans. In a Substack essay the other day, a mother wrote of her daughter: “She was among the last of her small group of biologically female friends to socially transition. ...
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A second Trump administration would be bonkers (3/27/23)If Donald Trump's Truth Social posts about his supposedly impending arrest make it feel like our politics are about to reach another level of insanity, just wait. The potential Alvin Bragg prosecution offers a taste of what our national politics will be like post-November 2024 if Donald Trump wins the presidency again...
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Alvin Bragg prepares to cross the rubicon (3/22/23)How much does a mug shot mean to you? To Alvin Bragg, it apparently means quite a lot. All signs point to Bragg, the progressive prosecutor in Manhattan, indicting Donald Trump for his 2016 hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels. The old Karl Marx line is that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. This historic first-ever indictment of a former president of the United States would skip straight to farce...
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The desperate front-runner (3/18/23)Social media exposes all of us, but perhaps none more so than the former president of the United States. Donald Trump's Truth Social account is a daily advertisement for a sense of political desperation seemingly at odds with his position in a Republican field he currently dominates...
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Shakespeare is not about whiteness (3/15/23)Shakespeare has long been dismissed, with others in the Western canon, as a dead white male. Now, there's another, worse charge against the bard — he created the concept of whiteness. Yes, instead of standing in the line of literary giants such as Dante, Chaucer, and Goethe, Shakespeare is to be associated from now on with the likes of the 19th century French apostle of scientific racism Arthur de Gobineau, George Wallace, and — why not — the Oath Keepers...
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In defense of Reagan (3/11/23)Presumably, Donald Trump will never produce the dark secrets promised about Ron DeSantis' past. But his team thinks it already has one -- the Florida governor once was a Reagan Republican. "There's a pre-Trump Ron and there's a post-Trump Ron," someone in the Trump camp told Axios. "He used to be a Reagan Republican. That's where he comes from. He's now awkwardly trying to square his views up with the populist nationalist feeling of that party."...
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Our Dickensian border policy (3/8/23)"I became, at ten years old, a little labouring hind in the service of Murdstone and Grinby." Thus relates David Copperfield in the Charles Dickens novel of the same name. Of course, Dickens was a crusader against the exploitation of children. The edge is taken off the depictions of the heartless treatment of children in his fiction, though, by the funny and memorable portrayals of the malefactors, the upward trajectory of the lives of the likes of David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, and the knowledge that the practices that Dickens inveighed against are a thing of the past in the advanced world.. ...
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Donald Trump's enduring strength (3/7/23)Donald Trump has had a terrible couple of months -- and still leads national polls for the Republican nomination handily. Almost everything that he's done lately -- really, everything since he's left office -- should redound to his discredit, and yet he remains in a relatively strong position...
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Don't rewrite books (3/1/23)First, they came for Roald Dahl. Anyone who thought the politically correct rewriting would stop at the irreverent author of such children's classics as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox" was, of course, sadly mistaken. The news that hundreds of changes have been made in Dahl's classics is now followed by word that Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, is getting an emergency rewrite as well...
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Biden vs. the UFOs (2/15/23)It's best never to take White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre's word for anything, but we can presumably believe her when she says that the flying objects shot down by the United States in recent days aren't from an alien civilization. Although she left herself some wiggle room -- "there is no indication" of extraterrestrial activity, she said, displaying the weasel-word instincts of someone whose job involves dancing around the truth...
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No, slavery didn't create capitalism (2/9/23)A recent episode of a Disney+ cartoon has woke kids performing a skit around the theme: "Slaves built this country." The installment of "The Proud Family" series -- in which the kids find out the founder of their town was a slave owner -- is a cartoon version of "The 1619 Project," although "The 1619 Project" is cartoonish in its own right...
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Trump's futile attack on DeSantis (2/4/23)Donald Trump hasn't been impressing anyone with his political acuity lately, but at least he is fully aware of one of his own vulnerabilities. His early attacks on the COVID-19 record of Ron DeSantis show that he knows the Florida governor has outflanked him on the populist right -- indeed, outflanked him in general -- regarding one of the most central issues of the last couple of years...
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Memphis is not about racism (2/1/23)There's nothing white supremacy can't do. It is supposedly so pervasive and powerful that it can cause Black men to sign up to serve as police officers in a majority Black city and severely beat a Black arrestee. It is to the contemporary left what capital was to Marx, sex was to Freud, and gravity was to Newton...
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Republicans can't be intermittent fiscal hawks (1/28/23)After a hiatus during the Trump years, Republicans are back in the mood for fiscal probity. It's very strange not to seriously pursue a deeply held goal when you have unified control of Washington, then to insist on trying to achieve much of it in one fell swoop when you barely have control of one chamber of Congress...
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DeSantis is right on African American studies (1/25/23)Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stands accused of a long parade of horribles to which has now been added a new count -- allegedly opposing the teaching of African American history. Florida rejected the College Board's pilot Advanced Placement African American Studies course, and the decision has been treated in progressive quarters like the curricular equivalent of George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door...
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The Trump-Biden embrace (1/21/23)America may not want a Trump-Biden rematch, but Donald Trump and Joe Biden sure do. A CNN poll late last year showed that 6 in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents want a different GOP nominee in 2024, and a roughly similar proportion of Democrats hope for a nominee other than Biden...
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No, you can't believe 'the science' (1/18/23)Copernicus surely had no idea when he got the Scientific Revolution underway in the 16th century that an unintended effect would be empowering agenda-driven bullies and fanatics. Of course, science is a pillar of modern life for which we should be deeply grateful. It has given us longer and healthier lives, incredible material abundance, and abilities that were unfathomable a few generations ago...
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Chip Roy won the speaker fight (1/14/23)Republicans looked like they were heading for a no-win debacle on the House floor in their fight over speaker. Instead, Kevin McCarthy got over the top, achieving a long-held ambition after a daunting feat of political endurance, and his opponents got nearly every assurance and rule change they were seeking...
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The conspiracy theory that deranged American public life (1/11/23)Not all conspiracy theories are created equal. The same people who pride themselves on rigorously insisting on the facts -- ideally, explained in the dulcet tones of an NPR anchor -- are happy to embrace conspiracy theories supportive of their own worldview...
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'Yellowstone' is not a show about race (1/9/23)Long after it has run its course on TV, the show "Yellowstone" will provide fodder for countless Ph.D. candidates in whiteness studies. In certain precincts, the verdict about the smash hit that has spawned a cottage industry of spin offs is in: The show is about whiteness, and particularly white grievance...
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The GOP is the self-loathing party (1/7/23)Will Rogers famously said: "I belong to no organized political party. I'm a Democrat." He would have to dig deeper to find a gibe suitable for today's GOP. The substantive stakes in the battle over Kevin McCarthy's speakership bid, which has produced a deadlock not seen on the House floor in 100 years, are not large. There are limits to what any Republican leader can accomplish with a five-vote majority while Democrats control the Senate and the presidency...
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Beware aggrieved empires (1/4/23)China sent 71 aircraft and seven ships toward Taiwan in a 24-hour period, while Russia shelled the Kherson region more than 70 times. These acts of aggression -- occurring 5,000 miles apart, one in a grinding war of attrition, the other as part of an ongoing political and diplomatic struggle that may well result in open hostilities -- are related...
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Ending Title 42 would exacerbate the border crisis (12/29/22)The U.S. teeters on the brink of a complete meltdown at the border, and yet the Biden administration is still consumed with blame-shifting and evasions. Whatever happens at the border must be the fault of the prior administration, Joe Biden's critics, or circumstances beyond anyone's control. ...
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Ending Title 42 would exacerbate the border crisis (12/29/22)The U.S. teeters on the brink of a complete meltdown at the border, and yet the Biden administration is still consumed with blame-shifting and evasions. Whatever happens at the border must be the fault of the prior administration, Joe Biden's critics, or circumstances beyond anyone's control. And no matter how bad things get, it is definitely not in any way a "crisis at the border" — a phrase as taboo at the Biden White House as "black sheep" or "ladies and gentlemen" at Stanford University...
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How a Russian composer took over American Christmas (12/24/22)It takes some doing in this country to be more than about 25 miles from a production of "The Nutcracker" during the Christmas season. The ballet has become as American as Friday Night Lights, and as much a holiday tradition as Frosty the Snowman or Charlie Brown...
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Trump's miserable month (12/17/22)So far, Donald Trump is having the worst campaign launch since Beto O'Rourke. Like almost everything else he's done lately, his early announcement of his next presidential campaign has proved a flagrant political misjudgment. A move that was supposed to demonstrate his strength is showing his weakness; a move that was meant to keep other candidates out of the race is an invitation to other candidates to get in; a move that was supposed to serve notice of his continued dominance of the party is pointing toward its potential end.. ...
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Elon Musk is the nation's foremost culture warrior (12/14/22)Elon Musk, who has never called himself a conservative, is now the nation's foremost culture warrior. That he's achieved this status without espousing anything remotely like social conservatism illustrates how important a set of hothouse progressive pieties have become to the nation's political debate...
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An emphatic 'yes' to killer robots (12/10/22)In the mid-1990s, Cyberdyne Systems Corporation created an artificial intelligence-based defense system called Skynet. When the system achieved self-awareness on Aug. 29, 1997, it decided that humanity was the enemy and precipitated a devastating nuclear war...
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The spies who deserve to be out in the cold (12/7/22)The "Twitter Files" released by Elon Musk give us a more fine-grained understanding of how and why the social media company decided to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. This was a woefully stupid decision. The New York Post's account was suspended for two weeks for the offense of coming up with a scoop that we are still talking about and that will surely play a large role in upcoming GOP investigations into Biden family corruption...
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If Trump 1.0 was chaotic, just wait (12/5/22)Donald Trump's allies praised him for his discipline during his announcement speech, when he mostly stuck to the script as written by his staff. Then, within about a week, he was embroiled in an antisemitism controversy. Could anyone be surprised? Trump's brief bouts of care about what he says and does, usually involving reading from a Teleprompter, are always parentheses in an ongoing story of chaos, wackiness and unnecessary firestorms...
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The extreme recklessness of Biden 2.0 (11/30/22)Joe Biden 2024 is a bad idea whose time has come. If Democrats had gotten the shellacking that seemed to be coming their way in the midterms, Biden might have been wounded enough for elements of the Democratic establishment to begin to try to shoulder him into retirement...
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Why do Republicans want to be led by a victim? (11/26/22)Republicans will have to decide in 2024 if they want a victim as their nominee, or someone else. The contest between Donald Trump and the rest of the field will have a number of themes depending on his adversaries -- past v. future, populism v. traditional conservatism, unconventional v. conventional, and definitely, no matter what, victim v. someone who rejects the label...
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Thanksgiving and football were made for each other (11/23/22)The Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving without football, but the game and the holiday have now become so intertwined that one almost wonders how they managed it. The most American holiday and the most American sport -- both of which are American inventions with only limited uptake overseas -- are joined at the hip, from high school games in the morning to the NFL broadcasts that provide a daylong backdrop to family gatherings...
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Kevin McCarthy's task (11/21/22)Kevin McCarthy may now have the hardest job in Washington. Assuming that he becomes speaker of the House, which will require the near-unanimous support of his caucus and isn't necessarily a forgone conclusion, he's signing up for the most miserable experience of any congressional leader since John Boehner barely controlled a Republican House majority in the Obama years...
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Don't count Trump out yet (11/16/22)Donald Trump is in his weakest political state since 2015 or early 2016. During his presidency, when he was at the center of countless intense controversies, he didn't blink once. He never showed fear or desperation. Both are clearly at work now in his gratuitous attacks on Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, neither of whom has done anything to him, besides presenting a viable alternative to his continued dominance of the GOP...
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Donald Trump cares about only one thing (11/12/22)If Republicans haven't noticed it already, their underperformance in the midterms offers yet another opportunity to realize what matters most to Donald Trump. What goal of the GOP was advanced by having candidates devoted to Trump's "Stop the Steal" gospel?...
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Decarceration has been a substantive, political disaster (11/9/22)New York Gov. Kathy Hochul delivered one of the most memorable lines of the midterm debates when she said she didn't know why her Republican opponent, Lee Zeldin, cared so much about locking up criminals. Hochul's highhandedness encapsulated an attitude toward crime and punishment that has been shaped by the decarceration movement...
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Florida is a GOP success story (11/5/22)Florida is about to become the center of the Republican political universe, and not because of Mar-a-Lago. Ron DeSantis is cruising to a potentially crushing reelection victory. This will set up a highly consequential 2024 decision: Will the governor jump into the Republican primary contest even if Donald Trump does too, or wait his turn?...
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No, democracy is not on the ballot (11/2/22)Democracy is under threat -- the wrong candidates could win more votes than their opponents in hotly contested free and fair elections. That's the worry of progressives insisting that "democracy is on the ballot" in the midterms. This trope, repeated endlessly on the center-left, is offered as a reason why voters of conscience should cast aside their other concerns and vote Democrat up and down the ballot...
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Great art is not an enemy of the climate (10/26/22)Climate activists have found a new target -- the greatest masterpieces in the history of Western art. Heretofore, no one thought that Claude Monet's "Haystacks" -- a sublime series studying the changes in light and color on haystacks in a field -- or Vincent Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" -- a painting that is instantly recognizable and forever associated these flowers with the troubled artist -- had harmed anyone, let alone had anything to do with the alleged climate emergency...
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Biden deserves what he's going to get on the economy (10/19/22)The S&P 500 is down more than 5% since Joe Biden's inauguration, and the Dow Jones Industrial more than 4%. The Federal Reserve is ratcheting up interest rates, raising borrowing costs across the board. And one of the most respected bankers in the country is warning of a recession, telling a conference that "this is serious stuff."...
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Civil war is not coming (10/17/22)In two days at Shiloh in April 1862, the Union and Confederate armies altogether suffered 23,000 casualties, a shattering total that was the worst of the war to that point. If we aren't on a path to the carnage of Shiloh, we are on a straight-line trajectory to a new civil war, at least according to commentators on the right and left, who can't agree on anything except looming violent conflict...
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High-speed rail is a progressive fantasy (10/12/22)California progressives tried to build a European-style high-speed rail network and alienated the French in the process. A big New York Times piece on the rail project reports that the French, who wanted to work with California, decided the state was simply too dysfunctional and departed to help complete a high-speed line in Morocco instead...
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Don't fear Elon Musk (10/8/22)Elon Musk is about to pollute the country's discourse, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop him. This is the alarm going up about the eccentric billionaire's on-again, off-again, on-again-if-it-looks-like-a-Delaware-court-is-going-to-insist-on-it acquisition of Twitter...
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Hispanics weren't what progressives thought (10/7/22)One of the most significant events in American politics is that Hispanics are, in effect, deciding that they are working-class voters rather than ethnic-grievance voters. This is so momentous because it means that Democrats can't rely on the monolithic Hispanic voting bloc they imagined would guarantee them an enduring electoral majority, and that the shift to the Republicans may be just beginning (the migration of working-class whites to the GOP has been happening over the course of a couple of generations).. ...
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Joe Biden is becoming a quasi-lame duck (10/5/22)Joe Biden's highly touted political comeback is failing to live up to the hype. He's up from his midsummer trough of an approval rating that averaged below 40%, but he's still at about 42%. This represents a shift from the cataclysmic to the merely dismal...
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Crime is a legitimate issue (9/28/22)There's been a wave of violent crime the last couple of years, and the best way to address the issue is for everyone to pass over it in silence. That's the implication of the liberal pushback against the GOP attacks on Democrats as soft-on-crime in the closing weeks of the midterms...
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Stacey Abrams and the perils of hagiography (9/26/22)This shouldn't be happening to Stacey Abrams, not after all that has been invested into her budding political super stardom. New York Magazine wondered in its 2019 profile of Abrams whether she'd run for governor, senator, vice president or president — the world was her oyster. Vogue asked, "Can Stacey Abrams save American democracy?" A Washington Post Magazine piece about her included an arty picture of her staring off into the distance wearing what looked like a superhero's cape...
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Biden's migrant crisis hits the blue states (9/22/22)The nation is having a contentious debate over whether illegal migrants coming over the Southern border should be transported farther inland, and if so, where and by whom. Should they stay in San Antonio or end up in New York City, get bussed to a rural town no one has heard of, or get flown to one the most desirable summer spots in the country?...
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The Democrats have a culture-war midterm strategy (9/16/22)Who's using the culture war to distract from the economy now? Democrats have long believed -- going back at least to the famous 2005 Thomas Frank book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" -- that Republicans cynically deploy cultural issues to divert attention from kitchen-table concerns...
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Ukraine proves there's no substitute for hard power (9/14/22)The ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive, if successful, could reshape the war and the geopolitical contours of Europe. It is a testament to Ukrainian pluck and staying power but, above all, to the advanced weapons that the West has put in the hands of the Ukrainians...
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Who says bipartisan cooperation is dead? (9/3/22)Joe Biden and Donald Trump are proving that even sworn enemies can cooperate to promote one another's political interests. President Biden, with his criticism, and his Department of Justice, with its search of Mar-a-Lago and related investigation, have boosted Trump's profile to the benefit of both Biden and his party and of Donald Trump...
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Republicans can’t run and hide on abortion (9/1/22)Republicans can't run and hide on abortion The Republican Party only had about a half-century to prepare for the end of Roe v. Wade yet is still scared and confused now that the late, unlamented decision is no longer with us. It may be that the media is exaggerating the extent that the Dobbs decision has changed the trajectory of the midterms, but there is no doubt that it has energized Democrats and that pro-lifers suffered a signal defeat in a Kansas referendum in early August...
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Biden's student debt debacle (8/27/22)It's hard to top President Joe Biden's Afghan withdrawal for reckless policymaking, but his student-loan forgiveness scheme is a contender for his second-worst decision. Based merely on his say-so, with no credible congressional authorization, Biden is going to forgive $10,000 in student debt for individuals with incomes below $125,000 or household incomes below $250,000. Those who received a Pell Grant are eligible for $20,000 in relief...
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No, Liz Cheney isn't Abraham Lincoln (8/22/22)"It's a slip, not a fall," Abraham Lincoln said after his loss in his legendary 1858 Illinois Senate contest against Stephen Douglas. Liz Cheney apparently has the same attitude after her nearly 40-point wipeout in her primary the other night. In lieu of a traditional concession speech, the Wyoming congresswoman and daughter of the former vice president delivered a picturesque, made-for-TV call to arms invoking Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant...
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Merrick Garland is on a path to the abyss (8/17/22)Does Attorney General Merrick Garland know that he is investigating the man most likely to be the opponent of the president he serves? Does he realize that the intense political pressure campaign that's he's under to indict that man has been plainly visible to everyone? Does he care?...
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Why is the FBI choosing Biden's opponent for him? (8/16/22)Donald Trump has more than $100 million in his political war chest. But he has something even more valuable -- an active FBI investigation against him. Anyone can raise money. Few can dominate the nation's political consciousness, cleaving the country into two passionately opposed sides and giving rise to perfervid theories and counter-theories, based on being the target of a law enforcement action. That's the quality that Trump has brought to the table for years, and it is boosting him still...
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No, Joe Biden still isn't a good president (8/12/22)Every dog has his day, and apparently so does every miserably inadequate president. Joe Biden, who has been out-of-touch, tone-deaf and disturbingly incompetent from the outset of his presidency, suddenly has the "Big Mojo," or at least the "Moderate-Sized This-Isn't-Quite-the Legislative-Debacle-We-Expected Mojo."...
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Donald Trump is the establishment front-runner in 2024 (8/10/22)In 2015, Donald Trump burst on the scene with a megaphone, a populist message, an army of grassroots supporters -- and not much else. If he runs for the Republican nomination again, as seems likely, it will be different. Early in his first presidential campaign, he had to be grateful for every small crumb of support from Republican officialdom -- an endorsement from then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, or former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie...
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Joe Manchin's travesty (8/8/22)Congress has never cared much about truth-in-labeling, but even by its standards, "The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022" is laughably absurd. The deal reached by West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is getting puffed up by the media as a presidency-revitalizing achievement for President Joe Biden, when in reality it is the detritus of his stymied legislative agenda hastily thrown together in an incoherent muddle, under a deceptive name...
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The joy of 61 (7/27/22)Baseball is a game of numbers, and one of the most iconic of them, 61, is now in play. New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge remains on pace to match or eclipse the single season home-run mark set by Roger Maris in 1961. Technically, a trio of sluggers obliterated the Maris record in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But their gaudy totals are a testament to performance-enhancing drugs and baseball's willingness to look the other way rather than genuine achievement...
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Joe Biden's bogus climate emergency (7/25/22)Word has come down from on high that it is now mandatory to refer to climate change as an "emergency." Democrats and climate activists are urging President Joe Biden to declare a literal emergency to unlock powers allowing him to enact new measures without congressional approval...
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The most self-destructive force in the world (7/20/22)Without a doubt, the climate-obsessed green movement is the most stupidly self-destructive force in the world today, leaving a trail of irrationality and folly wherever it goes. Consider its recent record of destroying the country of Sri Lanka, making Western Europe needlessly vulnerable to Vladimir Putin's energy blackmail and stoking higher energy prices in the U.S. that have contributed to the fastest decline in real wages in 40 years...
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Abortion isn't saving the Democrats (7/16/22)Democrats have been looking for a political lifeline and believe that the Dobbs case overturning Roe v. Wade is it. The problem is that their radicalism makes them out of step on this issue, as they are on so many others. A party that exists in its own echo chamber and that is more and more reliant on the votes of a highly educated, socially progressive portion of the electorate simply can't process the idea that the rest of the country may be in a different place. ...
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For the good of the country, Biden shouldn't run again (7/13/22)Perhaps the best decision Joe Biden could make as president is to stand down. It would be a welcome act of statesmanship and self-awareness if the 79-year-old president dropped the insistence that he's running for a second term, and instead announced sometime after the November midterms that he isn't running again...
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No, DeSantis isn't worse than Trump (7/11/22)If you thought Donald Trump represented a unique danger to the American system of government, you obviously haven't been paying attention to the growing menace from Tallahassee. Some of the same commentators whose hair has been on fire about Trump are now warning that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is "more of a threat" and "far more dangerous."...
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Biden's shameful gas-station attack (7/7/22)For Joe Biden, the buck stops with small independent business owners trying to make ends meet. Over the holiday weekend, the president slammed gas stations for the purported sin of not passing along declining oil prices to motorists. Biden took to Twitter to urge "the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump" to heed his message: "Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you're paying for the product."...
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No, the conservative justices didn't lie (6/29/22)The left simply lost the intellectual and political fight over the direction of the Supreme Court but can't bear to it admit it. Progressives tell themselves instead that they've been undone by a series of dirty deeds, including the alleged deceit of conservative justices who lied to the U.S. Senate about their commitment to preserving Roe v. Wade...
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Don't indict Trump (6/27/22)If the Jan. 6 committee truly cares about protecting norms, the last thing it should want is for Attorney General Merrick Garland to indict Donald Trump. If you believe that a prosecution of the most likely candidate to run against Joe Biden in 2024 by the president's own Justice Department would be considered anything but a politicized travesty by about half of the country, you haven't been paying attention...
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How Joe Biden torched his credibility (6/23/22)When President Joe Biden says something isn't inevitable, it is time to count on it as a deadlock guarantee. The president's handling of events has been poor and the same with his policies. But nothing has been quite as bad as his snakebit, maladroit, poorly informed, dishonest attempts to spin away the miserable results of his governance, especially on the economy...
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The GOP needs to get beyond 2020 (6/22/22)It's understandable that Democrats would want to constantly revisit Jan. 6 -- to invoke it, investigate it and sacralize it even. It's a mystery, at least from a certain level of abstraction, why Republicans would want to have anything to do with that day or want to fixate on the 2020 election...
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The Kamala Harris problem (6/15/22)The media taboo against talking about Joe Biden's age and the obstacle it presents to his running again in 2024 is finally off. Which should put a lantern on another looming problem for the Democrats -- waiting in the wings is a deeply unpopular officeholder, who makes Biden look like a prospective electoral juggernaut by comparison...
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Biden is an old man overwhelmed by events (6/13/22)Joe Biden has rarely seemed as fully 79 years old as he did sitting down with Jimmy Kimmel for a late-night interview that was supposed to showcase his lighter side. The president rambled, occasionally mixed up words, trailed off awkwardly once or twice, and looked gaunt...
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The US has an empidemic of gang shootings (6/9/22)The headlines coming out of the weekend were grim. Axios: "At least 54 injured, 11 killed in 7 separate mass shootings this weekend." NBC News: "At least 12 dead in another weekend of mass shootings across America." Yahoo! News: "At least 12 dead in 10 mass shootings in U.S. over the weekend."...
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Is Donald Trump boring now? (6/6/22)Donald Trump implicitly endorsed a half-baked conspiracy theory for why his candidates lost in the Georgia Republican primaries, and it created barely a ripple in the political world. The man who shocked and outraged his way through four transfixing years as president of the United States has become a known commodity, indeed predictable and even monotonous...
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New blowhard-in-chief (6/4/22)The president of the United States is a blowhard -- again. If the country thought that it was getting a buttoned-up, by-the-books communicator after four wildly undisciplined years of Donald Trump, it knew nothing about Joseph R. Biden's long career as Washington's standout long-winded, seat-of-the-pants, poorly informed, and misleading talker...
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Kemp and Pence are GOP heroes (5/31/22)Like Wyatt Earp after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Donald Trump and his allies mounted up for a vendetta ride in Georgia. Unlike Earp and his posse, though, Trump didn't get his man or any of his confederates, and Gov. Brian Kemp and Co. didn't even have to leave the territory...
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The big lie about Georgia voting has been exposed (5/25/22)We all know what happens when a tree falls in an empty forest. What happens when a democracy emerges unscathed from a purported vile racist threat to its very existence? Pretty much the same thing, it turns out. The surge in the early vote in Georgia shows that all the smears about the state’s new voting law, repeated by everyone from the president of the United States on down, were complete nonsense...
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Don't be penny-wise on Ukraine (5/23/22)Populist critics have gone after the new $40 billion in aid to Ukraine hammer and tongs. Donald Trump has complained we are sending billions to Ukraine, "yet America's parents are struggling to even feed their children." Republican Sen. Josh Hawley calls the assistance "unfocused globalism."...
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Don't weaponize demographic change (5/18/22)The horrific massacre in Buffalo, New York, has created a debate about the "great replacement theory," the rancid theory adopted by white supremacists that Jewish people are conspiring to destroy the influence of white Americans by importing nonwhite immigrants...
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The shameful Supreme Court protests threaten the American order (5/14/22)There was something ridiculous about the half-a-dozen protesters in "Handmaid's Tale" costumes showing up at Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett's house, with one of them explaining to a reporter that Barrett, as an adoptive mother, doesn't know what it's like to carry a child to term. Never mind that the Justice has given birth five times...
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We need to take the fentanyl crisis more seriously (5/11/22)The United States is in the grips of a fentanyl crisis that doesn't get nearly the attention it deserves. Yes, it's important who owns Twitter, and interesting what some Republicans might have texted former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows after the 2020 election, but none of this matches the significance of a hideously insidious drug devastating American communities...
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Scalia was right -- again (5/10/22)Justice Antonin Scalia was among the most prescient Supreme Court justices in American history, and the firestorm over the leak of Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion overturning Roe is a reminder of it. In Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the 1992 Supreme Court decision upholding (and amending) Roe v. Wade, the justices in the majority believed that they could settle once and for all the dispute over abortion...
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A shocking assault on the Supreme Court (5/4/22)Despite what you might have learned in high school civics, the Supreme Court really only has one role in our system of government -- to uphold Roe v. Wade. That's the animating sentiment behind the furor over the leak of a Supreme Court opinion drafted for a majority by Justice Samuel Alito overturning the abortion decision...
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Don't weaponize the 14th Amendment (5/2/22)Politics would be a lot simpler if one side could prevent the other from running for office. The left believes Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is a readily available tool to do just that and has been trying to use it to get Republican members of Congress knocked off the ballot...
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In defense of Vikings (4/27/22)The world clearly doesn't have enough Viking movies, so here is "The Northman" to fill the gap. Critics have called the revenge epic based on the legend of the Viking prince Amleth "two-plus hours of art house savagery" (NPR), "a bloody, mournful, violent tale of vengeance" (The Austin Chronicle), "136 minutes of muscle-bound, shaggy-maned mayhem" (The New York Times), and "an ineffably somber meditation on our species' seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of savagery" (The Wall Street Journal)...
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Let Disney be an example (4/23/22)Just like that, tyranny has descended on Florida. The state legislature, with the support of Gov. Ron DeSantis, voted to repeal the "special independent district" enjoyed by Disney for half a century. This is a sign, we are told, of the advent of an American authoritarianism that brooks no dissent. Disney criticizes a measure supported by the Florida GOP, the so-called Don't Say Gay bill, and immediately gets targeted...
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In defense of Elon Musk (4/20/22)A year after being named Time magazine's person of the year, Elon Musk is attempting to acquire Twitter. To listen to Musk's critics, you'd believe it's an act almost on par with Hitler invading Poland not long after being named Time's man of the year in 1938...
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The Russian way of brutality (4/13/22)Russia has found just the man to lead its ongoing assault on Ukraine, Gen. Aleksandr Dvornikov. The top-level general takes over a war that had no single overall commander and as the Russian military has suffered embarrassing setbacks, retreating from its planned siege of Kyiv...
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It's not 2003 again (4/12/22)On Ukraine, the neo-isolationists of the right are fighting the last war. They warn of a return to the belligerent mood that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- never mind that they are warning the wrong country. If the U.S. launched a large-scale military intervention 20 years ago without adequately calculating the risks or understanding the political and culture contours of the country it would occupy, it is the Russians, not the Ukrainians, the Europeans or us, who are now replicating that mistake.. ...
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What did Joe Biden know and when did he know it? (4/6/22)The walls evidently aren't closing in on President Joe Biden. Despite the mainstream press finally taking up the sleazy business dealings discussed in emails found on Hunter Biden's laptop, the media's lack of interest in the president's knowledge or involvement in this lucrative part of the family business is palpable...
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Clarence Thomas is better than his critics (4/5/22)Clarence Thomas is, by far, our most abused Supreme Court justice. His confirmation hearings in 1991 were, as he memorably put it, a high-tech lynching. Once on the Court, he was allegedly incapable of thinking for himself and was Antonin Scalia's "lawn jockey," as Emerge magazine shamefully put it. ...
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It's the inflation, stupid (3/30/22)Joe Biden is engaged in the most extensive test of whether an American president can survive elevated levels of inflation since Jimmy Carter, and it's not going well. The latest NBC News poll has Biden at a dismal 40% approval rating that, if it doesn't change, will end the careers of Democrats up and down the ballot in November's midterm elections...
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Why Trump? (3/28/22)An endorsement from Donald Trump, as Alabama congressman Mo Brooks has learned to his chagrin, is no guarantee against future harsh denunciation. Trump endorsed Brooks for senate in the belief he would say whatever Trump wanted to hear about the 2020 election, then when Brooks faltered in the polls, humiliatingly unendorsed him...
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Vladimir Putin and the fragility of order (3/23/22)An invading army surrounds a European city, cuts off its supplies, bombards it, and demands surrender. Is it 1346? 1631? 1870? 1941? Or 2022? The answer is any of the above, and all of the above. The Russian siege of Mariupol is shocking not because it is unprecedented, but because it is so traditional -- a form of war that is grinding, brutish, and all too typical in European history...
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Gut check time (3/22/22)Who are we as a nation? While the answer may lead to policy debates, a serious consideration of who and what we are about is critical to getting out of ideological silos and actually making coherent policy that helps solve some of our many problems...