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Veronique de Rugy: Make America affordable again (7/15/24)The Republican National Committee just released its 2024 platform. While calling it a platform is a stretch, the list of bullet points gives an idea of what the potential next Trump administration’s goals are. Here’s one issue that should be front and center: End inflation and make America affordable again.
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Star Parker: An excellent SCOTUS decision on homelessness (7/13/24)Homelessness, unfortunately, has become a persistent and growing problem in the United States. The Supreme Court, in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, just dealt with one big issue associated with this problem — the ability of cities to prohibit camping on public property.
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Rich Lowry: The coup against Joe Biden (7/11/24)The Democratic Party is divided. On the one side is the faction that wants to dump the presidential candidate chosen by more than 14 million Democratic primary voters. On the other side is the faction that wants to keep the presidential candidate who almost certainly will not serve out his four-year term, leading to the ascension of an unelected president and unelected vice president.
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Jonah Goldberg: What many don’t understand about Trump’s agenda (7/11/24)Donald Trump isn’t normally thought of as a consensus-builder, but in one sense that’s exactly what he is. Many of Trump’s most ardent fans and foes alike believe he is the leader of a political movement with a clear and defined set of principles and goals. They disagree only on whether that agenda is good or bad.
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Jason Smith: All options must be on the table to deliver tax relief (7/10/24)20Republicans are already hard at work to once again deliver for working families and small businesses by building on the success of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act next year. The 2017 tax law is a blueprint for prosperity that should be made permanent, and all options are on the table to ensure the biggest winners continue to be low- and middle-income people.
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Kathryn Lopez: The power of ‘Possum Trot’ (7/9/24)"The whole town. The whole town wants kids now!" The caseworker with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services was giddy with a mixture of elation and disbelief. A pastor and his wife were in her office explaining that 22 families were ready to foster some of the most difficult children in the surrounding area. The pastor emphasized the point: There are more couples than babies available to adopt.
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Veronique de Rugy: Don’t let calm seas in uncharted fiscal waters fool you (7/9/24)The United States is full steam ahead into uncharted fiscal waters, with rapidly growing federal debt promising a choppy economic future. Candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump have added trillions to the national debt during their recent presidential administrations, leaving America at a critical juncture that demands urgent, bipartisan action.
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Rich Lowry: Jack Smith should go away (7/8/24)46Even the Democratic deus ex machina is having a bad stretch. No matter how favorable the presidential race has looked for Donald Trump, there’s always been the possibility that special counsel Jack Smith would get to trial with his Jan. 6 case before the election and, at the very least, dominate the news cycle for weeks and, in all likelihood, convict Trump in a case involving more serious matters than hush money to a porn star. ...
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Guest commentary: Kathy Swan’s Spirit of America speech (7/6/24)The Spirit of America — what comes to mind? Do you immediately think of our nation’s founders? What was it that made them so successful? Determination, creativity, courage, grit? Most certainly.
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Jonah Goldberg: Dems’ defense of Biden mirrors GOP rally of Trump (7/6/24)4The fallout from President Biden’s miserable debate last week is giving me deja vu. In the political right’s intramural arguments over Donald Trump, I got some things correct and some incorrect. But I believe I was indisputably right in one respect: From the outset, I argued that Trump’s presidency would end badly because, to echo Heraclitus, character is destiny.
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Rich Lowry: Beware Gretchen Whitmer (7/3/24)In 1960, the New York Yankees fired their legendary manager Casey Stengel for being too old. "I’ll never make the mistake of being 70 again," Stengel quipped. If Democrats dump Joe Biden, the president might want to say the same thing about being 81. The biggest loser of the debate, besides the president himself, was First Lady Jill Biden.
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Kathryn Lopez: An unsurprisingly uninspiring debate (7/3/24)1"I did not have sex with a porn star." Donald Trump’s statement in response to an arguably ad hominem attack from Joe Biden during their June 27 debate must have given more than a few of us flashbacks to Bill Clinton -- specifically, his "It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is" dance as he tried to linguistically sidestep allegations about Monica Lewinsky.
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Victor Davis Hanson: Stop the Ukrainian meat grinder? (7/2/24)Nearly 11 months ago, in August 2023, the New York Times reported that U.S. officials had estimated that some 500,000 Russians and Ukrainians had been killed, wounded or missing in the then 18-month Ukrainian War. Both Russia and Ukraine underreport their losses. Hundreds of thousands of additional casualties have followed in the 28 months of fighting.
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Turning dreams of growth into reality (7/2/24)2When you consider how Missouri has failed to keep up with states like Florida and Texas in economic and population growth, the reasons may seem obvious. We didn’t get the sandy beaches and warm weather that Florida and Texas got, not to mention Texas’s fossil fuel reserves. But that explanation isn’t good enough. It doesn’t account for another state that is leaving Missouri in the dust: Tennessee, the state I grew up in.
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Star Parker: Tim Scott’s important message (6/29/24)2South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott hosted an event in Washington, D.C., marking the Juneteenth holiday, which showcased why he has been included among the candidates Donald Trump is considering as his running mate. Juneteenth, now a national holiday, commemorates June 19, 1865, the date of the final implementation of the Emancipation Proclamation in the State of Texas. It’s considered the official end of slavery in the United States.
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Rich Lowry: The triumph of ‘The Blues Brothers’ (6/29/24)By the time the makers of the "The Blues Brothers" had finished filming the movie’s epic finale in Chicago’s Daley Plaza, they’d spent $3.5 million on that scene alone. According to Daniel de Vise in his enjoyable new book on the iconic 1980 comedy, it was reportedly the most that had then ever been spent filming a movie scene in a big city.
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Veronique de Rugy: True test of leadership: Fiscal responsibility in the Presidential debate (6/28/24)During and after this week’s presidential debate, we must look beyond rhetoric and personality to the core issues shaping America’s future. The most pressing is the unsustainable growth of government spending and ballooning national debt, which promises to rob Americans of wealth and living standards in the coming decades. Make no mistake, it’s a genuine crisis demanding immediate attention. Dealing with it responsibly should be the litmus test for presidential leadership.
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Jonah Goldberg: The debate that could sway undecided voters (6/27/24)11I’ve changed my mind: This week’s presidential debate matters. Before I continue, a quick recap: Last month, I expressed my long-standing view that presidential debates aren’t very meaningful and are very stupid. They are pseudo-events, the historian Daniel J. Boorstin’s term for manufactured media spectacles that feel significant because we imbue them with significance.
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Victor Davis Hanson: How California’s paradise become our purgatory (6/26/24)4California has become a test case of the suicide of the West. Never before has such a state, so rich in natural resources and endowed with such a bountiful human inheritance, self-destructed so rapidly. How and why did California so utterly consume its unmatched natural and ancestral inheritance and end up as a warning to Western civilization of what might be in store for anyone who followed its nihilism?
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Missouri state treasurer urges residents to claim their share of $1 billion in unclaimed property (6/25/24)During June and July, newspapers across Missouri are publishing tens of thousands of names of people for whom the State Treasurer’s Office is holding unclaimed property totaling more than $1 billion. This is not the state’s money – it is Missourians’ money, and I am committed to returning it to its rightful owner.
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Kathryn Lopez: The true meaning of freedom (6/25/24)Now is the time of year that stores and companies move from displaying pride flags to draping everything in red, white and blue. Independence Day is about freedom. But what does that mean? A mature and educated understanding of freedom is not libertine. It is not about doing everything we want. It is not about hyper-individualism. We make choices about freedom every day, and we all need them to be rooted in civic duty and virtue.
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Michael Reagan: Maddow and Behar want four more years — for Trump (6/24/24)4Who do the liberal ladies of “The View” think they’re kidding? Last week, Joy Behar and her ragged troop of pretend political pundits were again acting terrified by the specter of Donald Trump — aka, Adolf Hitler 2.0 — returning to power this fall. ...
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Veronique de Rugy: SCOTUS takes on Congressional malaise and executive branch overreach (6/22/24)The United States Constitution vests all legislative powers in Congress. Yet, over the past century, we’ve witnessed a disturbing trend of legislators increasingly delegating much of the authority to set the laws that govern the land to the executive branch, which includes unelected officials at administrative agencies. This undermines democratic accountability, contributes to government bloat and abuse of powers, and disrupts the balance of power crafted so carefully by the framers.
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Jonah Goldberg: The Supreme Court’s role in our partisan polarization has been greatly exaggerated (6/21/24)3Conventional wisdom suggests that the Supreme Court, like the country, is deeply divided along partisan and ideological lines. But this overlooks the court’s historic recent run of unanimous decisions and the fact that the liberal and conservative justices often don’t vote as blocs. Court critics tend to respond to these inconvenient realities by saying something like, Sure, but on the big cases, the culturally divisive ones, the conservatives form the majority and the liberals the dissenting minority.
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Star Parker: Young voters leaving Democrats and Biden (6/20/24)4A lot of attention is being given to support being picked up by Donald Trump among non-white voters. But the change taking place among young voters is even more dramatic. In the elections in 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump was soundly defeated among voters 18-29.
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Rich Lowry: A Charlottesville every day (6/19/24)Every day is a Charlottesville now, but hardly anyone notices. The small central Virginia city is a metonymy for the 2017 white nationalist "Unite the Right" rally that created national shock waves and rocked the presidency of Donald J. Trump. The antisemitic rhetoric and menacing nature of that event — in a different, left-wing form — are being replicated all over the country in openly hateful pro-Hamas protests.
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Jason Smith: Cracking down on organizations that fund terrorism (6/18/24)11On June 8, the Israeli military launched a daring mission to free four hostages who were held captive for months by evil Hamas terrorists in Gaza. I’m incredibly grateful that these innocent people are safe and back at home with their families, and I pray that the other hostages – including Americans – will also come home soon.
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Kathryn Lopez: The importance of miracles (6/18/24)12"Every Sunday for me it’s hard," says Nancy Pelosi in "Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans Talk About Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning," a 2008 collection edited by Kerry Kennedy, daughter of the late Robert Kennedy. Pelosi’s sabbath difficulty has to do with the Eucharist, the Catholic belief that the bread and wine of Communion are transformed into the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ. "This is my body, this is my blood. They’re asking a lot. In my era, we didn’t question any of it," Pelosi says in "Being Catholic."
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Victor Davis Hanson: The west is sick of the New Woke Jihadism (6/17/24)2What are the mobs in Washington defiling iconic federal statues with impunity and pelting policemen really protesting? What are the throngs in London brazenly swarming parks and rampaging in the streets really angry about? Occupations? They could care less that the Islamist Turkish government still stations 40,000 troops in occupied Cyprus. No one is protesting against the Chinese takeover of a once-independent Tibet or the threatened absorption of an autonomous Taiwan...
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Rich Lowry: Is it OK to rescue hostages? (6/14/24)1Israel pulled off a hostage rescue that deserves to go down in the annals of extraordinarily daring, highly successful military operations, yet it is being condemned for it. The secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council denounced the "heinous and terrorist crime that targeted defenseless innocents with brutality," while Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon have decried Israel's alleged criminal tactics. ...
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Jason Smith: Fighting back against Biden’s two-tiered justice system (6/13/24)29The day the verdict was reached in New York v. Trump will go down as a dark day in our nation’s history. The former president was convicted and could be thrown in jail over charges that should have never been brought against him in the first place. This case was led by a left-wing prosecutor who ran for office promising to bring charges against Trump; it was overseen by a left-wing judge whose own daughter was helping Democrat politicians fundraise off the trial; and it was held in one of the most liberal cities in America. ...
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Veronique de Rugy: Biden points the bill (and the blame) elsewhere (6/13/24)1Government overspending, an activity the Biden administration has taken to a new level, has sent the country into an inflationary spiral. Through trillions of dollars in COVID-19 relief programs, infrastructure spending, vote-buying student loan forgiveness programs and a political "Build Back Better Agenda," the White House has flooded the economy and decimated consumers’ purchasing power. We’re paying more and getting less for everything from energy to food. ...
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Rich Lowry: The war on contraception that wasn't (6/12/24)5We don't know who they are or where they are. All we know is that some place or other, a shadowy group of powerful Republicans is meeting to figure out how to ban contraceptives. For all we know, they also might be scheming to cover up what really happened at Area 51 and to obscure the identity of the real assassin of JFK...
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Michael Reagan: A bad week for the Biden Clan (6/12/24)It was a good week for the Reagan family. Not so much for the Biden clan. On Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where my father is buried, there was a fine ceremony to mark the 20th year of his passing and recall the conservative principles that powered his domestic and foreign successes...
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Stacy Kinder: Gun violence, infrastructure, budget on center stage (6/11/24)The mission statement for the City of Cape Girardeau states that Cape will “actively promote a safe, innovative climate through city services that enhances the quality of life for its citizens and our region”. There are many ways the city goes about delivering on that mission, but it is seen most obviously in the city’s focus on public safety and infrastructure. ...
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Mayor's update: Gun violence, infrastructure projects, budget items on center stage (6/10/24)1The mission statement for the City of Cape Girardeau states that Cape will “actively promote a safe, innovative climate through city services that enhances the quality of life for its citizens and our region”. There are many ways the city goes about delivering on that mission, but it is seen most obviously in the city’s focus on public safety and infrastructure...
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Victor Davis Hanson: The myth that Biden had nothing to do with the prosecutions of Trump (6/10/24)32The five criminal and civil prosecutions of former President Donald Trump all prompt heated denials from Democrats that President Joe Biden and Democrat operatives had a role in any of them. But Biden has long let it be known that he was frustrated with his own Department of Justice’s federal prosecutors for their tardiness in indicting Trump. ...
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Veronique de Rugy: Social Security reform is coming (really) and will bring political rewards (6/8/24)1No matter what President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump promise you, and no matter its past as the untouchable "third rail" of American politics, Social Security will be modified one way or another within the next 10 years. While both candidates are misleading their voters, the party with the most to lose from ignoring Social Security’s troubles is the GOP.
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Rich Lowry: Don’t hate Caitlin Clark (6/8/24)By all means, let’s take a star who is drawing new attention to a women’s sports league that could definitely use it, and make her into a hate figure. If her critics have their way, this will be the fate of Caitlin Clark. Of course, Clark is the former University of Iowa basketball legend who has now embarked on her rookie season in the WNBA with the Indiana Fever, generating new interest in a league that has survived for almost two decades, but hasn’t set the world on fire.
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Betsy McCaughey: Alvin Bragg — nothing to brag about (6/7/24)2Saturday afternoon, a Duane Reade security guard was severely stabbed and a shopper threatened by a knife-wielding thief at one of the chain’s midtown Manhattan stores. Roughly 12 hours later, a straphanger was shot in the hand as his train pulled into the 86th street and Lexington Avenue platform. That’s life in Manhattan, where transit crime, assault and shoplifting are raging.
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Star Parker: Why is the United States negotiating with terrorists? (6/6/24)A Gallup poll of several months ago asked, "On the whole, would you say that you are satisfied or dissatisfied with the position of the United States in the world today?" Only one-third, 33%, said they were satisfied. This down from 53% in February 2020 at the conclusion of Donald Trump’s presidency. It’s a wonder that even a third of Americans are comfortable with President Joe Biden’s disastrous leadership. Many scholars now liken the world today to the 1930s, the years preceding World War II.
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Jonah Goldberg: Could the guilty verdict cost Trump the election? (6/6/24)5How much will Donald Trump’s conviction in the New York hush money case matter come November? The obvious answer is that nobody knows. Still, I suspect the verdict will matter, just not in ways that are easy or even possible to predict. A lot of the instant reaction revolves around polls. We talk about polls not because they are so important but because we lack much else to go on. Like the proverbial drunk who looks under the streetlamp for his lost keys because the light is much better there, we look at polls because they at least illuminate something, even if it’s not very much.
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Rich Lowry: The secretary of transportation who couldn’t (6/5/24)2Rarely has a cabinet secretary done so little with such vast resources. On the CBS show "Face the Nation," Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg had to defend the Biden administration’s woeful record of building new electric-vehicle charging stations that are key to unlocking its hoped-for EV nirvana.
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Bonnie Jean Feldkamp: Setting boundaries with the ‘let them’ theory (6/4/24)Podcaster Mel Robbins has ignited the "Let Them" theory for the masses. The theory is simply this: When you feel yourself trying to control a person, outcome, situation or circumstance, stop and instead just "let them" go ahead and do whatever it is they are doing. Does someone want to assign ill intent and misunderstand you? Let them. Your friends left you off an invite list? Let them. Is your company restructuring? Let them.
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Victor Davis Hanson: Our revolutionary times (6/4/24)4Sometimes unexpected but dramatic events tear off the thin veneer of respectability and convention. What follows is the exposure and repudiation of long-existing but previously covered-up pathologies. Events like the destruction of the southern border over the last three years, the October 7 massacre and ensuing Gaza war, the campus protests, the COVID-19 epidemic and lockdown, and the systematic efforts to weaponize our bureaucracies and courts have all led to radical reappraisals of American culture and civilization.
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Michael Reagan: Democrats go on trial in November (6/1/24)17Mark my words. Democrats will be sorry on Nov. 5 because of what they did this week in New York City. They and their friends in the liberal media can whoop it up and high-five each all they want over the guilty verdicts Donald Trump got on Thursday in his hush money trial.
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Veronique de Rugy: Projections vs. scenarios, and why politicians should care (5/31/24)Congressional Budget Office projections provide valuable insights into how a big chunk of your income is being spent and reveal the long-term consequences of our government’s current fiscal policies -- you may endure them, and your children most certainly will. Yet, like most other projections looking into our future, these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. So should claims that CBO projections validate anyone’s fiscal track record.
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Kathryn Lopez: The message of motherhood (5/30/24)"I am mother!" cried "Saturday Night Live" host, and former cast member, Maya Rudolph on Mother’s Day weekend, On the show, she was dubbed the "Mother of the House of Rockefeller," and she proceeded to recount some of the many characters she played throughout the years. I stopped watching "SNL" regularly when Adam Sandler’s "Opera Man" retired, so some of the bit was lost on me. But this idea landed: Even in a comedic context, popular culture was celebrating motherhood.
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Rich Lowry: Trump is changing the narrative with people of color (5/29/24)2The progressive journalist Thomas Frank wrote a much-discussed book in 2004 titled, "What’s the Matter with Kansas?" Right now, some other like-minded journalist might be thinking of writing a book called "What’s the Matter with People of Color?"
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Rich Lowry: Yes, militarize space (5/28/24)1"The stars will never be won by little minds," observed the great science fiction writer Robert Heinlein. If we aren’t careful, though, they just might be won by the scheming minds of governments hostile to the United States. A notable New York Times piece the other day reported that the "Pentagon is rushing to expand its capacity to wage war in space, convinced that rapid advances by China and Russia in space-based operations pose a growing threat to U.S. troops and other military assets on the ground and American satellites in orbit." ...
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Victor Davis Hanson: Loose talk about the end of everything (5/28/24)1After a recent summit between new partners China and Russia, General Secretary Xi Jinping and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin issued an odd one-sentence communique: "There can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be fought." No one would disagree, even though several officials of both hypocritical governments have previously threatened their neighbors with nuclear attacks. ...
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Veronique de Rugy: Making it easier to make things in America (5/27/24)2With more tariffs on electric vehicles and an election featuring two pro-tariff presidential candidates on the way, the debate about how best to support and strengthen the U.S. manufacturing sector is back. Some argue, mistakenly, that the key to protecting American industries and manufacturing jobs is a set of tariffs on industrial imports. This approach is ultimately counterproductive. There are better ways to help American manufacturing, not the least of which is to remove regulatory barriers and reform the tax code. ...
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Michael Reagan: Saluting America’s champions (5/25/24)5We can argue forever about left-right politics and why the country is going to ruin. But it is Memorial Day weekend. Let’s forget the endless political warfare being waged in Washington, D.C.
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Bonnie Jean Feldkamp: How my son encouraged me to experience more new things (5/25/24)My 8-year-old son likes rocks. He wants to know how different stones form, how they get their color, where they’re found and the folklore surrounding their properties. I, too, love stones. My jewelry collection spans the decades and is filled with gems such as turquoise, smokey quartz, carnelian and picture jasper. My son flipped through my encyclopedia of stones and gems and placed a sticky note on every page that described a stone we had in the house.
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Betsy McCaughey: Stop the migrant invasion (5/24/24)3Americans don’t have to surrender their country to the millions wading across the Rio Grande and crashing fences to get in. In Europe, ordinary people are fighting to save their continent and their standard of living from the impact of mass migration. Americans need to watch these Europeans and be encouraged. Resisting the cost of housing, feeding and educating migrants doesn’t make you a racist or bigot.
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Jonah Goldberg: Trump, Biden debate: Not as crucial as portrayed (5/23/24)1The Biden and Trump campaigns agreed to two presidential debates last week. Who among us can contain our excitement? Well, it depends on what you mean by "us." In my corner of the professional world — pundits, commentators, political junkies — there was much rejoicing. Watching the Sunday shows, you could be forgiven for thinking church bells must have rung out to celebrate the news across the nation, as if some medieval queen had given birth to a male heir. The debates are happening! The debates are happening! Huzzah! ...
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Victor Davis Hanson: The Biden reelection strategy (5/22/24)2President Joe Biden polls at or below 40% approval. Historically, such unpopularity has made it almost impossible for a president to be reelected. Biden is not so much an octogenarian as an unhealthy and prematurely aging 80-year-old. It is America’s irony that he is fit for almost no other job in the country other than the presidency, which apparently allows for a three-day-a-week ceremonial role while others in the shadows run the country.
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Kathryn Lopez: Advice to the graduate (5/22/24)"We don’t just need leaders, we need followers." A friend who’s worked in Washington politics for decades was thinking aloud about a commencement speech she was scheduled to give at her law school alma mater. She didn’t want to give the students fluff. She wanted to be congratulatory while not patronizing them. She wanted to make a point about gratitude, stewardship and humility.
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Stacy Kinder: Cape mayor speaks out after shooting at Cape Central commencement (5/21/24)18I am sitting in my empty house as my extended family takes my son, a 2024 Cape Central High School graduate, out to dinner to try to salvage a celebration of his graduation and all he has achieved. I’m not able to go to that dinner, because I am, in gut-wrenching honesty, trying to process what happened a few hours ago at the CHS graduation, where gun violence marred a beautiful family and community event. I am one of thousands of people here in Cape who have had this day turned on its head in a traumatic fashion.
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Rich Lowry: Harrison Butker is right about men and women (5/21/24)1To 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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Veronique de Rugy: Why no politician can ‘fix’ prices (and why that’s OK) (5/20/24)Prices are threads stitching together the fabric of our economy. They guide countless producers, here and abroad, to meet the most urgent demands of countless consumers. Prices enable the economic coordination of millions of individuals — each with his or her own unique preferences, skills and resources — with no need for a central planner. They direct entrepreneurs and innovators, signaling where opportunities lie and where resources are most needed. ...
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Bonnie Jean Feldkamp: Graduates need to know that life is bigger than their GPA (5/20/24)"Your success in high school does not determine your success in life." My high school English teacher Chuck Keller told me this, and it was exactly what teenage me needed to hear. Chuck was right, and I’m here to pass on this little nugget to young adults today. ...
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Michael Reagan: It’s all about Nov. 5, America (5/20/24)What’s happening on CNN and MSNBC is disgusting, but not surprising. Some of their so-called pundits and reporters have been downright giddy while watching Donald Trump on trial in New York City. They think that the New York DA’s office is doing God’s work, not Joe Biden’s. ...
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Star Parker: Fix Social Security with ownership, not more government (5/18/24)5The trustees for Social Security have just issued their annual report. And, as we have learned annually over recent years, the system cannot meet its obligations. According to this latest report, the Social Security system will not be able to meet its obligations to retirees by 2035. In 2035, the system will be adequate to meet just 83% of its obligations.
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Rich Lowry: Biden has disastrously misplayed the politics of Gaza (5/18/24)2It’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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Betsy McCaughey: Shafik, other college presidents have mission confusion (5/17/24)Columbia University President Minouche Shafik is urging university leaders across the country to do some "serious soul searching." Good advice. She should start with her own soul. Shafik has the wrong idea about the purpose of a university. She and likeminded college presidents are turning preeminent universities into factories, churning out social activists who are adept at shouting down their opponents, squaring off against cops and vandalizing buildings but who acquire little knowledge and few reasoning skills during college.
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Jonah Goldberg: Biden still trails Trump; It’s more than inflation, Gaza, age (5/16/24)6A batch of new polls from the New York Times, Siena College and the Philadelphia Inquirer has very bad news for President Biden: He’s losing. Among registered voters, he’s significantly behind in five of the six battleground states that are most likely to decide the election. He does slightly better among likely voters but remains behind in five key states.
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Jason Smith: Rooting out antisemitism on campus (5/16/24)Like so many Americans, I have been absolutely appalled by the rampant antisemitism we’re seeing on college campuses. It’s unacceptable that in America in 2024, vicious mobs are harassing, chasing down, and blocking students from entering buildings on college campuses because of their Jewish faith. And let me be clear: these mobs aren’t anti-war protestors; they are terrorist-supporting hate groups.
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Rich Lowry: A presidency in its dotage (5/15/24)3Is 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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Kathryn Lopez: The long haul of love (5/15/24)We cannot live without mothers. That seems like it should be an obvious point. But we have examples in recent culture and politics that suggest otherwise. The vice president of the United States recently visited an abortion clinic. As much as the issue of abortion has been important to the Democratic Party, no president or vice president had previously made such a visit. At his own abortion-rights rally, our Catholic president made the sign of the cross, as if to call upon God’s blessings for more abortions.
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Victor Davis Hanson: Try a little honesty about Israel (5/14/24)4Scan news accounts of anti-Israel campus and street protestors. Read their demands and manifestos. Collate the confusion after October 7 from the Biden administration. Here are 10 of their most common untruths about Oct. 7 and the war that followed.
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Holly Thompson Rehder: From teacher raises to opioid prevention: What Missouri’s new budget means for you (5/14/24)Hi y’all! What a week it has been in Jefferson City! There were certainly some highs and lows, but in the end, several bills were passed in the Senate and the fiscal year 2025 state operating budget was sent back to the Missouri House of Representatives with the Senate’s changes. It should pass smoothly and make it to the governor’s desk before the 6 p.m. deadline Friday evening. Granted, we cut it closer than almost any other session in history.
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Campus protests are just pale imitations of the 1960s (5/13/24)4It seems silly to write a column about the recent college protests. It’s not really news when privileged students who have never been in the line of fire and whose most pressing concern is what pronoun they’ll use on any given day decide to rise up against the establishment...
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Is the union resurgence real? Does it matter for workers? (5/13/24)Unions are said to be having a moment. The story goes something like this: Helped by a presidential administration that touts itself as the "most pro-union in history," labor unions — after decades of decline — are winning big victories against anti-union corporations and extracting impressive concessions for their workers. But is it all true?...
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It takes courage to write in the digital age (5/13/24)Erma Bombeck was right when she said, "It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else." I thought of this quote when my friend Gina Barreca recently asked on social media, "Writers: Why is it hard to hit 'send' even after all these years?"...
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Lucas Presson: Why I’m grateful my mom didn’t let me quit piano (5/11/24)5Growing up, I didn’t experience a major rebellious phase. I’m sure I had my moments, but frankly, between my parents’ guidance and church involvement, I stayed out of trouble for the most part. Looking back, I’m grateful for the direction they provided. However, one memory stands out—a conversation with my mom when I was 12.
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Guest commentary: A mother’s role in advancing shared parenting in Missouri (5/11/24)1n this Mother’s Day, Missouri has much for which to be thankful. We became the fifth state to pass Shared Parenting legislation in 2023. Shared parenting advocates are pro-mom and dad! But they are especially pro-children! Motherhood is a blessing to me, and I will readily admit that the challenges of working and nurturing children at home are hard to handle all the time. Of course, that’s the beauty of shared parenting, sharing those responsibilities. I have met so many women in the movement who are mothers, stepmothers, grandmothers and aunts. This movement couldn’t have had the success it’s had without women stepping up to the plate.
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Star Parker: Add Sen. Tom Cotton to VP Shortlist (5/11/24)Headlines are now filled with names reported to be on Donald Trump’s "shortlist" of possible VP candidates. These individuals, some of whom I know, indeed have serious qualifications and experience and are appropriate to be considered for the No. 2 position in the executive branch of the nation’s government.
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Betsy McCaughey: Colleges side with radicals to detriment of students (5/10/24)2The Left and their media allies want you to believe the protests roiling college campuses are spontaneous uprisings of morally fervent students worried about Gaza war victims. Don’t fall for that claim. It’s a scam. These protesters don’t represent most students or the American public. Yet Monday, Columbia University canceled graduation ceremonies, kowtowing to the radical fringe, with whom they largely agree. Students and their families be damned.
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Jason Smith: House Republicans challenge Biden’s economic policies amid rising living costs (5/10/24)5Last week, President Biden called for the expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, President Trump’s signature legislation that jump started the best economy of my lifetime and that continues to provide needed tax relief to working families today. In one statement, the president promised American workers, families, farmers, and small businesses that they would see their taxes go up – breaking his promise that families making less than $400,000 would not receive a tax increase...
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Jonah Goldberg: What we should have learned from the war on woke (5/9/24)1This isn’t going to be more musing about whether America has reached "peak woke." But that is part of the story. So let’s start there. About a decade ago, many on the left embraced the word "woke," a term with roots in African American culture and activism. It originally meant staying awake — that is, "woke" — to the dangers facing the Black community. But in the hands of the broader, and whiter, academic and journalistic left, it soon became a kind of cool catchall for progressive politics, alongside other buzzwords like "intersectionality."
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Rich Lowry: The Columbia University push to elect Donald Trump (5/9/24)1"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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Kathryn Lopez: A troubling tale (5/8/24)At 10 years old, Rob Henderson reached the following conclusion: "As far as I was concerned, adults were unreliable liars. With each new family, new parent and new rejection, grief, anger and loneliness accrued within me." Henderson writes of the upbringing that led to this despairing insight in his powerful new book, "Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class."
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Holly Thompson Rehder: Rural health care access and funding moves forward despite lengthy delays (5/8/24)Hi y’all! What a week it has been in Jefferson City. It’s hard to wrap up all the political drama that took place, including a multi-day filibuster, but the bottom line is that multiple measures to improve and protect rural health care access have moved forward in the Senate this week.
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Rich Lowry: 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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Victor Davis Hanson: Can the current universities be saved? (5/7/24)4Elite higher education in America — long unquestioned as globally preeminent — is facing a perfect storm. Fewer applicants, higher costs, impoverished students, collapsing standards, and increasingly politicized and mediocre faculty reflect a collapse of the university system.
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Michael Reagan: It’s not about you, Marjorie Taylor Greene (5/6/24)5What a good week it should have been for Republicans. Dozens of campuses from UCLA to Columbia University were being wracked by pro-Palestinian protestors who set up “Gaza Solidarity” encampments, spewed antisemitic hate speech, took over buildings and intimidated Jewish students. ...
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Bonnie Jean Feldkamp: Ultraprocessed food manufacturers should not be permitted to market to children (5/6/24)1My son brought home a bookmark from school promoting the school’s spring book fair — and it doubled as a coupon to a fast-food restaurant. This isn’t the first "free kid’s meal" coupon my son has gotten. It’s a pretty common thing, and after the book I just read, it annoys me. ...
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Veronique de Rugy: Will California hobble the US railroad industry? (5/6/24)American federalism is struggling. Federal rules are an overwhelming presence in every state government, and some states, due to their size or other leverage, can impose their own policies on much or all of the country. The problem has been made clearer by an under-the-radar plan to phase out diesel locomotives in California. If the federal government provides the state with a helping hand, it would bring nationwide repercussions for a vital, overlooked industry. ...
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Stacy Kinder: A look at sales, property taxes in Cape Girardeau (5/4/24)6The City of Cape’s fiscal year begins every July, and our administration is very busy preparing the FY25 budget for city council approval. This process will be before the public numerous times in June, which is important as our city budget lays out the city’s priorities. It is vital that city residents can see clearly how revenue is generated, and how it is used.
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Star Parker: No, demonstrations today not like the 1960s (5/4/24)The current demonstrations on college campuses against Israel remind some of the unrest on college campuses during the 1960s. But the comparison is not a good one.
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Betsy McCaughey: Trusting China in inviting another pandemic (5/3/24)3It’s one thing to die from natural causes. Worse, to die from a disease leaked by Chinese scientists in a lab and allowed to wipe out millions. That is now almost certainly the explanation for the origins of COVID-19. And even worse? U.S. taxpayers paid for it.
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Jonah Goldberg: What we keep getting wrong about campus protests (5/2/24)The current campus demonstrations are a reminder that of all the mossy cliches and puffed-up pieties of polite (and impolite) American discourse, the sanctity of protest is the hardest to question.
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Rich Lowry: No, don’t rush the Trump J6 case (5/1/24)11When 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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Holly Thompson Rehder: Education wins the week (5/1/24)Hey y’all! It’s hard to believe, but we are truly in the home stretch in Jefferson City as there is now officially less than a month until the last day of the legislative session. Last week, a resounding statement was made that, for all the obstacles and false starts that may have gotten in our way so far this year, education is a priority for this General Assembly.
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Kathryn Lopez: The evil of antisemitism (4/30/24)Eva Weintraubova and her older brother Pavel. Marthe Suzanne Tepfer. Rosa Henriette de Vries-Gersons. Petr Haim. Eva Neuova. Those are just a few of the names of children at Auschwitz who were recently remembered in an online memorial. The Auschwitz museum in Poland regularly posts photos on social media of people who died in the gas chambers. These posts note the birthdays and death days of people of all ages. Most jarring are the daily photos of children.
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Veronique de Rugy: Stop the ‘emergency spending’ charade already (4/29/24)5Last week, Congress moved closer to passing four separate bills with $95 billion in funding for Ukraine, Israel, Indo-Pacific allies and the domestic submarine industrial base. This funding has been debated for months, with much of it intended for wars that have been going on — and likely will continue — for a while. In other words, it’s not new or surprising. Yet once again, it will be labeled "emergency spending", a tool allowing legislators to double down on their fiscal irresponsibility. ...
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Bonnie Jean Feldkamp: Ultraprocessed foods are everywhere (4/29/24)In my quest to eat healthier as an adult, I’ve encountered a lot of meat and dairy alternatives along with low-fat and sugar-free treat options that claim to be better choices. Many of these products are also marketed as organic. Like the almond milk I buy. I choose not to eat mass-produced animal products because of the unethical and inhumane conditions found in corporate farming. What I failed to realize was that the corporate atmosphere of processed food marketed as healthy is equally horrific. ...
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Star Parker: House Speaker Mike Johnson is a hero (4/27/24)1Author Herman Wouk captured well how to understand heroism. "Heroes are not supermen; they are good men who embody — by the cast of destiny — the virtue of their whole people in a great hour," observed Wouk.
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Betsy McCaughey: There should be no right to sleep in all public places (4/27/24)1In a Supreme Court showdown Monday over whether the homeless have a "right" to camp in public, almost no one mentioned the actual victims of that crazy idea. Homeless advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, told the court that living on the streets is a "victimless" crime. Victimless?
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