A year ago the conservative movement was fired up for a year-long celebration of Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday. Well, it didn’t really last a year, but this coming Monday, February 6, the Gipper would have been 101, and the longing for comparable conservative leadership will not disappear just because his centennial has passed. Indeed,…

As the first month of the Republican presidential race draws to a close, a fissure that has laid dormant within the party is coming to define the campaign: the divide between the conservative insurgency personified by the Tea Party and what’s conventionally referred to as “the Republican establishment.” The former has ricocheted…

Barack Obama had an open microphone and time to kill at Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, a scenario only slightly less distressing than learning that a serial arsonist is on the loose. What resulted was grandiose even by the standards of this endlessly self-referential chief executive: 65 minutes of blather punctuated by 75 personal…

The utter fecklessness of top conservative office-holders is stunning. Faced with what most of them call a make-or-break, now-or-never election, most of them are so brave, so ready to meet the moment, so willing to step up to the plate… that they sit on the sidelines, quaking in their boots, afraid to make a stand because they don’t want…

Over the course of the past three years, the Tea Party movement has reshaped conservative politics in America. By the closing days of the Bush Administration, the GOP was lost in a philosophical morass, having ceded ground to “compassionate conservatism,” runaway spending and government bailouts. Then, in early 2009, in an impassioned speech…

Okay, pretend I’m running for president. Here’s my platform. Personal income taxes: Flat rate, 20 percent. Same applies to dividends and capital gains. $7,000 exemption per person in household (no more than two adults age 18 or above). Full tax deductions for charitable contributions. Deduction for home mortgage interest for primary residence…

If the Obama Administration already behaves as lawlessly as we are witnessing despite the tempering prospect of an electoral performance review this November, what degree of unbound malevolence might a second term bring?  As 2012 begins, three events this week brought that question into particular relief.  First, the United States fell…

A weak incumbent president — hated by the opposition and experiencing resistance from within his own party — heads into his reelection campaign struggling to keep his political prospects alive. The opposition party fields a colorful cast of potential challengers – a hot-headed candidate prone to grand rhetorical flourishes aimed at…

In the run-up to the Republican Iowa caucuses, President Barack Obama and his subordinates made several controversial moves to gin up liberal support while conservatives weren’t paying attention.  Here are four of the worst.  1. Overruling South Carolina’s Voter ID Law Just before Christmas, Eric Holder’s Justice…

2011 was Barack Obama’s year of living dangerously. Whether it was the debt ceiling showdown, the prospect of closing the federal government or the push for a macroeconomically meaningless payroll tax cut, the president’s standard operating procedure was to wait until the eleventh hour, then hope that the resultant chaos in Congress would…

For years now I’ve warned that Barack Obama gives evidence of disturbingly authoritarian tendencies. Wednesday’s ferociously unconstitutional “recess appointments” of three members of the National Labor Relations Board and a new director for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were just the latest in a long line of…

2012 is going to be a year dominated by politics. It will begin with the Iowa caucuses only a few days away and end either with a Republican president-elect  preparing to enter the White House or President Obama gearing up for a second term (if the latter is the case, we can still hold out hope that the Mayan calendar doomsday scenario will come…

For Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General, to play the race card is about as surprising as for Charlie Sheen to go on a bender. Weak people have ugly habits.   Holder is rightly under fire, and subject to the call by dozens of congressman for his resignation, because of the blatant incompetence and dishonesty of his Justice Department in the gun…

The White House Office of the President December 14, 2011 Dear Mr. Claus ~ As we celebrate the joyous season of Christmas, I know that I speak for many Americans in wishing you well on your trip around the globe and thanking you for the joy that you spread on an annual basis. You know I’ve always been a fan of yours – anyone who spends…

When Republican senators won’t even support one of their own senior members in blocking an Obama nominee on ethics grounds, for blatant dishonesty to the senator’s staff and blatant misfeasance regarding an inspector general, one wonders if they have even an ounce of fortitude. This latest example of craven capitulation continues a string…

Every circus needs a clown.  With President Barack Obama’s campaign machine getting ready to kick into high gear, the Washington punditry is speculating that despite his comically disastrous tenure as U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder is in no danger of being fired.  The reason is simple: Obama needs to please his liberal base by…

So in which tropical paradise are you spending 17 days this holiday season?  What’s that you say?  You don’t get 17 vacation days over an entire year, let alone for the holidays?  Well, you’re not alone.  According to most estimates, American workers average approximately 14 days of vacation per year.  But…

Evidence of corruption at the Justice Department continues to mushroom – and, speaking of things one finds under trees, the corruption continues to ACORN as well. Considering how controversial the vote-fraud mill known as ACORN was just a couple of years ago, it is remarkable how little attention has been generated by a November report of the…

This is not a good moment for Barack Obama. Now less than a year away from the election that will decide whether he is destined to become a one-term president – and thus endure one of the sharpest declines in public esteem in American history – he is at record lows in public favor.   Tuesday’s iteration of Gallup’s daily…

Even the worst of political adversaries – the most misguided, misleading and even mendacious – should be free from dangerously abusive SWAT-team actions. Barbara Arwine, executive director of the execrable Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, had her home searched by a gun-wielding SWAT team from Maryland’s Prince…

“It’s hard to think of anyone more polarizing than Barney Frank, but Maxine Waters manages to do it,” Mark Calabria, the lead banking expert at the Cato Institute, told MarketWatch.com after Frank’s surprise retirement from Congress shifted focus to his likely replacement as the most powerful Democrat on the House Financial…

MEMORANDUM FROM:  The Office of Presidential Speechwriting TO:  POTUS, Senior Staff RE:  Second Inaugural Address   Mr. President - As you know, all of us on the speechwriting staff hold both your writing skills and your political savvy in the highest regard. That is why we approach the task of refining the draft copy of…

If the Solyndra scandal failed to convince some people that President Barack Obama’s promise to “restore science to its rightful place” above political considerations has no basis in reality, a new taxpayer-funded boondoggle involving yet another corrupt government contract proves it.  Details are rapidly emerging that Siga…

Sometimes writers can get too fond of metaphors. A visit to the site of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, however, seemed to offer metaphorical lessons for current politics so appropriate as to demand attention. The lessons include worthwhile considerations of positioning and tactics and the importance of culture, freedom and commerce. Also perhaps…

If Mitt Romney becomes the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, the former Massachusetts governor will certainly have earned it. For while the media have spent the past several months presenting Romney as the ‘inevitable’ nominee in the GOP field, the reality is much more complicated. In fact, Romney couldn’t be a worse fit for…

In an interview with ABC News last month, President Barack Obama sympathized with the Occupy Wall Street Movement, saying, “I understand the frustrations being expressed in those protests.  In some ways, they’re not that different from some of the protests that we saw coming from the Tea Party.  Both on the left and the right,…

President Obama is a man for whom the founding legacy of the United States seems little more than a perpetual irritant.   This is the man, remember, who said on Chicago public radio in 2001 that one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that it didn’t move beyond the constitution’s limits on government power to &ldquo…

Not all current societal trends are negative, although it’s often easy to overlook that fact.  Moment by moment, federal spending heaps another mountain of debt upon us.  Civic virtue appears increasingly rare, as public discourse becomes increasingly lurid.  Meanwhile, the Obama Administration plumbs new depths of economic illiteracy…

Here’s an irony.  How is it that the only location in America immune from belt-tightening lies within the actual Beltway itself?  According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the federal government just spent a new record $3.6 trillion during fiscal 2011.  If that leaves you insufficiently insulted, the Census Bureau separately…

For a president allegedly as eloquent as Barack Obama, it’s amazing to hear the nonsense that escapes his mouth when he tries to ad-lib.  1. “That’s my [jobs] plan.  Then you’ve got [the Republicans’] plan, which is, let’s have dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance.  So…