President Obama’s red line that wasn’t Someone had to take the fall for President Barack Obama thoughtlessly drawing a “red line” threatening serious consequences if Syria used chemical weapons. It turns out that it is the president himself.
Senior officials explained to The New York Times that last August, the president’s advisers had no idea he was going to boldly issue a red-line warning. The president was “unscripted,” according to one official. In this perilously unteleprom...
Health care plan is a job killer Among the many justifications used to try to popularize the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the first and foremost claim was that the measure would be a job creator. At the White House Health Summit in 2010, Nancy Pelosi asserted, “In its life, this bill will create 4 million jobs — 400,000 jobs almost immediately.”
The fact of the matter is, President Obama’s health care law doesn’t create jobs, it kills them. As the darkening ...
Obama takes a pass on abortion President Barack Obama was proud to become the first sitting president to address Planned Parenthood the other day. But not proud enough to utter the word “abortion.”
The right to abortion is the sneakiest, most shamefaced of all American rights. It hides behind evasion and euphemism and cant.
So President Obama sang a hymn of praise to Planned Parenthood at the organization’s annual conference without mentioning what makes it so distinct...
Depression isn’t always apparent On April 11, 2013, I got the most dreaded call that any parent could ever receive, a call from the police in the town where my 23-year-old daughter Kaitlyn was starting her third year of medical school at Wake Forest School of Medicine. He said he had to talk with me about my daughter and that I had to go there to be told what he had to say.
I begged this man to tell me then, as I would have a three-and-a-half hour drive to Winston-Salem. M...
At least everyone had a laugh “Personal charm may be Obama’s last best hope” headlined the Washington Post on Monday. That charm was on ample display at the annual vanity fest called the White House Correspondents Association dinner over the weekend.
The dinner always features two comedians — one professional, and the other, the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Skilled joke writers contribute the one-liners, but delivery counts, too, and President Obama has clearly im...
Politics: The art of the impossible Someone called politics “the art of the possible.” But, in the era of the modern welfare state, politics is largely the art of the impossible.
Those people morbid enough to keep track of politicians’ promises may remember how Barack Obama said that ObamaCare would lower medical costs — and lots of people bought it.
But if you stop and think, however old-fashioned that may seem these days, do you seriously believe that millions more people...
The Clinton and Obama reparations Abraham Carpenter Jr., a farmer in Grady, Ark., has more insight into human nature than the average sociologist. “Anytime you are going to throw money up in the air,” he told The New York Times, “you are going to have people acting crazy.”
Carpenter is quoted in an astonishing 5,000-word Times expose on the federal government’s wildly profligate program to compensate minority and women farmers for alleged discrimination. The government rigg...
Legalization of marijuana paying off The good things that should happen after marijuana is legalized are happening in Colorado. In November, voters in Colorado — and Washington state — legalized pot for recreational use. (Many states allow medical use of marijuana.)
What are the good things?
For starters, money, money, money for the state coffers. As of last week, lawmakers in Denver were still tussling over how heavily to tax marijuana sales. A leading plan centers on excis...
The danger of white America It was cool and rainy Sunday morning when the bomb ripped through the building. At 10:22, a group of children was just heading into the basement to hear a sermon at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. According to a Washington Post account at the time: Dozens of survivors, their faces dripping blood from the glass that flew out of the church’s stained glass windows, staggered around the building in a cloud of white dust raised ...
If you are able, carry your own lead We who work through colds, bad backs and low moods — however liberal we might be — have permission to resent those who could hold a job but don’t, preferring to collect disability checks unto the decades. You see them at the coffee shop, refilling their cups in leisure, or even pumping iron at the gym.
And there are more of them all the time. More than 5 percent of eligible American adults are now receiving disability payments from Social S...
Taking us to the ground for a point The air traffic controller furloughs are the White House tours of the sky.
From time immemorial, a government that doesn’t want to tighten its fiscal belt finds high-profile ways to inconvenience the public to try to turn it against spending cuts. In keeping with this so-called Washington Monument strategy, the White House canceled tours in the immediate aftermath of sequestration. In an escalation, the Federal Aviation Administration has f...
Governor should be a Mr. Fix-It RALEIGH — Now that Pat McCrory has passed the oh-so-important mark of 100 days in office, the political class in Raleigh feels obligated to offer a critique of his administration. The most common one is that Gov. McCrory is playing “small ball.”
That is, the critics say that because the governor didn’t propose a major spending program in his 2013-15 budget plan, he’s not really doing anything of consequence. Even the reform initiatives McCr...
Genes and race: Both are in play During decades of watching both collegiate and professional football, I have seen hundreds of touchdowns scored by black players — but not one extra point kicked by a black player.
Is this because blacks are genetically incapable of kicking a football or because racists won’t let blacks kick a football?
Most of us would consider either of these explanations ridiculous. Yet genes and discrimination were the predominant explanations of blac...
Obama’s nice campaign a failure If there was one thing the left was certain about in 2008 it was this: George W. Bush had catastrophically undermined America’s world reputation with his unprovoked aggression and use of torture. The advent of Obama would reverse the damage. As Andrew Sullivan wrote in 2007, among best assets Obama brought to the “rebranding” of America was “his face.” The election of Obama and his friendly approach to the Muslim world would make the United S...
Our duty is keep the terrorists out The uncle of the accused Boston Marathon bombers got the boys right. They were unable to settle into American life, Ruslan Tsarni told reporters from his home in Maryland, “and thereby just hating everyone who did.” He called the two brothers “losers.” I prefer the term “weaklings.”
As the story thickens with detail, it would seem that the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, now dead, was the ringleader. So let’s concentrate on him.
Tamerla...
