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Hottest Tax Fight Breaks Out
Among GOP Conservatives
Over How To Cut Taxes
By IRA STOLL,
June 16, 2014
The hottest fight on the center-right idea scene at the moment is over tax policy for Republicans in the years ahead. I touched on the topic in last week’s column about a new report, Room to Grow. Two paragraphs of my column criticized the tax chapter…
McCain, Sanders Veterans Bill
Would Backfire on Veterans,
Leaving Them to Mercy of VA
By BETSY McCAUGHEY,
June 15, 2014
Senators McCain and Sanders are rushing to pass a bill they claim will rescue vets from deadly wait lists. But behind the kudos for bipartisanship, the truth lurks. This bill won’t speed up health care for ailing vets. The fine print sabotages vets…
By GARDNER WALDEIER,
June 15, 2014
While helping a neighbor move some boxes and burlap sacks, I uncovered what would become my first of many motorcycles: a 1973 honda cl125s, single cylinder four stroke. Then aged 12, I was instantly enamored with the little bike’s orange gas tank, flat seat, and cycloptic headlight, wide open and ready to go.
Immigration Emerging as Flaw
In Free-Market Platform
Of Brat’s Platform for GOP
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
June 11, 2014
Listening to David Brat on election night, following his upset win over Eric Cantor in Virginia’s seventh congressional district, I heard a principled, free-market, pro-growth individual who is going to make an excellent Republican House member. Mr…
ObamaCore Emerges
As a Major Issue
As Education Takes
An Orwellian Turn
By BETSY McCAUGHEY,
June 10, 2014
In the past week, Governors Haley of South Carolina and Fallin of Oklahoma evicted Common Core from public schools, even at the risk of losing hundreds of millions of federal dollars promised to states adopting it. Mmes. Haley and Fallin initially…
Latest of the Boudreaux Letters
By DONALD J. BOUDREAUX,
June 10, 2014
Editor, Roll Call: Tom Udall and 42 other incumbent U.S. senators propose a Constitutional amendment with the following key provision: “To advance the fundamental principle of political equality for all, and to protect the integrity of the legislative…
GOP Has Yet To Find
A Pro-Growth Policy Mix
For Its 2016 Platform
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
June 6, 2014
Despite a shrinking economy in the first quarter and outright declines for consumer spending and manufacturing in April, the May jobs report delivered the fourth-straight monthly gain above 200,000, with nonfarm payrolls jumping 217,000. This is the…
By SETH LIPSKY,
June 5, 2014
While Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is getting readjusted to life after the Taliban, let us snap a salute to James Stockdale, George “Bud” Day, Jeremiah Denton and Nick Rowe. They’re gone now, and our country has many heroes — but their courage as enemy-held…
Bloomberg Showing Signs
That He Could Yet Emerge
As a Contender for 2016
By IRA STOLL,
June 2, 2014
Is there a politician out there these days more entertaining and provocative than Michael Bloomberg? He is no longer the mayor of New York. But in the past week, he’s given a world-class demonstration of how he plans to remain relevant even while out…
Bernanke’s Loose Lips
Could Well Be the Cause
Of Surprise Stocks Rally
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
May 30, 2014
Are Ben Bernanke’s loose lips the real cause of surging stocks and plunging interest rates? Here’s the backstory: The so-called smart money on Wall Street had it all wrong. “Sell in May, and go away” was the big theme a month ago. Oops. The…
IRS Eyes New Ways To Tax
Miles of Frequent Fliers
By IRA STOLL,
May 26, 2014
Just in time for your summer vacation, the IRS is getting ready to toughen the tax treatment on frequent flyer miles and hotel loyalty reward programs. The IRS announced in 2002 that it wouldn’t try to go after individuals for income taxes on frequent…
Socialism Emerges as Culprit
In Scandal of Veterans’ Care
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
May 23, 2014
The VA problem is not Shinseki, it’s socialism. The Veterans Affairs health-care system is completely government run. It is a pure single-payer program. National Review editor Rich Lowry calls it “an island of socialism in American health care.” He is…
By SETH LIPSKY,
May 22, 2014
The newspapers were expecting the “Kerry Doctrine.” It supposedly was to be unveiled Sunday in Secretary of State John Kerry’s commencement speech at Yale. What they got was an incoherent and insipid dirge, a marker for the Obama administration’s…
By R.EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr.,
May 21, 2014
As I reflect on the “inevitable” presidential candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton, I try to put it in historic context. She lacks the shifty eyes, darting hither and yon at her audience and the assembled press corps. Her brow betrays no beads of sweat…
Rise of Robots May Doom
Retail Restaurant Jobs
Amid Furor on Lowest Wages
By IRA STOLL,
May 19, 2014
Retail restaurant robots are coming soon to a checkout counter near you. For anyone who dismissed as a bunch of right-wing propaganda the claim that a higher minimum wage and mandatory health benefits would mean more workers replaced by computer…
Tea Party Surprise
Could Yet Develop
On Immigration Reform
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
May 17, 2014
Tea-party activist Sal Russo offered an eye-opening remark this week. He said “Conservatives should be leaders in the immigration-reform movement.” Then tax-reform activist Grover Norquist organized a media conference call, in which he reinforced his…
How Geithner’s Apologia
For Bush/Obama Bailout
Flunks Capitalist Stress Test
By IRA STOLL,
May 12, 2014
The release this week of a memoir, “Stress Test,” by President Obama’s first-term Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, is providing an opportunity to re-argue the merits of the extraordinary measures that the Bush and Obama administrations and the…
Christie Gets a Pass
In Supreme Court’s Refusal
To Hear Jersey Gun Case
By BETSY McCAUGHEY,
May 5, 2014
Governor Christie dodged a political bullet, when the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the National Rifle Association’s challenge to New Jersey’s highly restrictive gun law. The justices’ decision not to hear the case, Drake v. Jerejian…
Shocking Charges at VA
Likely To Be But the Start
Of an Even Worse Scandal
By BETSY McCAUGHEY,
May 5, 2014
The nation was shocked by charges that more than 1,400 vets lingered and 40 died on a secret waiting list at the Phoenix, Arizona, Veterans Administration A medical center. The list was concocted to conceal long waits for care. What you haven’t heard…
Republican Control of Congress
Could Spell Trouble for GOP
By IRA STOLL,
May 5, 2014
If the Republican Party takes full control of Congress in November, it may have a harder time than a lot of people expect in figuring out what it’s actually for. The USA Today-Pew poll showing “the strongest tilt to Republican candidates at this point…
Senate Races Will Be Stoked
By the Suprising Jobs Report
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
May 2, 2014
Does a solid jobs report change the overall economic picture and offer the beleaguered Democratic party a new leg up for the midterm elections? My answer is no and no. Even with all the political slicing and dicing that accompany these big reports…
Obama’s Keystone Veto
Certainly Won’t Be Lost
On President Putin
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
April 25, 2014
When President Obama holds back approval of the Keystone pipeline, for the umpteenth time, it’s bad enough that he’s politically pandering to Tom Steyer, the hedge-fund billionaire and manic radical opponent of fossil fuels. If he gives in to Mr…
Supreme Hour of Resolution
Finally at Hand for Quebec
As Couillard Savors Mandate
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 12, 2014
The supreme hour for a resolution of the Quebec issue could be at hand. All Canadian posterity could be liberated from endlessly debating that hackneyed question as all living Canadians have for most of our lives. It has been such a terribly…
Amen to Old Time Religion
Of Low Inflation, Sound Dollar,
As Stockman Challenges
The Federal Reserve
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
April 11, 2014
Will somebody please explain to me how rising inflation is somehow going to extricate us from the tepid economic recovery? I don’t get it. It used to be hypothesized that low inflation was the key to high economic growth. For everybody in the economy…
Cancellation of Tomahawk
Puts American Navy
On Perilous Course
By STEVE COHEN,
April 11, 2014
The Obama Administration will be adding insult with its cancellation of production of the Navy’s Tomahawk and Hellfire missile programs. These decisions followed by just weeks the decision to reclassify two hospital ships, 10 coastal patrol craft and…
Farrago of Falsehoods
Infests Hollywood Yarn
Of White House Butler
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 9, 2014
Feeling somewhat mellow last week on my way home from London after my only daughter’s wedding to a very bright and attractive Frenchman we have known and liked for several years, I yielded to the Satanic temptation of an in-flight film. The Butler…
By IRA STOLL,
April 8, 2014
House Republicans are quietly moving ahead with dueling plans to replace the tax code with a simpler system. It’s a hot topic in advance of the April 15 filing deadline for individual income tax returns. The latest budget blueprint from the chairman…
Left Fighting the Last War
In Battle of McCutcheon
As Unions Face Competition
By BETSY McCAUGHEY,
April 8, 2014
Democrats are hyper ventilating over the Supreme Court ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Elections Commission. The minority leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi, claims the ruling will turn politics into a “money war.” Sorry, that happened a long time ago…
Is Atlas Shrugging?
Koch Warning on Collectivism
Echoes Slow Jobs Growth
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
April 4, 2014
Is it too farfetched to connect the dots between a brilliant Wall Street Journal op-ed by Charles Koch, the chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, and the continued sluggish recovery in jobs, business investment, and the overall economy? I don’t think…
By GARDNER WALDEIER,
March 31, 2014
Freshly brewed warms my hands and opens my veins. Standing on the frost glazed dock I watch the top of Russell Mountain wake up. When the sharp line of the sunrise works its way down the slope, the muted autumnal reds, oranges, yellows, and greens of the leaves begin to pop in my eyes. . . .
Campaign for 80% Tax Rates
Begins With New Book
Lauded by Paul Krugman
By IRA STOLL,
March 31, 2014
“Capital In The Twenty-First Century,” by the French economist Thomas Piketty, is being hailed as “the most important economics book of the year — and maybe of the decade” by Nobel laureate Paul Krugman. The Economist magazine says the book may…
Startling Rift on Supreme Court
Springs From Error by Kagan
On Text of Obamacare Law
By BETSY McCAUGHEY,
March 29, 2014
A startling rift appeared Tuesday on the Supreme Court as the three female Justices came out swinging like Brunnhildes — women warriors — for what they erroneously labeled an “entitlement” to employer-provided contraceptives and morning-after pills…
Fear of God — Or Man?
High Court Could Find
Wisdom in Washington’s
Letter to the Jews
By SETH LIPSKY,
March 27, 2014
Sometime before June, if things go true to form, President Obama is going to issue a warning to the Supreme Court to look after its reputation and refrain from outlawing the birth-control mandate of ObamaCare. He tried that stunt the last time…
GOP, Too, Using the Rich
As Their Punching Bags
In the Coming Campaign
By IRA STOLL
March 24, 2014
Now the Republicans are turning millionaires into punching bags, too. That’s the news emerging from a series of moves by leading Republicans. It suggests that, after seeing President Obama’s success in 2012 with a campaign to raise taxes on…
Signs of Progress Emerge
In Reform of the System
Of Justice in America
By CONRAD BLACK
March 19, 2014
Having committed the cyber equivalent of shouting myself hoarse and becoming blue in the face advocating reform and humanization of American criminal justice, I would be churlish in failing to recognize distinct signs of progress. What amounts to a…
Will Royal Warrants
Be the Next Big Thing
From Obama’s Campaign?
By IRA STOLL
March 17, 2014
It’s approaching the point where the Obama administration should just announce he’s starting an American version of royal warrants. You know, those fancy shields with lions and crowns that appear on the sides of British goods like Walker’s Shortbread…
By GARDNER WALDEIER
March 16, 2014
Bit and brace in hand, I set out to commence the process of burning off, as we call the spring tradition of making maple syrup. A twig of maple is gripped between my teeth, just like my dad used to as he set out to tap the trees. Late February hints of the vernal awakening, the sun rising higher each day, warming the tops of the maples on my property in rural Maine. It drops to 20 degrees at night, rising to 40 degrees during the day, a cycle that stimulates the flow of sap up to the terminal branches.
A Growth Plan Emerges
As the Key Element
Of Winning GOP Formula
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
March 14, 2014
Sizing up last week’s unexpected congressional win by Florida Republican David Jolly, Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal wrote, “The Republicans who win this fall will be those who have serious answers to the attacks leveled on them — about…
Big Move Against Harvard
Being Plotted in Congress
By House Republicans
By IRA STOLL
March 10, 2014
House Republicans are plotting a $1.7 billion tax increase aimed at America’s most elite colleges and universities. The tax increase is buried on page 879 of Congressman Dave Camp’s 979-page tax reform bill. The bill is considered unlikely to become…
JFK-Type Tax Cuts
Could Have Given Obama
A Major Economic Boom
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW*
March 5, 2014
Fifty years ago President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the sweeping tax cuts that had been championed by his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. The law brought the top marginal income-tax rate down to 70% from 91% and the bottom marginal rate down to…
In the Court of Logic,
Federal Minimum Wage
Loses by Nine to Zero
By IRA STOLL
March 3, 2014
President Obama and Congressional Democrats are pressing to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Here are nine reasons why that’s a bad idea. 1. It’s a big country. The costs of living, especially housing, vary widely in America from…
Bitcoin Collapse Puts Premium
On Greenback Pending
Restoration of Gold-Backed $
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
February 28, 2014
Just before the bankruptcy of the Mt. Gox bitcoin digital-money (or virtual-currency) exchange, Japanese finance minister Taro Aso predicted the inevitable failure. “No one recognizes them as a real currency,” he told reporters. “I expected such a…
Bill Clinton’s NATO Playbook
Emerges as Strategy
For Obama in Ukraine
By CONRAD BLACK
February 27, 2014
It is an immense pleasure to be able to commend the Obama administration on a foreign-policy issue, and so far, the handling of the Ukrainian crisis by the president, vice president, secretary of state, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice has…
Warren Buffett Boasts
Of Real Estate Profits
He Made Off the Taxpayers
By IRA STOLL
February 24, 2014
The second-richest American, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, has given the March 17 issue of Fortune magazine an excerpt of his forthcoming annual letter to investors. The tale of two successful Buffett purchases is illuminating, but not quite…
Moratorium on Obamacare
Emerges as an Idea
Amid Fiddling by Obama
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
February 21, 2014
Slowly but surely President Obama is unwinding, rolling back, and even cancelling his own Obamacare. A couple of years ago he told Republicans not to mess with his plan. He said he’d veto any changes. But now, in substantial ways, he’s messing with…
How Romney Missed
The Central Point
About Hillary Clinton
By R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr.
February 18, 2014
WASHINGTON — First Mitt Romney loses a presidential election that he was predicted to win in a walk. Then he appears some 15 months later on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” to lecture the nation on how Republicans might lose the presidential election once…
Jeb Bush Heading
To NYC To Test
Bush v. Clinton
By IRA STOLL
February 18, 2014
The former governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, will be speaking and getting an award in New York City this spring at the Manhattan Institute’s annual Alexander Hamilton dinner. The save-the-date notice that went out last week about the dinner, which is to…
Secret of Abe Foxman's Success
By SETH LIPSKY
February 16, 2014
Abraham Foxman will retire next year after 50 years at of the Anti-Defamation League. The news could have been worse. It could have been that he died a second time – or been kidnapped a third. It was 14 years ago that he died. After a holiday dinner…
By GARDNER WALDEIER
February 14, 2014
Getting from Chimney Pond to Russel Pond can be a easy ten miles, or a hard eight. The easy way is a little bit longer, the hard way is a bit more interesting, elevation gain and lost, climbing up and over the tablelands of the Katadhin massif, miles above tree line. In late September, that can mean a variation on every season imaginable. . . . .
Stock Market Cheers
For Yellen’s Testimony
Mask Subpar Labor Story
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
February 14, 2014
Stock markets cheered Janet Yellen’s maiden congressional testimony this past week, as the new Fed chair emphasized the word “continuity” and offered no boat-rocking surprises. Continuity? I assume she means a steady diet of tapered bond purchases…
Obama Makes But a Gesture
Toward Sentencing Reform
In U.S. Justice System
By CONRAD BLACK
February 13, 2014
The recent commutation by President Obama of eight lengthy individual sentences for drug abuse is a tiny but significant gesture, as America’s long indulgence, spiked intermittently into passionate support, for draconian hypocrisy in its failed War on…
By IRA STOLL
February 10, 2014
When Janet Yellen arrives on Capitol Hill this week for her first Congressional testimony as chairman of the Federal Reserve, some enterprising senator or congressman may want to ask her about Bitcoin. The most provocative way to phrase it would be…
Millions of Millionaires
Could Be Created
By the U.S. Energy Boom
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
February 7, 2014
So let me get this right. Team Obama taxes millionaires who create jobs, while Obamacare creates incentives not to work at those jobs. No wonder recovery is so anemic. The policy here is to create fewer jobs and induce people to work less at those…
By GARDNER WALDEIER
February 5, 2014
To capture a day at Katahdin, I start with a wood stove, an Ashley, capable of keeping the kitchen in the Ranger cabin toasty at 4 a.m. A world of difference, easing into the dark day with the soothing company of wood smoke and a dose of strong black coffee (rocket fuel). Already being at 3,000 feet in the midst of the Great Basin is another advantage over those making the climb from the Roaring Brook . . . .
Obama’s Failure in State of the Union Marks Decline of American Leadership
By CONRAD BLACK
February 5, 2014
As one who has been watching presidential State of the Union messages since the Eisenhower years, and has read a great many of them in historical research, I am conditioned to think of the SOTU as a serious occasion that lends itself to important…
Washington Hatching Plans
To Relocate Americans
To High Employment States
By IRA STOLL
February 3, 2014
The latest Washington policy solution to the problem of the long-term jobless is to pay them to move somewhere else where there are more jobs. It’s been tried in other contexts. For years some cities have been offering homeless people one-way bus…
A New Greatness Awaits
A Generation in Search
Of Its Own FDR-Scale Leader
By CONRAD BLACK
January 29, 2014
Last week I received a message from a distinguished retired general and head of a strategic institute in Canada, wringing his hands at the pusillanimity and ambivalence of most current world leaders and the apparent lack of any public appetite for the…
Death of Imagination
Emerges as Latest
Hollywood Whodunit
By GARDNER WALDEIER
January 22, 2014
Hammer Handle from Bus Huxley on Vimeo.
Big Business Swings Behind a Mantra of Growth
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
January 18, 2014
Growth, growth, growth is the new mantra of the venerable Business Roundtable, whose member companies generate annual revenues of more than $7 trillion while employing 16 million. In past years, the BRT has put out lengthy pamphlets proposing…
Christie’s Pursuers Will Have Culprits Singing Like Canaries Flying Backwards
By CONRAD BLACK
January 16, 2014
The problems of New Jersey governor Chris Christie were a long time coming, though they came in an unforeseeable way. A tough, large, and very effective protagonist found himself sorely taxed in a skeptical press encounter, professing to be…
How Christie Can Rescue His Presidential Hopes: Sell the George Washington Bridge
By IRA STOLL
January 13, 2014
It’s going to take Governor Christie more than a confessional press conference and the firing of some aides to rescue his presidential hopes in 2016 and restore public confidence in his leadership following the scandal over the politically motivated…
Giddy National Press
Misses the Danger
Of Legalizing Marijuana
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
January 3, 2014
There was way too much giddiness in the press about the first day of legal pot selling in Colorado. Instead of all the happy talk, I think it’s time for some sober discussion and a strong dose of education about the addiction risks of smoking…
By GARDNER WALDEIER,
January 3, 2014
Rock Memorabilia from Bus Huxley on Vimeo.
Whether it would be lunar, solar, or terrrestrial gravitation, let me say that I’m just not sure, but when those rocks start flying, a-catching I will go. Locally its known as sprundig, afar they call it magic. Or you could call this phantasmagorical phenomenon vimeologizing.
Wilson Emerges in a New — and Better — Light as American Foreign Policy Founders
By CONRAD BLACK
January 2, 2014
Reading Scott Berg’s recent biography of Woodrow Wilson to write a review of it for another publication has brought to mind a couple of striking developments in the evolution of the U.S. presidency. Woodrow Wilson has been much maligned as an…
By GARDNER WALDEIER
December 23, 2013
First tracks, last ride from Bus Huxley on Vimeo.
Traditionally, winter’s arrival marks the end of motorcycle season for a couple of logical reasons. Cold is colder on a bike, which does nothing to shield the wind from cutting into you; as hypothermia sets in, you lose the ability to manipulate your extremities — and therefore the break lever and throttle. Snow and other forms of frozen water are slippery, and on slipperty surfaces. Rational, however ...
By GARDNER WALDEIER
December 21, 2013
from feather to taco from Bus Huxley on Vimeo.
It’s a cold and clear October morning, the sun just angling through the bare trees, with warm blades cutting the frost as it rises. There is no wind, and when I stop walking, I can hear everything in the woods around me: the flutter of a chickadee, the knock of a far-off woodpecker, and the muffled steps of a ruffled grouse. Bingo. I rely on aural cues to seek my quarry because this woodland bird has evolved to be invisible to visual cues.A Race to the Insurance Company To Secure Coverage After Obamacare Fails
By IRA STOLL
December 23, 2013
“Obviously, we screwed it up.” —President Barack Obama, December 20, 2013, discussing health care reform in response to a question at a year-end press conference. This column needs to be finished quickly so I can drive over to the headquarters of a…
Federal Reserve Emerges
From the Bernanke Era
As Central Planning Agency
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
December 20, 2013
So the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, finally pulled the taper trigger this week. And it was the right thing to do. Stocks soared. Even with some backing-and-forthing, gold, commodity indexes, and the dollar were basically stable. In other…
American National Interest Recedes as Obama Retrenches
By CONRAD BLACK
December 19, 2013
As this confusing year wends to an end, it is hard not to wonder what has happened to the underlying, continuous, almost immutable national interest of the United States. When George Washington declined the advice of his aides and supporters to seize…
Ira Stoll’s Office Pool: The Democrats Sweep Congress and Other Predictions for the Coming Year
By IRA STOLL
December 16, 2013
In memory of the late William Safire: 1. The November election results in a) Republican majorities in both the Senate and House as voters vent their rage at ObamaCare and frustration at a still-sluggish economy b) Democratic majorities in the House…
Ryan Deal Clears the Decks
For a Historic Battle
Over Control of Congress
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
December 13, 2013
Did Paul Ryan’s budget deal save the Republican party from itself? I think it did. Everyone acknowledges that Ryan-Murray is not a great deal. The fact is, its passage will avoid a government shutdown. That’s crucial. If the GOP wants to retake the…
Growth and Jobs Emerge
As the Defining Challenge
Facing President Obama
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
December 5, 2013
Either President Obama needs a new speechwriter, or he needs a new set of economic policies. Actually, he needs both. Can anyone think of a more boring, banal, irrelevant, or stale speech than the one he gave this Thursday in Washington DC? The speech…
America Could Fall
To the Soft-Left
If Unity on Right Fractures
Over Yalta, Other Myths
By CONRAD BLACK,
December 5, 2013
This is not a return to Diana West’s book. However, Andy McCarthy, a man for whom I have very great respect and whom I like very much, has written a review of it in the New Criterion that, because of its revisionist presentation of a number of…
200-Year-Old Dispute Erupts Today in Battle Between Left and Right, But Beware of Burke
By IRA STOLL,
December 2, 2013
What sound like fights between capitalism and socialism, or between “religious traditionalism and secular cosmopolitanism,” turn out to be battles between “progressive liberalism” and “conservative liberalism,” echoes of the more than 200-year-old…
How JFK Concluded
A Golden Age
Of the Presidency
By CONRAD BLACK,
November 23, 2013
Fifty years after the murder of President Kennedy, the event is scarcely less saddening than it was in its immediate aftermath. It must rank with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as the most graphically shocking and horrifying moment in…
‘Empress of the Doves’
Gets Set To Accede
As Chairman of the Fed
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
November 22, 2013
The greatest central banker in my professional lifetime was Paul Volcker. His signal achievement was bringing down the inflation rate from roughly 15% to about 3% more than three decades ago. The simplest way to look at the economic evils of runaway…
Epitaph for a Presidency:
‘Pride Goeth Before
Destruction’
By CONRAD BLACK,
November 21, 2013
The great Obama levitation is ending; the inexplicable aspect of it is that it has endured so long. The president won in 2008 on a slick platform, but given the unpopularity of George W. Bush and the economic calamity that caused the incumbent to…
‘I Could Stay Here Forever,'
JFK Murmured on a Visit
To the Place That Would
Become His Grave
By WARREN KOZAK
November 20, 2013
Fifty years ago, in that tranquil fall of 1963, Liz Pozen was a young suburban mother living in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Her husband was a lawyer at the Department of the Interior, and she was a stay-at-home mom, typical of that time. The only unusual…
By SETH LIPSKY,
November 10, 2013
Forget the U.S. election returns for a moment and jump in a taxi to northern Manhattan, where at Yeshiva University something is happening. A line is stretching for blocks. People are waiting to get in to a conversation with the longest-serving…
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
November 8, 2013
There’s no question that the catastrophic debut of Obamacare — including the website breakdown and the millions of pink-slip cancellations — will be a great card for Republicans to play on the way to the 2014 midterm elections. No question. The…
Hillary Clinton’s Fees
From Goldman May Mean
Trouble Come the Election
By IRA STOLL
November 4, 2013
The news that Hillary Clinton has earned what the Washington Post characterized as “close to $500,000” for two recent speeches to Goldman Sachs is generating a certain amount of excitement. An editorial in the Washington Examiner reports that “some…
Obamacare Collapsing
Of Its Own Weight,
Eluding Corrective Legislation
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
November 2, 2013
May I ask this question? Why is it that Americans don’t have the freedom to choose their own health insurance? I just don’t get it. Why must the liberal nanny state make decisions for us? We can make them ourselves, thank you very much. It’s like…
How the Experts Struck Out
On World Series Baseball
By IRA STOLL,
October 28, 2013
Enjoying the World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals? Almost as entertaining is looking back at the pre-season predictions of the baseball “experts.” ESPN bills itself as “the worldwide leader in sports,” and it’s a rare…
Delaying Obamacare Could Backfire on the Republicans
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
October 25, 2013
One huge political question surrounds the catastrophic launch of Obamacare: Will the administration double-talk, cancelled insurance contracts for millions, terminated doctor-patient relationships, sticker shock from higher premiums and deductibility…
Massachusetts Readies Raid on Hospital Profits, Pointing to Future Health Care in U.S.
By IRA STOLL,
October 21, 2013
For a sense of where the health care policy debate in America is headed, look no further than Massachusetts, where RomneyCare was a state-run demonstration project for ObamaCare. Here, activists with ties to the Massachusetts State Nurses Association…
War Clouds Scud Over Budget, Debt, As White House Eyes Tax Hike on Corporations
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
October 19, 2013
Judging from the speech President Obama gave following the deal to end the government shutdown, Republicans better get wise to the president’s next fiscal gambit when the three-month stop-gap budget and debt measures come due. As was the case with his…
U.S. Selling Bonds to Itself
To Underwrite Obamacare
By CONRAD BLACK,
October 17, 2013
One of the most hackneyed lines in the apparently endless and sterile partisan tug-of-war in Washington is this sanctimonious claptrap about Obamacare being “the law of the land” and that it therefore must not be obstructed. Anyone resorting to such…
JFK Emerges as a Conservative — Economically, Geopolitically, and Religiously
By IRA STOLL,
October 14, 2013
Ira Stoll interviews himself on his new book, JFK, Conservative, being brought out this week by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and reports some facets of the story that will surprise even those who thought they knew John F. Kennedy . . .
Astonishing Silence Greets Shooting Death of Miriam Carey by Police at Capitol
By R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr.,
October 9, 2013
Shutdown of Government Starts To Feel Like Sequester — a Surprise Success
By IRA STOLL,
October 7, 2013
The government “shutdown” is starting to feel a lot like the sequester — a lot of alarmist warnings that the sky is going to fall, followed by business pretty much as usual. That’s not to minimize the genuine inconvenience or worse for those…
Markets Appear Likely To Outsmart the Politicians as Obama Threatens Catastrophe
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
October 4, 2013
Never before has an American president threatened and risked the U.S. economy and financial markets the way President Obama has in recent days. For his own narrow political ends, Mr. Obama and his minions have actually accused the Republican party of…
Win-Win Situation for GOP Starts To Come Into Focus in The Fracas Over Obamacare
By IRA STOLL,
September 30, 2013
For Republicans, the cliffhanger over a government shutdown is a win-win. If they manage to extract a concession from Senate Democrats in exchange for voting to approve a continuing resolution to fund the government’s operations, then they’ve won. The…
White House Leaves U.S. on Brink of Shutdown
By Special to the Sun
September 29, 2013
WASHINGTON — The federal government is hurtling toward a shutdown after the White House, choosing a hard line, spurned Republican efforts at a compromise and refused to delay President Obama’s health care law and insisted implementing a tax to pay for…
Defeat of Cruz May Be the Start of the Fight To Save Free Market Health Care
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
September 27, 2013
The defeat of Senator Cruz’s defunding strategy may not be the end of the fight to overturn Obamacare. In some sense, for free-market conservatives who want consumer choice and private-sector competition, this whole debate is about good versus evil…
Soaring Food Stamp Outlays in House Bill Could Cover Marine Mammals, Such as Polar Bears
By IRA STOLL,
September 23, 2013
The food stamp bill passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives earlier this month, widely criticized for supposedly cutting the nutrition assistance program to the poor, would actually raise spending over the next decade by 57%, to…
Odd Paradigm Emerges
As Obama Refuses
To Talk With GOP
While He Is Prepared
To Parley With Iran
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
September 21, 2013
One of the biggest mistakes President Obama is making over the threat of a government shutdown and the failure to raise the debt ceiling is his refusal to negotiate. In speech after speech, Mr. Obama crusades against negotiation. Has anyone ever seen…
Fed Headed for Trouble Absent a Rules-Based Monetary Regime
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
September 16, 2013
When Senator Tester, the Montana Democrat, announced Friday that he would vote against Lawrence Summers’ for Fed chairman if it came before the Banking Committee, he put a dagger in Mr. Summers’s Fed career before it even started. Mr. Tester would…
By IRA STOLL,
“Stocks Soar on Summers Withdrawal” is the headline on the New York Times Web site. It appears over a Reuters dispatch reporting that Wall Street and global market indices were rising after Lawrence Summers withdrew his name from consideration to be…
Defeat of Spitzer Offers Hope in America’s Political Safety Net
By CONRAD BLACK,
September 11, 2013
As I returned from the studio in Toronto at the baseball stadium from where I speak to foreign television networks, after doing my best to be respectful of the great office of president of the United States while expressing my views of the debacle of…
Obama’s Domestic Program Threatened by Defeat on Syria
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
September 6, 2013
President Obama, speaking at the G-20 meeting in St. Petersburg earlier today, reminded me of an investment banker trying to sell a deal he doesn’t believe in. The customer knows it. Halting. Hesitant. Uncertain. Uncomfortable. That’s what Mr. Obama’s…
High Jobless Rates Tied to the Way Obamacare Reduces the Reward for Working
By IRA STOLL,
September 2, 2013
When the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the unemployment number for the month of August this Friday, even an improvement in last month’s 7.4% seasonally adjusted rate will leave the number higher than it was during any month of the George W. Bush…
August 28, 2013
Geithner Surfaces as a Third Option To Succeed Bernanke
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
August 26, 2013
When it comes to Fed policy, one of the hottest topics on Wall Street is the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. Who will replace Ben Bernanke? Believe it or not, Timothy Geithner’s name may be resurfacing. Is it possible that the former treasury…
By IRA STOLL,
August 26, 2013
If President Obama tries to mark the 50th anniversary of the civil rights March on Washington this week by repeating Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on federal property, don’t be surprised to see the church-state-separation types…
By JEROLD AUERBACH,
August 25, 2013
The jubilee celebrations of the March on Washington affirm the iconic stature of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Americans may debate whether, and when, the dream that King so eloquently affirmed will be fulfilled. But there can be no doubt that…
By SETH LIPSKY,
August 22, 2013
Military justice, goes the saying, is to justice as military music is to music. The old saw isn’t meant to be a compliment. But it looks as if military justice has done right well by itself in the case of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was sentenced…
Rise of New Corporatism Dims Capitalism, Argues a Nobel Laureate (Hint: Not Krugman)
By IRA STOLL,
August 19, 2013
A Nobel laureate in economics who teaches at a New York-area Ivy League university is out with a new book attacking the Bush tax cuts. Relax, it’s not Paul Krugman. The professor is Edmund Phelps, who teaches at Columbia, not Princeton. And if you can…
FDR Betrayed: How Diana West Errs on Roosevelt and the Great Heroes of the Cold War
By CONRAD BLACK,
August 16, 2013
The strange plague of psycho-Roosevelt-ementia, which suddenly springs to life and infects factions of the Left and Right, has been reported in several severely afflicted cases recently. Diana West, a right-wing loopy who has occasionally aroused…
Snowden Pere Will Have To Walk a Fine Line in Russia
By SETH LIPSKY,
August 16, 2013
Lon Snowden is off to Russia to meet with his son, Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who disclosed secrets of America’s surveillance programs. He says he wants to discuss with his son how to fight the espionage charges laid against…
JFK Emerges To Trip Up Obama’s Theory of History
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
August 16, 2013
After delivering a number of “economic growth” speeches this summer, President Obama has failed to inspire any confidence, falling all the way back to square one in a recent Gallup poll. Actually, make that less than square one. Gallup reported that…
Obama’s High Wage Vision Hides Some High Costs to Consumers
By IRA STOLL,
August 12, 2013
President Obama’s high-wage vision of the American economy could make a consumer’s typical shopping trip nearly five times more expensive. Think that’s an exaggeration? Mr. Obama promised recently that for the “remainder of his presidency” he would…
How America’s Political Dysfunction Started in the Takedown of President Nixon
By CONRAD BLACK,
August 8, 2013
At the best of times it is hazardous for the mental equilibrium of a rational person randomly to turn on the television set, and it is probably especially so in summer. Last week, in a cavalierly daredevil moment, I did so, and was almost reduced to…
Tale of the Tapering: Fed Is Big Loser as Markets Maneuver at Prospect of an End of Easy Money
By GEORGE MELLOAN,
August 4, 2013
How does an investor react to the news that a propped-up and thus over-priced asset may lose its props? His natural urge is to sell, of course, and that urge will soon be reflected in a decline in the asset’s price. So it is with Treasury bonds. When…
How Obama’s Public Support of Summers Signals Someone Else for Chairman of the Fed
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
August 1, 2013
The Federal Reserve made news this past week in two separate events. The first came with the Fed’s policy meeting on Wednesday, when the central bank gave no hint that it would taper or slow its QE bond purchases any time soon. Wall Street believes…
Obama Abdicating Leadership Amid Need To Reorient Economy Toward Free Market
By CONRAD BLACK,
July 25, 2013
We are now well into the season generally known as the summer doldrums, made more profound and dispiriting this year by the prolonged ineffectiveness of the political system, other than as an agent of sluggishly induced deterioration in public…
Jerusalem Passport Case Will Be Appealed to Supreme Court, a Second Time
By SETH LIPSKY,
July 25, 2013
Prime Minister Begin of Israel famously used to warn against deciding the question of Jerusalem in the United States Congress. Nor, it looks like he should have added, in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That…
By IRA STOLL,
July 22, 2013
Democrats in Congress and their allies at the New York Times are preparing for another assault on Goldman Sachs, this one based on the claim that an aluminum warehouse owned by Goldman is increasing the prices of canned beverages. A Democratic Senator…
Jack Kemp-Type Liberation Beckons for Detroit
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
July 22, 2013
With Detroit filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, everybody knows major root-canal cutbacks are coming. Cutbacks of out-of-control government spending, pensions, and health benefits. Major cutbacks. We know that. We also know that the downfall of Detroit…
How Israel Isidore Beilin Upends the Consensus on Immigration
By IRA STOLL,
July 15, 2013
Republicans and Democrats in Washington don’t agree on much, but they do seem to agree on this: America’s immigration policy should prioritize the admission of “skilled” immigrants. This column is about why they are wrong. First, a bit on the…
How a Cynic Crafted the Constitution and Fell for the Romance of America
By LEWIS LEHRMAN,
July 5, 2013
“We the people” begins the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States. These are the words of 35-year-old Gouverneur Morris, the talented wordsmith who fine-tuned this Founding document. New Yorker Morris represented Pennsylvania at the…
How Immigration Fuels the Red Sox Nation
By IRA STOLL,
July 1, 2013
One of the things I have found reassuringly familiar as I move back to New England after an absence of nearly 20 years is the Red Sox baseball team, still battling for the top of the American League’s East division. It’s just the players who are…
Deflationary Signal Raises a Question: What About Rules for the Fed?
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
June 29, 2013
Bernanke Plan To Tighten Money Looks Premature Absent Stronger Economy
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
June 21, 2013
In the aftermath of Chairman Bernanke’s announced timetable for ending Fed bond purchases, long-term interest rates have jumped up while stock prices have cratered down. As I wrote yesterday, I think the Bernanke plan is premature — especially in a 2%…
Bernanke Stumbles Into a Major Policy Mistake as Deflation Is in the Air
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
June 20, 2013
Without intending to — and perhaps without even realizing it — the normally cautious Fed head Ben Bernanke may have launched a major tightening policy during his news conference on Wednesday. The de facto policy shift immediately sparked a rout on…
Scandals Being Magnified for Obama by Our Economic Troubles
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
June 12, 2013
When President Richard Nixon collided with the Watergate scandal he was a very unpopular man. The nation at the time was suffering one of the worst recessions in history, and one of the highest inflation rates, too. So Watergate sunk Dick Nixon, but…
Verizon’s Top Secret Deal With Pentagon Was Made Public in Regular, Annual Filing With SEC.
By IRA STOLL,
June 10, 2013
Verizon, the phone company whose disclosure of customer data to the federal government is at the center of the furor over cooperation by technology companies with top-secret national security programs, has offered a precise, clear, but little-noticed…
How Frank Lautenberg Made a Fortune by Doing Work the Government Made Necessary
By IRA STOLL,
June 3, 2013
Frank Lautenberg, the Democratic senator from New Jersey who died today at age 89, will be remembered by others for his career in government. To me the more fascinating story is his career in business. Because the company where Lautenberg spent the 30…
Buzz Starts in Washington That Tax Reform Is Route To Curbing IRS
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
June 2, 2013
Apart from criminal prosecution, the best way to strip the power of politics and corruption from the IRS is to initiate broad-based, pro-growth tax reform and simplification. It’s the complexity of the tax code that nurtures the corruptness of the IRS…
Aide to Bush, Romney Warns Fate of Rome Could Befall America
By IRA STOLL,
May 27, 2013
A top economic adviser to George W. Bush and Mitt Romney is warning that if America doesn’t adopt a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution it risks a decline and fall in the pattern of the ancient Roman Empire. Glenn Hubbard is the dean of…
Criminality Appears To Lie at the Heart of the IRS Scandal
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
May 23, 2013
When you get right down to it, the political targeting and stalling of tax-exempt applications by the IRS was an effort to defund the Tea Party. Rick Santelli, one of the Tea Party founders and my CNBC colleague, was the first to make this point. I’ve…
IRS Was Afraid of the Constitution, the Obama Scandal Suggests
By IRA STOLL,
May 20, 2013
Of all the discouraging news in the scandal involving President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service, the most illuminating is that one of the things that triggered additional scrutiny from the IRS for groups applying for tax-exempt status was any plan…
Republicans Shying From Immigration Reform Risk Losing the Soul of America
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
May 10, 2013
At the end of the day, the battle over immigration reform is not about dollars and cents. It’s about the soul of a nation. President Reagan reminded us that America must remain a “beacon” and a “shining city on a hill” for immigrants who renew our…
Heroes of the
Interred at Arlington
Half a Century Later
By JAMES GRANT,
May 3, 2013
On July 19, 1967, a helicopter took off from the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier operating off the coast of North Vietnam. The chopper, with its crew of four, never returned. On Thursday, at the Arlington National Cemetery, the sailors’ remains were…
Even as Good News Rolls In, Economy Is Falling Behind Long-Term Trends
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
May 3, 2013
The really good news from April’s employment report is that all the pessimistic, end-of-the-world, spring-swoon forecasters were wrong. It wasn’t a fabulous report. But it handily beat Wall Street expectations. Stock markets soared on the news. The…
Rise in Value of Dollar Spells Good Times Ahead, As End of the World Scenario Fades
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
April 15, 2013
In the last two days gold has plunged so deep that it’s being called the worst drop — at least in percentage terms — in 30 years. That brings us back to the early Reagan period, when falling gold was regarded as a good thing. Back then, lower gold…
Possible Confiscation of IRA Accounts Raises Question of Power To Limit Savings
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
April 12, 2013
No matter how you slice the Obama budget pie, the inescapable fact is that the President wants to get rid of the roughly $1 trillion budget-cutting sequester and substitute in a $1 trillion-plus tax hike. In other words, more spending, more taxing…
Boom in Bitcoins Challenges Bernanke Amid Sagging Confidence in Fiat Dollar
By GEORGE MELLOAN
April 8, 2013
Things are wild in the Bitcoin market these days. As quoted on the Mt. Gox exchange in Tokyo, the price of a Bitcoin has soared to $194 from $36 in the space of 30 days. Volume has soared and so have Mt. Gox’s problems in keeping order in this new and…
Basic Tax Deal Starts To Change as Refunds Wax in Era of Earned Income and Per-Child Tax Credits
By IRA STOLL,
April 1, 2013
One of the most important but least noticed changes in American life over the past 20 years is the way that tax season has gone from a time when Americans write checks to the Internal Revenue Service to a time when the IRS sends money to Americans…
Watergate Yarn Unravels in Unclouded Light of History
By CONRAD BLACK,
March 28, 2013
Gradually, inexorably, the great Watergate fraud is unraveling. The Knights of Revelation, 40 years onward, are being exposed, in the light of analysis unclouded by cant and emotionalism, as the myth-makers they always were. Bob Woodward, unable to…
Bernanke Wins a Round as GDP Inches Forward at 0.4% Annual Rate
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
March 28, 2013
Apropos of my column of a week ago — “Has Bernanke Gotten the Story Right?” — this week’s paltry GDP revision again backs up the actions of the Federal Reserve chairman and his market-monetarist supporters. Real GDP was a miniscule 0.4% at an annual…
Bernanke’s Vow To Adjust Bond Purchases Suggests Fed Is Listening to Its Critics
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
March 21, 2013
The most important point in Chairman Bernanke’s Wednesday press conference was the announcement that the Federal Reserve will adjust the amount of monthly bond purchases according to economic conditions. In other words, an improving economy with…
Scalia, Sotomayor Light Up High Court Hearing on Arizona Voting Rights Case
By RICK RICHMAN,
March 20, 2013
What an illuminating exchange erupted at the Supreme Court this week between Justices Sotomayor and Scalia. It came during oral argument on Arizona’s requirement that persons seeking to register to vote produce evidence of citizenship, such as a…
By IRA STOLL,
March 18, 2013
The Republican National Committee’s report on how to recover from its 2012 election losses is out, and the product is a strange combination of the intriguing, the illuminating, the hypocritical, and the humorous. Alas, it’s dark humor for anyone who…
Suddenly, Optimism Is in the Air
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
March 15, 2013
One might not know it from the acrimonious political debate on cable and broadcast TV, or on talk radio, or on websites and blogs. But here’s a counterintuitive observation: Amidst all the negativism out there, I believe optimism is in the air. That’s…
By SETH LIPSKY,
March 8, 2013
It’s hard to recall many more wonderful moments on the floor of the United States Senate than the filibuster mounted Wednesday night by Sen. Rand Paul against President Obama’s nominee to the CIA. The junior senator from Kentucky didn’t stop — or even…
Sequester Surprise Turns Out To Be That Budget Cuts Are Good for Growth
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
March 5, 2013
President Obama may be backing away from his doomsday spending-cut predictions as the sequester goes into place. But the new party line is that while there will be no impact in the first few days, there’ll be a slow, downward slump after that. What…
By BRANDT AYERS,
March 5, 2013
There is a bridge over the Alabama River in Selma, the crossing of which ended one civilization and began a newly minted one. On the first Sunday in March, as they have for 48 years, civil rights leaders crossed the bridge to commemorate “Bloody…
Warren Buffett Gets Caught in a Contradiction on the Political Economy
By IRA STOLL,
March 4, 2013
Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the richest men in the world, put out his annual letter to shareholders over the weekend. It got a lot of press attention, but, as is often the case with Mr. Buffett, even in the newspapers that…
Ugly Tone Emerges in Drive by Obama for Tax Hikes on Rich
By IRA STOLL,
February 25, 2013
With a March 1 deadline looming for the imposition of the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester, President Obama and his allies in the press are stepping up their campaign for additional tax increases on the rich. Mr. Obama said over the…
Hysteria on Sequester Masks Fact That Spending Cuts Bode Well for Growth
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
February 22, 2013
The Obama administration is whipping up hysteria over the sequester budget cuts and their impact on the economy, the military, first providers, and so forth and so on. Armageddon. But if you climb into the Congressional Budget Office numbers for 2013…
By R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr.,
February 20, 2013
To Amity Shlaes I am indebted for gently correcting a joke of mine that dates back to July 8, 1972. On that date in the New York Times I joshed that President Calvin Coolidge “probably spent more time napping than any President in the nation’s…
Obama’s Most Illuminating Initiative Turns Out To Be His College Scorecard
Violates Enumerated Powers, Competes Against Private Raters
By IRA STOLL,
February 18, 2013
The Obama State of the Union line that’s attracting the most attention is the $9-an-hour minimum wage. But the policy initiative that’s most illuminating in a certain way is the college scorecard. The minimum wage is certainly telling. A friend…
Next? The Barack Obama Campaign Promises Implementation Act of 2013
By IRA STOLL,
February 11, 2013
Senator Rubio of Florida is scheduled to give the Republican response to President Obama’s state of the Union address Tuesday night. Here’s one approach he may want to consider for his speech: My fellow Americans, Good evening. You just heard…
Obama Declares a Hollow Victory in the Budget Battle, Forgetting About the Predicament of the Fed
By GEORGE MELLOAN,
February 11, 2013
During the Vietnam War, Senator Aiken of Vermont became famous for allegedly saying that the U.S. should “declare victory and go home.” He didn’t say anything about going home, but the phrase lives on in American folklore as a solution to intractable…
Monsters of Entitlement
Reform Are Stalking
The Baby-Boomers
By IRA STOLL,
February 4, 2013
The political arithmetic of entitlement reform in Washington has, for decades, run something like this: you can either raise taxes, or you can cut benefits. President Obama has tinkered some around the edges. As part of ObamaCare, he reallocated some…
By GEORGE MELLOAN,
February 1, 2013
The year-end “fiscal cliff” tax deal sent shivers through the bond market, driving 10-year Treasuries to the lowest level since last April. There was a good reason. The stubborn resistance by Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to…
In Which Our Columnist Seeks To Keep His Pledge To Give Obama a Honeymoon
By CONRAD BLACK,
January 31, 2013
It is my solemn pledge to readers that I have tried to give President Obama a bit of a honeymoon in my thoughts as he takes the oath for a second term, and to think kindly of Secretary Clinton, as she hands over the State Department, and of her…
Decline in GDP Masks Strength in the Private Economy as Sequester Nears
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
January 30, 2013
Today’s report of a 0.1% GDP decline for the fourth quarter came as a surprise to most forecasters. But it actually masks considerable strength in the private economy. Namely, housing investment in the fourth quarter jumped 15.3% annually, business…
By IRA STOLL,
January 28, 2013
John Mackey, the cofounder and co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, has a flair for well-timed entries into public policy debates, as readers of his 2009 Wall Street Journal op-ed attacking Obamacare may recall. Now Mr. Mackey is back, along with a…
Cabal of Leftist Vulgarizers Foists Fraudulent, Procrustean Popular History on America
By CONRAD BLACK,
January 24, 2013
The last thing I would have imagined a week ago, when I wrote my column about the mythologization of Henry Wallace by Oliver Stone, was that I would return to the same subject this week. But Mr. Stone and his fig-leaf of ostensibly respectable…
Obama’s Choice: Best Case Scenario Holds Optimistic Option for America
By IRA STOLL,
January 21, 2013
What will President Obama’s second term, which begins this week, bring? Here’s a best-case scenario and a worst-case scenario. The best case is that Mr. Obama follows through on some of the proposals that he, or members of his administration, have…
‘Whither Goest Thou America, In Thy Shiny Car in the Night?’
By CONRAD BLACK,
January 19, 2013
As part of a television project, I have been checking film versions of celebrated events against historical facts. What has been most striking is the gratuitous manner in which dramatic events and the behaviour of eminent and fabled historical…
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
January 18, 2013
Okay, it’s official. According to the Treasury Department, the U.S. debt jumped to $16.1 trillion in 2012 from $14.8 trillion in 2011. That’s a $1.3 trillion deficit for the last year. Remarkable. During President Obama’s first term, the federal debt…
By CONRAD BLACK,
January 17, 2013
With mounting incredulity and alarm — like, I am sure, many readers — I have watched the exhumation, by Oliver Stone, Peter Kuznick, and other members of a leftist claque of revisionist historians and pseudo-historians, of the putrefied historic…
Lew Signals Leftward Lurch by Obama, Putting Premium for GOP in Sequester for Spending
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
January 11, 2013
The worst part of the Jack Lew nomination for treasury secretary is not simply that he has no qualifications, standing, or experience in the financial world or international sphere (think G20 and European debt crisis). Nor is it simply that he doesn’t…
Only a Resurgent National Will Can Return America To the Vision of the Founders
By CONRAD BLACK,
January 9, 2013
George Will’s address last month at Washington University in St. Louis has been rightly hailed as a seminal statement on the role of religion in Western and especially American society, and on the conflicting constitutional ambitions and their…
Obama Pick for Global Council Illuminates The President’s Approach To Economic Policy
By IRA STOLL,
January 7, 2013
On the Friday before Christmas, President Obama announced that he was appointing Mohamed A. El-Erian, the CEO of Pacific Investment Management Company, as the chairman of his Global Development Council. The announcement didn’t get much attention, but…
Europe Emerges as the Model for Obama Years
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
January 3, 2013
One cheer out of a potential three is all anyone can logically give the fiscal-cliff deal. On the day after the bargain was clinched, the stock market gave a 300-point cheer. So be it. In the short run, extending tax cuts up to $450,000 probably saved…
‘Lincoln’ and ‘FDR’ Invent History Where Accuracy Would Have Served Even Better
By CONRAD BLACK,
January 2, 2013
Two recent films about America’s greatest presidents since, and along with, George Washington — Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt — cannot fail to remind us of the deterioration in the distinction of the presidency. They have received sharply…
Going Over Fiscal Cliff
Emerges as the Lesser Evil
Facing Congress
Three Ex-Governors — Wilson, Pataki, and Weld — Could Point The Way Forward for GOP
By IRA STOLL,
December 24, 2012
How can the Republican Party — or the center-right political movement in this country generally — dig itself out of the hole it’s in? That’s the question being asked after two months in which the Republican Party lost a presidential election, had its…
If Congress Goes Over the Cliff, GOP Tax Cut Is Sure To Follow
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
December 21, 2012
When you lose an election you get frustrated. When you’re sitting in a subpar 2% economy and are faced with tax hikes rather than marginal rate reductions, you get even more frustrated. When you’re staring at $47 trillion in spending over the next ten…
American Party System Sets Stage for Elevation of a Strong Leader To Lead a Reform
By CONRAD BLACK,
December 21, 2012
There are many lamentations, not least audibly from me, about the gridlock and general current futility of the U.S. political system, as well as the comparative mediocrity of most high officeholders, a trans-partisan problem. I was bemoaning to a…
By IRA STOLL,
December 17, 2012
With apologies and thanks to William Safire: 1. At year-end, the junior senator from Massachusetts is a) Deval Patrick, who stepped down from the governor’s office to run for the post to gain Washington experience in advance of a 2016 presidential run…
How the Shouting Match of the Pundits Goes Back to Vietnam
By CONRAD BLACK,
December 14, 2012
It will not become a fortnightly event for me to ride like the Seventh Cavalry to the assistance of News Corporation or its leader, and it is only a coincidence that I take up on what is apparently an effort at satire at the expense of Fox News. It…
Stock Market Expects a Deal at the Edge of the Budget Cliff
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
December 11, 2012
Despite all the hullabaloo in the press about the fiscal cliff and a potential recession if none of the Bush tax cuts are extended, stock markets have behaved calmly throughout this whole period. As of this writing today, the Dow is up 100 points. I’m…
Secret Parley of Obama, Boehner Betrays Their Pledges To Open Government
By IRA STOLL,
December 10, 2012
Here’s one thing President Obama and Speaker Boehner agree on: they don’t want you to know what happened at their meeting Sunday about taxes and spending. “We’re not reading out details of the conversation,” said identical statements issued by the…
‘Doomsday’ Scenario Starts To Come Into Focus in Battle Over the Budget
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
December 7, 2012
Republicans are divided. President Obama won’t budge. And more and more, it looks like the fiscal-cliff deadline of December 31 will be missed. It’s now clear that Team Obama wants higher tax rates and revenue-raising tax-deduction caps to meet…
‘Doomsday’ Scenario Starts To Come Into Focus in Battle Over the Budget
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
December 7, 2012
Republicans are divided. President Obama won’t budge. And more and more, it looks like the fiscal-cliff deadline of December 31 will be missed. It’s now clear that Team Obama wants higher tax rates and revenue-raising tax-deduction caps to meet…
How Obama Could Yet Emerge as a Transformative President
By CONRAD BLACK,
December 5, 2012
AT&T; Trying To Raise Your Rates — Tax Rates, That Is
By IRA STOLL,
December 3, 2012
AT&T; customers, pay attention: your phone company is trying to raise your rates. No, not your phone rates: your tax rates. And therein lies a story. If federal campaign contributions are any guide, the CEO and chairman of AT&T;, Randall Stephenson, is…
‘Herbert Hoover’ Obama Emerges as the Legacy the President Wants To Avoid
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
November 28, 2012
Once again, President Obama dodged the key fiscal-cliff issues at a campaign rally/press conference Wednesday morning. Campaign-style, he argued that the middle-class tax cuts (below $250,000) must be renewed in order to prevent a $2,200 average tax…
By IRA STOLL,
November 26, 2012
As the clock ticks toward a tax increase scheduled to take effect at year end, expect to hear a lot from the “tax me more” crowd. These are wealthy individuals who profess to favor increases in their own tax bills. A series of recent articles help…
Danger of Stalemate on Fiscal Front Rattles the Markets
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
November 21, 2012
Romney’s ‘Gifts’ Remark Is Rooted in a Nobel-Prize-Winning-Theory of Political Economy
By IRA STOLL,
November 19, 2012
Governor Romney’s explanation of his election loss — that President Obama bought the election with “gifts” such as health insurance coverage and student loan forgiveness — may be closer to the truth than a lot of people want to believe. The losing…
How Centers for Disease Control Have Moved
Into Vote Buying Business
By BETSY McCAUGHEY,
November 15, 2012
Public opinion about the Obama health law is split, but no matter what your view, surely you would want Obamacare spending to go towards what it’s supposed to be for — helping people afford health insurance. Yet the money trail discloses billions…
Dangerous Political Vortex Could Engulf Both America, Canada in Election’s Wake
By CONRAD BLACK
November 14, 2012
President Obama’s victory this week was hoped for, and celebrated, in Canada as a triumph of Canadian-style Americanism. Here in Toronto, for example, the writers group PEN Canada invited a wide range of people to a public-speaking event titled…
Beware of Counting on the Fed If U.S. Goes Off the Fiscal Cliff
Fisher: ‘There’s Got To Be a Limit’
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
November 14, 2012
In the event the United States goes off the Fiscal Cliff, don’t expect the Fed to shield markets from the worst. In an interview on the Kudlow Report, the hawkish president of the Dallas Fed, Richard Fisher, said he’d resist that kind of intervention…
‘Congratulations, Partner’: What Boehner Could Say in a Memo to President Obama
By IRA STOLL,
November 12, 2012
If Speaker of the House John Boehner wrote a memo to President Obama, it might look something like this: * * * Dear Mr. President: Seeing that YouTube video of you choking up while thanking your campaign volunteers in Chicago reminded me of how much…
Key Senator Warns Against Simpson-Bowles, Arguing Revenues Can Be Raised Via Growth of the Economy
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
November 12, 2012
A federal budget deal to avoid the fiscal cliff can be achieved without raising tax rates, the minority whip, Senator Jon Kyl, said Friday on the Kudlow Report. “Tax revenues can be generated by two ways other than raising tax rates,” he said. “One is…
Why Petraeus Deserved Better Than This Humiliation
By SHMULEY BOTEACH,
November 11, 2012
Did General Petraeus have to resign? He opened himself as head of the Central Intelligence Agency to blackmail, which is a security breach. So the argument goes. But surely once he admitted the affair, he presumably couldn’t be blackmailed any more…
Little-Noticed Exit Poll Finds 63% Said ‘No’ To Raising Taxes To Shrink Deficit
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
November 9, 2012
In the fierce headline debate over the so-called fiscal cliff, our newly reelected president argues that “a majority of Americans agree with [his] approach.” That approach, according to the president, is “to combine spending cuts with revenue — and…
By IRA STOLL,
November 5, 2012
If Mitt Romney ends this week as President-Elect Romney, it will be because of these six reasons: “One-term proposition”: “If I don't have this done in three years, then there's gonna be a one-term proposition,” President Obama told NBC’s Matt Lauer…
Optimism Turns Out To Be Secret Weapon for Romney
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
November 5, 2012
Putting aside all the voter models, there’s one overlooked point worth making with Election Day at hand. Most times in American politics, optimists win, and pessimists lose. I know that’s not always the case. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between…
Obama, Congress Quietly Borrowed Money From China To Subsidize Housing At Coastal Flood Plains
By IRA STOLL,
October 29, 2012
Four months before Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, President Obama quietly signed legislation expanding the federal program that offers taxpayer-subsidized flood insurance to ocean-front homeowners. The law extended the National Flood Insurance…
Murders by Nanny Illuminate the Nature of Fate, As Did the Boy Who Was Grazed By a Meteor
By LENORE SKENAZY,
October 29, 2012
How can you protect your children from possibly being murdered by your nanny? The answer is to do a thorough background check. Of history. The horrific crime that appalled the country last week – two children stabbed to death on New York’s Upper West…
Obama’s Second Term Vision Seeks To Move Government Beyond 25% of GDP
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
October 24, 2012
Under pressure from Mitt Romney, President Obama has finally released his own policy vision for a second term. And yes, it’s the same old, same old. Some are calling it a second first term. There isn’t a single true economic-growth incentive in this…
Maneuvering Starts Among Democrats To Claim GOP
Is Buying the Election
By IRA STOLL,
October 22, 2012
If Mitt Romney wins the presidency, expect the Democrats to complain that the Republicans bought the election — and to try to outlaw it from ever happening again. The signs are already emerging. A New York Times column earlier this month ran under the…
Why Even Conservatives Liked McGovern Personally
By CAL THOMAS,
October 22, 2012
Senator McGovern, who died Sunday, had all manner of evil said about him because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. He was called unpatriotic, disloyal, an appeaser and an enabler of communism. Those were the printable slanders. Many conservatives…
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
October 19, 2012
With the unprecedented budget explosion of means-tested, welfare-related entitlements, does Team Obama think it can buy the election? It’s a cynical question. But I wouldn’t put it past that cynical bunch. Remember Harry Hopkins, Franklin Roosevelt’s…
Biden Sideshow Sets the Stage for Obama, Romney Tonight
By CONRAD BLACK,
October 16, 2012
The spectacle of the Democratic television networks and newspapers straining to make Joe Biden the Paul Revere of the flagging Obama campaign is one of the more entertaining sideshows of American politics since Jimmy Carter’s encounter with the…
It’s Romney Vs. Ryan on Taxes, But They Both Could Be Right
By IRA STOLL,
October 15, 2012
Maybe the next debate should be between Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, about what exactly is in their tax plan. Consider the following contradiction: “My plan is not like anything that's been tried before. My plan is to bring down rates…
How Lincoln Emerged in the Stratosphere of Greatness
By CONRAD BLACK,
October 14, 2012
The mighty American star system has elevated and demoted thousands of people over the 236 years since the propagandistic arts were first torqued up in the Declaration of Independence. But the supreme champion of the American personality cult has been…
Ryan Stuns Biden on Foreign Policy in Big Surprise of Vice Presidential Debate
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
October 12, 2012
The irony of ironies: The Biden-Ryan debate was more about foreign policy than the economy and jobs. Yet another irony: Paul Ryan, an expert on all things fiscal, disclosed a much better knowledge base of foreign policy than anyone thought existed…
Romney Market Beckons as Victory in November Grows More Plausible by the Day
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
October 11, 2012
The S&P; fell for the fourth day in a row on Wednesday, as investors ran for the exits, fearing a rough market ahead. However, if you’re among those sellers running for the sidelines, you may be making a big mistake. For the first time, I feel…
By CONRAD BLACK,
October 10, 2012
In this space I have written before that President Obama is the first incumbent since Martin Van Buren in 1840 to seek reelection without running on his record. He is also the first incumbent in my time as an observer, which goes back to the…
Where Will the Next Political Party Start? Gaffe by Romney Leads to an Idea
By IRA STOLL,
October 8, 2012
The most infuriating moment of the first presidential debate between Mitt Romney and President Obama hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. That moment was when Governor Romney, the Republican, in response to a question about regulation, declared it…
Romney Wins Debate by Focusing on Taxes, Key Principles
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
October 4, 2012
Mitt Romney politely cleaned Barack Obama’s clock tonight. A lethargic and at times tired looking President Obama was out-hustled, out-facted, out-energized, and out-informed by Governor Romney. Completely unlike Mr. Romney’s convention speech, he…
America Flunking Churchill’s ‘Test of Civilization’
By CONRAD BLACK,
October 4, 2012
An article in the Wall Street Journal last week having pointed out that 97% of U.S. criminal prosecutions are now guilty-plea bargains, and that 85% of the remaining 3% are trials that return guilty verdicts, I return to the spavined bête noire of the…
Taxes, Growth, Sound Money Are the Notes on Which Romney Can Seize the Lead Tonight
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
October 3, 2012
Free advice is, well, free advice. But I would say this to Governor Romney: In your gentlemanly fashion, get on the offense quickly tonight, and put President Obama on the defense. Play the leadership card: “No leadership on the anemic economy. No…
Counterrevolution Comes To California as Governor Brown Vetoes a Raft Of Liberal Legislation
By IRA STOLL,
October 1, 2012
One of the saving graces of modern progressivism is that eventually it gets too left-wing even for left wingers. That’s the takeaway from Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s volley of vetoes — 34 pieces of legislation passed by the Democrat-controlled…
What Would Churchill or FDR Have Done in the Face of Riots and Flag Burning?
By CONRAD BLACK,
September 27, 2012
At the end of World War II, the Americans and the British ruled, or heavily influenced by traditional right, or occupied, or sustained by force of arms righteously exercised, almost all the world except what was under the hobnailed jackboot of…
Latest Numbers Suggest Fear of Fiscal Cliff Is Already Hurting the Economy
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
September 27, 2012
As if the looming “fiscal cliff” isn’t frightening enough, new results suggest it’s already doing serious damage to the economy — and it’s only September. According to a survey released by the Business Roundtable, corporate America’s view of the…
Romney Rates a Mulligan on Latest Tax Gaffe, As Pressure Builds on the Debate
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
September 27, 2012
For some unknown reason, Mitt Romney dialed back his tax-cut plan yesterday, the same day new reports showed incomes are dropping. Last month, median household income fell by about $500, and since Barack Obama became president, income is down over…
An ‘Aha!’ Moment as Romney Suddenly Talks Take-Home Pay
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
September 25, 2012
One of the reasons Mitt Romney and the GOP failed to get a convention bounce was their inability to talk tax cuts, economic growth, and jobs. In his 45-minute convention speech, Governor Romney spent 200 words on the economy, with no mention of tax…
Tax Take Soars Under Obama, Even as He Argues Otherwise
By IRA STOLL,
September 24, 2012
Where are the “fact-checkers” when you need them? On CBS News’s “60 Minutes” Sunday night, President Obama said, “Taxes are lower on families than they've been probably in the last 50 years. So I haven't raised taxes.” As of Monday morning, neither…
U.S. Government Playing a Game of Chicken With Itself Over the National Debt
By CONRAD BLACK,
September 20, 2012
The election campaign has entered its final phase with the administration irritatingly pretending that some sort of economic recovery is under way, and that a deficit-reduction plan that leads where a sane and numerate citizen might wish to go is in…
The Chair Will No Longer Be Empty When Obama, Romney Meet in Debate
Some Questions for the Candidates
By IRA STOLL,
September 17, 2012
The first debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney is scheduled for Wednesday, October 3, at the University of Denver in Colorado, which means it’s not too soon to suggest some questions for the moderator, Jim Lehrer. The debate is supposed to…
Bernanke Reverses Policy of Volcker, In Bid To Finance Obama’s Tax, Spending Plan
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
September 14, 2012
About thirty years ago, Paul Volcker launched a monumental monetary effort to bring down inflation. As Fed chairman, he sold bonds, removed cash from the economy, and cared not one wit about rising interest rates. And it worked. Gold plunged, King…
Democrats Hand GOP a Winning Issue as the Obama Deficits Put the Dollar on the Road To Collapse
By CONRAD BLACK,
September 13, 2012
The shape of the election is already clear; as was predicted here and elsewhere, the administration cannot and won’t run on its record. The economy is in shambles, the prospects are poor, the dollar is falling faster against gold than the Euro for the…
Sex, Videotape, and FDR in ‘Hyde Park on the Hudson’
By CONRAD BLACK,
September 10, 2012
The core of the story of Hyde Park on Hudson, premiering September 10 at the Toronto International Film Festival, is how Franklin Delano Roosevelt coped with the immense pressures of his office as he pulled the United States out of the Great…
By IRA STOLL,
September 10, 2012
Call it the Obama paradox: He’s been a failure as a president, but he looks headed for reelection, anyway. Sure, things could change between now and November if there’s a stock-market plunge, a scandal, an Iranian nuclear test, or a truly…
‘Government’ Becomes ‘Citizenship’ In Obama’s New Language of Politics
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
September 7, 2012
Perhaps the reason for President Obama’s flat and energy-less speech Thursday night -- TV cameras panning the convention floor actually showed delegates falling asleep -- was that he already knew Friday’s jobs numbers were going to be a disaster. The…
Barack Obama, Scrambling Away From His Record, Makes the Mistake of Martin Van Buren
By CONRAD BLACK,
September 5, 2012
It could normally be presumed that the Democrats will put the best imaginable face on their administration and charge out of their convention with an agreed rationale for what they intend to do if reelected and why they deserve to be on the basis of…
The Gold Standard Goes Mainstream
By SETH LIPSKY,
An under-reported development of this campaign season is the Republican Party's decision this week to send Gov. Mitt Romney into the presidential race on a platform effectively calling for a new gold commission. The realization that America's system…
By CONRAD BLACK,
August 30, 2012
Following on my prediction of last week that the selection of Paul Ryan as the Republican vice-presidential candidate would energize what had been shaping up to be an extremely lackluster campaign, the undergrowth has already erupted with Democratic…
All Eyes Are on Romney To Mark the Strategy for Growth as Ryan Sticks To Debt
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
August 30, 2012
Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan gave a powerful speech Wednesday night that repeatedly brought conventioneers at the Republican National Convention in Tampa to their feet. I am going to give him high marks for his speech’s delivery…
‘Second American Century’ Heaves Into View As Ann Romney Steals the Show at Tampa
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
August 29, 2012
In front of a spirited crowd that packed the Tampa Times Forum, Chris Christie gave a solid speech that echoed Mitt Romney’s programs consisting of substantial budget cuts, tax cuts, and entitlement reform. Mr. Christie pressed on the notion of what…
Romney, as GOP Retreats From the Weather, Sounds Off Key
By IRA STOLL,
August 27, 2012
So the Americans that survived Valley Forge and stormed the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima have gotten so soft that the mere threat of heavy rain is enough to cancel an entire day of a national political convention. Here is the chairman of the…
How Paul Ryan Rescued the Presidential Race
By CONRAD BLACK,
August 25, 2012
It is refreshing to see the metamorphosis of the U.S. presidential campaign in the two weeks since the selection of Paul Ryan as Republican nominee for vice-president. It has miraculously evolved from one of the most unrelievedly vacuous election…
Supply-Side Grousing About Paul Ryan Is Gainsaid by the Candidate Himself
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
August 24, 2012
In the two weeks since Governor Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate, the entire Republican party has been rejuvenated. Governor Romney himself has been reenergized. After losing ground in the polls this summer, he’s once again drawn even with…
Ron Paul Has a Cautionary Question for Romney — Doesn't Monetary Policy Belong To Congress?
By Special to the Sun
August 24, 2012
Governor Romney’s latest statement in support of the independence of the Federal Reserve has brought a sharp warning from Congressman Ron Paul that the Constitution vests responsibility over monetary policy in the Congress. The congressman’s riposte…
Romney, in Budget Talk on the Stump, Shows an Instinct for the Capillary
By IRA STOLL,
August 20, 2012
For a tale that sums up both the Romney presidential campaign and the battle over the federal debt and deficit, look no further than the battle over funding the National Endowment for the Humanities. The endowment, despite its name, is not an…
Tax Hike Hangs Like Sword of Damocles Over Economy
As It Starts To Recover
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
August 17, 2012
While the fiscal-cliff tax hike still hangs like the recessionary sword of Damocles over the economy, the economic stats for the month of July do not show it. Key data points suggest there is no double-dip recession. All in all, it’s still an anemic…
Ding Dong Battle Shapes Up as WMR Turns To Paul Ryan
By CONRAD BLACK,
August 13, 2012
It is no longer a fresh story, but the selection of Paul Ryan as vice-presidential nominee by Mitt Romney is the most, and possibly the first, presidential act W.M. Romney has taken. After doffing his cap in every ideological and policy direction for…
Romney, Framing a Pro-Growth Program, Moves To the Right of Bush, McCain, and Dole
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
August 10, 2012
While some of my conservative colleagues are criticizing the Romney campaign for one thing or another, I want to make a distinct point that is largely being overlooked: Governor Romney is the most fiscally conservative Republican standard-bearer since…
Falling Health Care Costs Set To Emerge as Next Big Issue
Little-Covered Trend Upends Argument of Obama
By IRA STOLL,
August 6, 2012
One of the key arguments that President Obama used to get his health care law though Congress, control of soaring health care costs, turns out to have been bogus. Here is the way Mr. Obama put the argument in a September 9, 2009, speech about health…
Watergate 40 Years On: Where’s the Smoke, and Where’s the Gun?
By CONRAD BLACK,
August 4, 2012
Forty years after Watergate, as the agreed demonology of that drama begins to unravel and the chief authors of it, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, struggle to keep the conventional wisdom about it intact as an article of righteous liberal faith, a…
As Stocks Soar on Jobs Report, Small Business Is Stopped Dead
Romney Platform Emerges in Sharp Relief
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
August 3, 2012
Stocks loved today’s jobs report, rising well more than 200 points at this writing. But equities may be suffering from a certain irrational exuberance. Yes, nonfarm payrolls rose by 163,000 in July. That’s better than the prior two months and probably…
Obama’s Campaign To Subordinate Religious Institutions Threatens a Pillar of American Success
By CONRAD BLACK,
August 2, 2012
It has been a learned joke for 40 years that long-serving Chinese premier Chou En-lai, when asked the principal consequence of the French Revolution, replied: “It is too early to say.” As events unfold in this rather dismal election year in the United…
Elizabeth Warren Praising Communist China as a Model for America
Runs Startling Campaign Ad in Olympics Prime Time
By IRA STOLL,
July 30, 2012
Massachusetts residents who tuned in to the Olympics opening ceremony saw a new 30-second campaign commercial from the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Elizabeth Warren, that said America should be more like Communist China. “We've got bridges…
Nastiness Exceeds Expectations As Obama Campaign Skirts President’s Record
By CONRAD BLACK,
July 26, 2012
So far, the presidential-election campaign has moderately exceeded even very high expectations of banality and nastiness. It is like a three-legged race between the head of a failed administration (except in continuing to combat terrorism), who is…
Greenspan Warns Spending Boom Has Negative Impact, As Economy Reels From Capital Strike
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
July 19, 2012
Does anybody remember, back in the depths of the recession of 1981-82, how President Reagan kept his chin up and exhorted American businesses to work hard and produce an economic recovery? Reagan had a program of tax cuts, limited domestic spending…
How Walter Cronkite Betrayed Journalism and Ignited the Rage That Burns Against the Media Today
By CONRAD BLACK,
July 18, 2012
Douglas Brinkley’s biography of Walter Cronkite tells you all any sane person would want to know about the subject, and tells it fluently and with rigorous attachment to sources. It also tells a greater tale, of the ideological and policy uniformity…
Errors Start To Emerge in Standard Stump Speech of President Obama
By IRA STOLL,
July 16, 2012
Really understanding President Obama’s governing philosophy and agenda doesn’t require a whole fleet of investigative reporters or opposition researchers. All you have to do is take a reasonably careful look at his campaign stump speech, a collection…
As Obama Falters and Romney Consults, 2012 Election Exposes an Office Looking for the Man
By CONRAD BLACK,
July 12, 2012
As we plod into the final two months before the presidential election campaign officially begins (although they in fact begin about two years before the election that precedes the one for which the campaign is intended), there is still time to review…
Obamacare Does Indeed Look Like the Largest Nominal Tax Increase in American History
By IRA STOLL,
July 9, 2012
No sooner had Chief Justice Roberts issued his ruling that ObamaCare’s individual mandate to purchase health insurance ObamaCare was a tax than the law’s defenders in the press were racing to rebut the idea that the law, overall, is the largest tax…
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
July 7, 2012
President Obama needed a filet mignon in the June employment report. But instead he got a rubber chicken. Only 80,000 new jobs were created last month, way below Wall Street expectations. It’s the fourth consecutive monthly disappointment. For a few…
Policy Battle Emerges as New Focus in Fight Over Obamacare
By IRA STOLL,
July 5, 2012
Conservative fury at the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts, for the Supreme Court ruling declining to strike down the bulk of ObamaCare is misplaced. Some of the more perfervid criticism makes it sound like the law is actually the fault…
Surge of Campaign Cash for Romney Greets Supreme Court Ruling on Obamacare
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
June 29, 2012
In the hours following the Supreme Court’s decision to ratify Obamacare, Governor Romney got $4.6 million in donations from 47,000 individuals. The tide is with him. The Supreme’s are a game changer. But Mr. Romney has to make the case. He needs to…
Uncertainty Will Cast Pall on Economy, Even If High Court Voids Obamacare
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
June 27, 2012
It may well be that the complex tax-and-regulatory mandates embodied in Obamacare have proven to be a deterrent for business job creation. You hear it all the time from men and women in business — especially smaller businesses, but large companies too…
Obama, NYTimes Targeting Wealthy Conservatives for a Sudden Tax Scrutiny
By IRA STOLL,
June 25, 2012
Billionaires thinking of becoming politically active on the right side of the political spectrum be warned: the press will want to know how much you pay in taxes. President Nixon tried to get the IRS to audit the taxes of his liberal political enemies. The press, the public, and historians rightfully found that to be an affront to the rule of law and to the spirit of liberty. But now President Obama and his allies . . .
McCain Hits a Career Low in Attacks on Adelson for ‘Foreign Money’ in His Campaign Contributions
By IRA STOLL,
June 18, 2012
The Republican Party’s 2008 presidential candidate, John McCain, is warning about foreign money influencing American elections this year via a prominent supporter of Republican politicians. In an interview that aired June 14 on PBS’s “Newshour”…
Nixon Emerges a Victor in ‘War on History’ Waged in the Wake of Watergate
By CONRAD BLACK,
June 14, 2012
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (Woodstein for our purposes) now claim, in a Washington Post piece, that President Nixon was “far worse than we thought,” and accuse him of conducting five “wars”: against the anti-war movement, on the media, against…
Warning Signs Growing That a Global Recession Is Already Here
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
June 14, 2012
Is it possible that we are already in a global recession but just don’t know it yet? And is the U.S. itself — still the epicenter of the world economy — standing on the front edge of another recession? I sincerely hope I’m wrong. But warning signs are…
Stock Market Surge Is Touched Off by Victory of Walker at Wisconsin
Dow Soars Right at the Market Open, With No Other News
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
June 6, 2012
You didn’t see it in the mainstream financial press Wednesday morning. But stocks loved Governor Walker’s spanking of public-sector unions and Democrats in Wisconsin. The Dow jumped about 165 points right at the opening on Wednesday, and was up over…
Failure of Keynesian Spending Spree Puts U.S. Back at Edge of Recession, as Jobs Growth Stalls
Employers Waiting for Supreme Court Decision on Obamacare, Watching Europe
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
June 1, 2012
You would think $1 trillion in spending stimulus and $2.5 trillion of Fed pump-priming would produce an economy a whole lot stronger than 1.9% GDP, which was the revised first-quarter number. You’d think all that government spending would deliver a…
Bananas for Capitalism: History of United Fruit Chronicles Innovation, Creativity
By IRA STOLL,
May 25, 2012
Americans puzzling over the role of today’s powerful corporations — Bain Capital, Goldman Sachs, Google — may profit from considering the example of the United Fruit Company. It seems almost quaint to think that a company specializing in bananas might…
Why Cory Booker Spoke Out on Negative Campaigning
By SHMULEY BOTEACH,
May 23, 2012
For a moment, let me remove my hat as a Republican candidate for public office and speak only wearing my yarmulke, as a Rabbi who has known Cory for twenty years and has had the blessing throughout that time of an intimate, brotherly friendship. Many…
Schumer’s Bid To Tax a Founder of Facebook Ignites Discussion of a Law Used by Nazis
By IRA STOLL,
May 21, 2012
Call it the return of the Reichsfluchtsteuer. The president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, did not use the term. That is what Mr. Norquist was talking about, though, when he spoke to The Hill newspaper about the legislation proposed by…
A Fell Swoop Is Sought by Boehner on Debt-Limitation and Tax Cuts — in Advance of November
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
May 17, 2012
House Speaker John Boehner is playing a heroic role right now. In his efforts to prevent the Bush tax cuts from expiring, Mr. Boehner is aggressively taking on President Obama’s leadership ineptitude on the economy. In essence, Mr. Boehner is pushing…
Big Romney Fundraiser in New York Backed Not by Big Banks But by New Breed of More Nimble Financiers
By IRA STOLL,
May 14, 2012
The Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, will visit New York City May 22 for a large fundraiser featuring many members of the financial industry, and on the face of it, it couldn’t be worse timing. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman…
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
May 8, 2012
While President Obama is out on the campaign trail talking about how bad things were four years ago and how we have to go “forward” to his second term to see just how great things are going to be in the next four years, the biggest problem he’s got is…
Weak Presidential Nominees Pose a Bleak Choice for Voters in Both France, U.S.
The Two Democracies Must Choose Between 'Apparently Incorrigible Wafflers'
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 28, 2012
In last Saturday’s edition, I reviewed the French election. And the first round came out largely as I expected. The second round in May, between François Hollande and incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, right now seems too close to call. Closer to home, the…
Geithner Crosses the Line Into the Political Fray as a Particularly Partisan Treasury Secretary
Calls Dean of Columbia Business School a‘Hack’
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
April 27, 2012
Is Secretary Geithner the most politically partisan treasury secretary in history? Certainly sounds like it these days. As the government’s chief financial officer, he’s spending a lot of time firing campaign barbs at various Republicans and their…
Guarded Optimism Voiced on Measure in Congress To Narrow Scope of the Federal Reserve
An End to Era of Humphrey-Hawkins Is Seen
By JOHN V. BENNETT,
April 20, 2012
NEW YORK — The main sponsor in Congress of legislation to narrow the mandate of the Federal Reserve expressed guarded optimism about the bill’s prospects at a monetary parley here today. Representative Kevin Brady was speaking of his “Sound Dollar…
Romney’s Economic-Approval Rating Soars Over President’s, New Polls Show
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
April 20, 2012
Wall Street headlines are full of fears of a springtime stall for the already subpar economic recovery. If that weren’t bad enough for President Obama’s reelection chances, a spate of new polls show Governor Romney’s economic-approval ratings are far…
Obama’s Radio Address Leaves Him Exposed To a GOP Challenge Over Taxes
By IRA STOLL,
April 16, 2012
If there were some kind of award for the most misleading statements in a single four-minute speech, President Obama would have earned it with his weekly address this weekend, timed for tax day. “We can’t afford to keep spending more money on tax cuts…
America’s Decline Turns Out To Be Real But Reversible
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 14, 2012
Prominent public intellectuals in the United States are becoming increasingly vocal in their protestations that their country is not in decline. Robert Kagan militates in his latest book that the United States is still by far the most powerful country…
A New Definition of Chutzpah Emerges as Obama Seeks To Use Reagan as Cover for Attacks on Romney
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
April 13, 2012
In President Obama’s latest class-war, tax-the-rich gambit, he has stooped to a new low with misleading and out-of-context quotes from Ronald Reagan. Apparently, the president is now trying to use the Gipper for cover while he attacks Mitt Romney with…
Americans Will Have To Wait Until After the Election for a 5% Growth Rate
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
April 9, 2012
Despite the disappointing jobs report for March, it’s difficult to make a realistic case that the economy is falling off a cliff or that some kind of double-dip recession is on the way. Or that a Ben Bernanke QE3 is likely. Sure, the 120,000 gain in…
President Bush, Governors Due in New York for Tax Parley, As State v. State Tax Competition Looms
By IRA STOLL,
April 9, 2012
The big news over the long holiday weekend, which is resonating in the stock market, was the national employment and unemployment number. The national unemployment number for March was 8.2%, down just slightly from the 8.3% reported in February. The…
Misconception on Health Care Law Could Be Key To Decision of Supreme Court
By BETSY McCAUGHEY,
April 6, 2012
If the Supreme Court upholds the health law’s mandatory insurance, the ruling will likely turn on a misconception rather than constitutional principle. During the oral argument on March 27, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli told the packed courtroom…
Clouds of a (Real) Culture War Are Scudding as Santorum Nears the End of His Quest
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 5, 2012
Now that the Santorum campaign — the last and most durable of the non-Mitt efforts — is finally fading, a little analysis of it is warranted before it vanishes from mind. It didn’t flame out absurdly like the Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich…
One of Biggest ‘Tax Cuts’ in History Seen in Collapse of Natural-Gas Prices
Supreme Court Ruling on Plea Bargains Is Occasion for Rejoicing
By CONRAD BLACK,
March 29, 2012
Every resident of or frequent visitor to the United States should rejoice at the Supreme Court’s decision last week expanding the rights of defendants to effective counsel in plea-bargain negotiations. As Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority…
Romney Would Be Big Winner If Supreme Court Voids Health Insurance Mandate
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
March 29, 2012
If the Supreme Court overthrows the individual mandate, doesn’t Mitt Romney say “I told you so” and emerge as the big political winner? All along he’s been arguing that only states have mandate power, and that the federal government under the commerce…
By IRA STOLL,
March 26, 2012
The burst of attention devoted to Congressman Paul Ryan’s 2013 federal budget seems to have passed, at least momentarily, but don’t be deceived: the plan rolled out last week by the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee is going to be…
By RICK RICHMAN,
March 24, 2012
On March 19, the New York Times published an excerpt -- covering almost half the op-ed page — from Peter Beinart’s new book, “The Crisis of Zionism,” in which Mr. Beinart proposed boycotting Jewish communities in the disputed territories of the West…
Era of U.S. Leadership
Drawing to an End
As America Retreats
By CONRAD BLACK,
June 11, 2014
It is clear from a canvass of other columnists and bloggers that I am in good and numerous company in trying to find anything worthwhile to write about, and must warn readers not to be too complacent that I have succeeded in the balance of these…
Pirates Suddenly Emerging
Against Merchant Vessels
Off New Coast of Africa
By STEVEN COHEN AND TERENCE McKNIGHT,
June 10, 2014
Pirates are once again threatening merchant ships off the coast of Africa. But now, most of the attacks are coming not off the eastern coast near Somalia, but in the Atlantic along the west coast near Nigeria. Moreover, today’s new pirates’ weapons…
Clinton, Jeb Bush Emerge
As Candidates for Rushmore
In a Vacuum of Leadership
By CONRAD BLACK,
May 30, 2014
It is not clear that anyone in a position of authority in any important country has been doing any strategic thinking since the end of the Cold War. Yet despite this, the West has had some strategic bonanzas. The Chinese, still widely toasted as the…
Next in Ukraine’s Defense
Comes Bid To Establish
A Strong, Stable Currency
By JUDY SHELTON,
May 26, 2014
The next step for Ukraine after its resounding affirmation of the democratic process is to maintain the momentum of hope by delivering results. It’s vital to link the aspirations of Ukrainian citizens for political unity and sovereign independence…
Modi’s Triumph in India
Is a Stroke of Fortune
For the Democratic World
By CONRAD BLACK,
May 22, 2014
While the Indian election that concluded last week has received significant attention, its implications have not been very widely appreciated. About 70% of India’s 815 million voters voted in 900,000 polling stations, and the balloting was conducted…
Israel Readies a Bill
To Allow Jewish Prayer
At Judaism’s Holiest Site
By MICHAEL FREUND,
May 20, 2014
After several exasperating decades, one of the thorniest and most painful issues on Israel’s public agenda may at last be heading toward a resolution. In a move underlining the national consensus regarding the Temple Mount, two members of the…
Modi Facing a Rocky Road
As He Seeks To Govern
India From the Right
By PRANAY GUPTE,
May 18, 2014
NEW DELHI – Elections are all about arithmetic and atmospherics, about calculus and celebration, but they are also about a division of the spoils. To put it another way: Winning parties that get to form governments also get new opportunities to get…
Cupboard of Leadership,
In a Dangerous World,
Turns Out To be Empty
By CONRAD BLACK,
May 14, 2014
Mediocre leadership is acceptable for ordinary times. Surely no one disputes that this is a time of comparatively unsuccessful and weak national leadership in the world, which has historically meant that times are not overly threatening. The United…
Obama Abandons Interests
America Has Kept
For Seven Decades
By CONRAD BLACK,
May 8, 2014
After taking refuge in last week’s column in a discussion of the hazards of watching television news, I can no longer conscientiously resist the duty of commenting on President Obama. Last week, when asked about recent American foreign-policy…
How the Press Buried Story
Of Canonization of Popes
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 29, 2014
I started out to write about the proclaimed coalition between the Palestinian factions of Fatah and Hamas, and will get to a condensed analysis of that in a few paragraphs. My interest was side-tracked by my effort on Sunday to see the television-news…
Canada Could Acquire
Nimitz Class Carriers
Obama Doesn’t Want
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 26, 2014
Canada has set aside its former cherished international position as self-proclaimed peacekeeper, and now has an opportunity to graduate from the Harper government’s more commendable but still unsatisfactory status as a mouse that roars, to some level…
‘Fear the Worst’ Is Watchword
After Waffling on Ukraine
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 23, 2014
After ducking the subject for two weeks and grasping at improbable straws, I bow to the inevitable and return to the Ukraine crisis. Everyone with the slightest insight into Eastern European or Russian history saw this problem coming. No full-blooded…
America Is Checkmated
In the Middle East War
After U-Turn on Syria
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 20, 2014
For those hoping to ignore the Middle East during Easter and Passover, I am the Grinch who will steal the holiday. Approximately 140,000 people have died in the three years of the horrible imbroglio in Syria. Russia, despite its weakness and the moral…
Herbert Raccoon Turns Out
To Be Henrietta the Mother
In a Tale of Life’s Triumph
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 17, 2014
While casting about to find something to write about apart from another lamentation over the weakness of most Western political leadership, the collapse of fiscal integrity in all but a few countries, the charade of Iranian nuclear discussions, and…
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 10, 2014
It was an honour to give the address at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Sir Winston Churchill Society in Edmonton last week, and it gave me the occasion in preparing my remarks to reassess what it is about Winston Churchill that makes him such a…
Crisis in Ukraine Sounds
A Wake-Up Call
For Focused Foreign Policy
By CONRAD BLACK
March 13, 2014
It is probably too late for this administration, but surely there is a reawakening in the foreign-policy community of the United States about the need for some sort of focused strategic thinking and planning, and not just the random, feckless pursuit…
Israel Emerges in Clearer Light
In Wake of the Crisis in Ukraine
By CONRAD BLACK
March 12, 2014
In the turmoil of the autumn of the Arab Spring and in the light of the Ukraine Crisis, a relatively unnoticed aspect has been the decline of the confected and orchestrated pandemonium about Israel. A blog that happened onto my screen last week…
By SETH LIPSKY
March 9, 2014
President Obama will meet a week hence with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Israel’s premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, says he is prepared to make a “historic peace.” The White House reckons his choice is limited. “What is his long-term answer…
True Clash of Civilizations
Is Coming Into Focus
In Violence in Ukraine
By CONRAD BLACK
February 22, 2014
The dramatic violence in Ukraine represents a seismic shift between the West and Eastern Europe: a true clash between civilizations. Ukraine has never been a homogeneous country; it was born of an uneasy congeries of Mongols, Lithuanians, and Poles in…
As Anti-Semitism Waxes
Throughout Europe,
Spain Makes Historic Move
By MICHAEL FREUND
February 20, 2014
Somewhere, deep in the bowels of hell, Spanish King Ferdinand and his wife Queen Isabella are most assuredly burning with rage. Over five centuries after the wicked monarchs cruelly expelled the country's Jews in 1492, Spain now finds itself clamoring…
Investors Beware: Emerging Markets Taking a Left Turn, Endangering the BRIC Model
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW
January 27, 2014
There’s a new and cynical perception among international investors that Brazil is becoming Argentina and Argentina is becoming Venezuela. These investors are starting to boycott all the so-called emerging markets, since nearly all them are moving to…
Canada, Breaking With U.S.,
Emerges as Staunchest Ally
Of the State of Israel
By CONRAD BLACK
January 25, 2014
Prime Minister Harper’s address to the Israeli Knesset this week was one of the greatest speeches ever delivered by a Canadian leader, ranking (in content if not delivery, though that was quite adequate) with Sir John Macdonald’s defense of his…
‘Merger of the Century,’ Combining America, Canada, Emerges as Quixotic Cause
By CONRAD BLACK
January 18, 2014
My relations with my National Post colleague Diane Francis have had their ups and downs over three decades or so. We have gotten over some rough patches, including a period of a couple of years when her chief public conversational gambit seemed to be…
German Aide, in Demarche at Sharon Funeral, Echoes Board Game From Nazi Era
By MICHAEL FREUND
January 17, 2014
With an impeccable sense of timing, the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, arrived in Israel earlier this week, attended the funeral of Ariel Sharon, and then proceeded to browbeat Israel in public. Speaking with reporters, Herr…
Western Leaders Abdicate
Vast Field by Failing
To Defend Christianity
By CONRAD BLACK
January 9, 2014
For many years I have been writing, here and elsewhere, until I have thought that I must be blue in the face, that the West should cease to concede the religious high ground to our militant Muslim assailants. It is routine, and rarely contradicted by…
By SETH LIPSKY
January 9, 2014
News that al Qaeda is flying its flag over Fallujah this week certainly takes me back — not to Iraq, but to Vietnam. I’ve been making this point for years now, but never as well as it was made in Megyn Kelly’s interview Tuesday with Rep. Duncan Hunter…
Surely Frau Merkel Protests Too Much in Comparing the NSA to the East German Stasi
By SETH LIPSKY
December 23, 2013
It’s not my usual practice to crank out copy defending President Obama, but I don’t know what else to do in the face of the report in The Guardian that Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel compared the snooping practices of the United States with those…
Quote of the Day:
Kerry in the Storm
December 17, 2013
There was a ghoulish creepiness to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Israel last week. Here we were, beset by the greatest winter storm in a hundred years. All roads to Jerusalem were sealed off. Tens of thousands of Jerusalemites and…
Obama’s Handshake With Castro Recalls an Apology by Netanyahu
By SETH LIPSKY
December 12, 2013
“Nauseating” is the word that was used by Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to describe the spectacle of the President of the United States shaking hands with the Cuban communist Raul Castro. It happened at the funeral of Nelson Mandela and the…
How Mandela Managed To Tower Over a Continent
By CONRAD BLACK
December 12, 2013
Nelson Mandela was born into the Thembu faction of the Xhosa, the tribal equivalent of the royal family, which enabled him to receive a good education, although he was suspended from school for boycotting the food and became a lawyer only after…
Was America Really Against Mandela?
By SETH LIPSKY,
December 9, 2013
One of the treasures in my study is a letter from Menachem Begin. He wrote on the letterhead of the prime minister of Israel to thank me for sending the published copy of an interview two colleagues and I had conducted with him in July 1982 at…
Deal With Iran Could Serve as Bridge to a More Purposeful Administration at Washington
By CONRAD BLACK,
November 27, 2013
Despite its obvious weaknesses, and undaunted by the usual hyperbole of the Obama administration and its bearers, beaters, and apologists, led by John (“unbelievably small”) Kerry, I think the Geneva agreement over the Iranian nuclear program is…
By SETH LIPSKY,
November 24, 2013
“Never again” was the statement Menachem Begin made after sending a wave of F-16s against Iraq’s nuclear reactor. “There won’t be another Holocaust in history. Never again.” No such language could have been used by President Obama last night in…
Pope Francis Confounds a Journalistic Rat, Unleashed in the Atheistic Press
By CONRAD BLACK,
October 23, 2013
A few weeks ago, there was a brief flurry of mindless enthusiasm in the Guardian, one of the Western world’s most pathologically biased atheist, socialistic, and anti-American newspapers, over the notion that Pope Francis was abandoning the…
How a Terror Attack Against Our Marines — 30 Years Ago This Week — Reverberated Down the Decades
By WARREN KOZAK
October 21, 2013
When suicide bombers strike, the shadowy men who dispatch their charges then step back to gauge the response. Thirty years ago Wednesday, after one of the costliest acts of terror ever committed against America, Washington sent out the worst possible…
Israel, Leftist Critics to the Contrary, Discovers a Lot of Thriving Friendships
By MICHAEL FREUND,
October 14, 2013
For a country often portrayed as isolated and alone in the international arena, Israel sure does seem to have a lot of thriving friendships. Notwithstanding efforts by the press and the Left to paint a picture of the Jewish state as solitary and…
War of Words Enters New Round on the West Front
By CONRAD BLACK,
October 9, 2013
It is a painful but implacable duty to return to the dismaying subject of Diana West’s book, “American Betrayal,” about which she has written, in the last few days, “The war of words is over.” Her authority for this triumphalist expression of relief…
Revisionist View of Munich, Launched in Aid of Obama, Fails the Test of History
By CONRAD BLACK,
October 3, 2013
Historical revisionism is always in season and is generally a useful, or at least diverting, activity. But Nick Baumann’s effort, in Slate last week, to resuscitate the strategic reputation of Neville Chamberlain (British prime minister, 1937–40), on…
Canadian Exceptionalism Starts To Come Into Focus As America Begins To Falter
By CONRAD BLACK,
September 28, 2013
An eminent American industrialist who is an old friend, a proud veteran of the U.S. Navy, a patriotic but very reasonable and moderate citizen and a respecter of all other serious nationalities (including Canada), visited me last week and volunteered…
Vladimir Putin Is Bucking
To Join Barack Obama,
Jimmy Carter, Albert Gore
And Win Nobel Peace Prize
By CONRAD BLACK,
September 18, 2013
Little is left to be written about the discordant integration of reality television and “The Gong Show” that President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry, and their collaborators produced the past three weeks over Syria. Like an unpredictably bouncing…
Israel Awaits an Apology From Architects of Accord Struck in 1993 at Oslo
By MICHAEL FREUND,
September 12, 2013
Twenty years ago this week, Israel committed one of the greatest strategic blunders in its modern history, one that is still casting a long and painful shadow over the entire Middle East. Ignoring military intelligence, moral principles, and basic…
Collapse of American Influence Recalls Disintegration of Soviet Union, Fall of France
By CONRAD BLACK,
September 7, 2013
Not since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, and prior to that the fall of France in 1940, has there been so swift an erosion of the world influence of a Great Power as we are witnessing with the United States. The Soviet Union crumbled…
Agony Lies Ahead as Obama Abdicates as Commander-in-Chief
By CONRAD BLACK,
September 3, 2013
As the United States contemplates military action against Syria, it must realize that it can no longer enter into and conduct wars in the way it has done since Korea. Vietnam was not really properly authorized or explained. It was also mismanaged, in…
U.N. Secretary General Gets Caught in Flip Flop Over Israel
By BENNY AVNI,
August 19, 2013
Yes and no. Those are Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s answers to a twice-asked question: Does the United Nations discriminate against Israel? Yes, Mr. Ban admitted Friday during a meeting with Israeli students in Jerusalem. No, he told me today during…
As Egyptian Churches Are Put To the Torch, Obama’s Reputation Goes Up in Flames
By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM,
August 18, 2013
As church after church is put to the torch in Egypt by members of the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, one of the things that is going up in flames is the reputation of President Obama. In the past 48 hours alone, some 57 Egyptian churches have been…
America’s Retreat Becomes a Fiasco in Russia as Well as Egypt
By CONRAD BLACK,
August 10, 2013
The events of the last week prompt me to write a sequel to last week’s column about the general withdrawal of the United States from world affairs. First, I retract my apology for having written that the Bust of Sir Winston Churchill in the Oval…
America’s Alliance With Egypt Is on Verge of Collapse
By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM,
August 8, 2013
America’s intricate alliance with Egypt, woven over four decades, is standing on the verge of collapse over the failure of the Obama administration to comprehend the revolution that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood from power in Cairo. In a…
With Three Kings in View, The Monarchy Thrives, and It’s the People Who Need Salvation
By CONRAD BLACK,
July 27, 2013
Nothing could be more natural than the celebrations that have followed the birth of a healthy baby boy to the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William. But even before the birth, the level of international interest in this relatively routine event had…
As Washington Dithers, Arabs Rally To Egypt’s Revolt Against Political Islam
By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM,
July 16, 2013
Arabs are flocking to support Egypt’s upheaval against political Islam. In the past ten days alone Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates pledged $12 billion in cash, fuel, food, wheat, interest-free loans, and gifts. Vast shipments of…
Egypt Could Divorce Palestinian Arabs in Wake of Second Revolution
By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM,
July 12, 2013
After evicting the Muslim Brotherhood from power, the second Egyptian revolution is rallying for what could be an historic act — divorce from all things Palestinian. A number of influential voices are now calling for an expulsion of Palestinians from…
Disillusionment — Swift and Provident — Emerges as the Force That Felled Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
By CONRAD BLACK,
July 11, 2013
There is too much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth about Egypt. Obviously bloodshed is regrettable but neither surprising in the circumstances nor likely to escalate or even continue. The Muslim Brotherhood is a vile organization; and Egypt…
Dissonance Emerges in American Policy on Handling Terror Suspects
By MICHAEL FREUND,
July 9, 2013
Six weeks ago, a remarkable scene played out at the National Defense University in Washington. In the middle of President Obama’s much-anticipated speech on US counterterrorism policy, a protester from a far-left group interrupted the commander in…
What Happens In Egypt Will Not Stay in Egypt
By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM,
July 8, 2013
What happens in Egypt does not stay in Egypt. The country described by Greek historian Herodotus and Napoleon Bonaparte as the “gift of the Nile” has just gone through its second revolution removing two presidents in two years. Hosni Mubarak was…
Energy Independence for U.S. Adds Up to Strategic ‘Game Changer’
By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM,
July 7, 2013
It’s not just independence in 1776 that American can celebrate this month. The United States can also celebrate the fact that it has crossed a critical line in its pursuit of energy independence: We’re there. “Energy self-sufficiency is now in sight,”…
By CONRAD BLACK,
July 4, 2013
[Editor’s note: The Sun has reached out to the biographer of Samuel Adams and will revert.] The last thing I would wish to do, as a Canadian and also as a British citizen, is dispute the worthiness of celebrating the Declaration of Independence on the…
Obama Loses His Chances on Foreign Policy With the Collapse of His Second Term
By CONRAD BLACK,
June 26, 2013
Several months ago in this space, on slight twinklings of accelerated economic growth, confirmation of the path to energy self-sufficiency, conciliatory noises to the Republicans, and (prayerfully hopeful) signs that the president’s irrational…
By CONRAD BLACK,
June 21, 2013
The belated, reluctant assistance of the United States to some of the anti-Assad forces in Syria has all the distinctive signs of a Great Power’s being dragged into a combat zone that were prefigured in Libya. There, President Obama uttered…
Moment of Truth Looms for Turkey, as Well as for Erdogan
By CONRAD BLACK,
June 13, 2013
It cannot be that I am the only one who is thoroughly consolable at seeing the Turkish premier, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reviled by thousands of his countrymen for brutality, hypocrisy, and primitivism. Of course, Turkey is an eminent nationality and has…
German Government Brands Goods Made in Factories That Are Owned by Jews
By MICHAEL FREUND,
June 10, 2013
In a throwback to its darkest past, the German government recently decided to back an initiative which singles out Jewish-owned businesses and targets them for detrimental treatment. Joining 13 other European Union members, Berlin has reportedly…
Sleep-Walking Into a Post-American World
By CONRAD BLACK,
June 5, 2013
The United States, viewed from outside, is almost sleepwalking into a post-American world, with practically no audible awareness that this is happening. It may be that the media and government of the country are now so completely in the hands of…
Benghazi Affair Falls Short of Impeachable Offense But Signals a Failed Foreign Policy
By CONRAD BLACK,
May 15, 2013
Two important points need to be made about the lamentable Benghazi affair. The first is that this is no time to start reaching for the self-firing, almost untargeted impeachment six-guns. Ever since Watergate, the joys of criminalizing policy…
Israel’s Raid on Syria Lights the Way for the West Amid a Fraternity of Silence
By CONRAD BLACK,
May 9, 2013
Once again, Israel has demonstrated a commendable sense of self-preservation, and shown the way forward on how to deal with the world’s principal current center of violence by its example and professional military execution. It has also highlighted…
Democracy, in the End, Will Defeat Those Who Would Destroy It
By CONRAD BLACK,
May 2, 2013
In an interview in the Wall Street Journal of April 27, eminent classicist and historian Donald Kagan suggested that democracy “has had its day.” Though apparently tossed off casually, this is a worrisome thought from a serious source. It is a…
Forces of Nonsense Advance In Face of an Enfeebled U.S.
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 25, 2013
The forces of nonsense appear to be taking over the world. As in olden time, Italy is entering its third month without a government, and it celebrated the milestone by reelecting Giorgio Napolitano, 87 — the same age as Queen Elizabeth II, now in her…
UN Aide, Behind Closed Doors, Likens Slaughter in Syria To Plight of Palestinians
By BENNY AVNI,
April 23, 2013
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations representative in Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, who has a long history of anti-Israel animosity, told the Security Council that the horrors suffered by civilians in Syria remind him of the plight of Palestinian Arabs…
As Thatcher Is Interred
Her Foes Are Scattered
By the Sword of Mourning
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 20, 2013
LONDON — As someone who frequented Margaret Thatcher and her inner circle at the height of her power and prestige — when, in the whole world, only John Paul II and perhaps Ronald Reagan were equivalent celebrities — I would like to draw a few lessons…
How Mrs. Thatcher Delivered a Pep Talk to a Visiting Editor
By R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr.,
April 10, 2013
On the occasion of Baroness Thatcher’s death there is widespread admiration and even applause for her premiership, but surely there ought to be gratitude too. After all, without her — and without President Reagan — the poor would be much poorer and…
Thatcher Ranks as One of the Greatest Leaders of Britain In a Thousand Years
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 9, 2013
The news of the death of Margaret Thatcher is not, at her age and in the condition that she has been in for some years, a great surprise or entirely sad. But in contemplation of the great career she had and the immense service she rendered the United…
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
April 8, 2013
Many profound and detailed admiration pieces will be written about Margaret Thatcher, and they’ll be much deeper than this one. But I want to get on record with my own esteem for Mrs. Thatcher, whose character, philosophy, and achievements made her…
Tentative Optimism Starts To Be Justified in Mideast
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 6, 2013
In the gradual, relatively orderly withdrawal of the United States from global positions it has rightly judged over-exposed, new regional balances of power, or at least correlations of forces, have been forming. This is really what has been afoot in…
Obama’s Middle East Tour Offers a Hopeful Sign
For His Second Term
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 4, 2013
President Obama distinguished himself in the Middle East. It is early, grasping at straws, and probably insane to make this point, but as of now, only ten weeks into it, Mr. Obama is the first president since James Monroe to be having a better second…
Controversial Jerusalem
Case Could Be Decided
Any Time By Key U.S. Court
By RICK RICHMAN,
March 31, 2013
Any week now the second most important federal court could hand down a decision in one of the most closely watched cases in the land — the one that centers on how our country refers to Jerusalem. The case is Zivotofsky v. Secretary of State, in which…
Under the Volcano: How the Charade of Cyprus Obscures Bigger Danger to Economy
By CONRAD BLACK,
March 23, 2013
An examination of the writing of a British 18th Century author such as Dr. Johnson, and a writer from 100 years later, such as Charles Dickens, reveals that there was no increase in that time in the cost of a loaf of bread or the rental of a simple…
Germany Emerges, After America and China, as the Powerful Third Postion in the New World Order
By CONRAD BLACK,
March 14, 2013
The disintegration of the Western Alliance was a predictable response to the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of a threat to the security of the entire democratic world. For most of the 20th century, first an imperialist and then a rabidly…
Francis Accedes to Papacy at a Time of Growing Importance of the Church
By CONRAD BLACK
March 14, 2013
Let us start from the premise that no one other than intimates of Pope Francis has any idea what the new pope is going to do. Let us further agree that 95% of the editorial outpourings on the subject at this early point, probably including this one…
Crisis in Church Puts Rome at a Turning Point as Benedict Retires
By CONRAD BLACK,
March 7, 2013
The benign and serene dignity with which Pope Benedict XVI retired from his office, pledged “obedience and cooperation” to his successor, urged the cardinal electors to behave as coherently as an “orchestra,” and departed for the “last phase of my…
Moment of Truth Awaits Europe Over Question of Hezbollah
By MICHAEL FREUND,
February 14, 2013
Next week could prove to be quite an illuminating one in the long and storied annals of European hypocrisy. For when European Union Foreign Ministers gather on February 18 to discuss a variety of pressing international concerns, they will be…
By CONRAD BLACK,
February 14, 2013
On awakening to consider what to write about in this space and learning that Pope Benedict XVI had retired, I first thought of what Bill Buckley would think it appropriate to write. Apart from his other claims to eminence, he always commanded a level…
Phony War Over Japanese Yen Masks Need for Supply-Side Measures in Land of Rising Sun
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
February 12, 2013
All this chatter about a so-called global currency war is utter nonsense. All that is happening is the Japanese are wisely taking steps to increase liquidity and depreciate their vastly overpriced yen. They are doing this in order to avoid deeper and…
Obama Visit To Jerusalem Will Be the Occasion for Demands For Concessions From Israel
By MICHAEL FREUND,
February 12, 2013
Even though Israel's new coalition government has yet to be formed, international pressure is already starting to mount on the Jewish state to make concessions to the Palestinians. At a press conference last week with Vice President Biden, President…
Britain’s Future Turns Dodgy After Years of Squandering Thatcher’s Legacy
By CONRAD BLACK,
February 7, 2013
The United Kingdom is rivaled by no other country as a continuous major power since the rise of the nation-state, but it is now slipping into a crisis of national purpose as serious as it passed through prior to the Thatcher years. By the late 1970s…
‘Gatekeepers’ Turns Out
To Echo Interviews
That Precipitated a Tragedy
By RICK RICHMAN,
February 3, 2013
“The Gatekeepers,” the leading candidate for this year’s Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, begins with ominous music. It informs viewers that Shin Bet is the secret Israeli agency dealing with terrorism. Then three sentences flash slowly across the…
By AVI SHAFRAN,
January 16, 2013
American politicians tainted by scandal and forced to resign their positions usually explain that they want “to spend more time with their families.” Issam al-Aryan, a top advisor to Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, who recently tendered his own…
Rand Paul, on His Visit to Israel, Makes a Sharp Contrast With Biden
By SETH LIPSKY,
January 15, 2013
What a contrast with Joseph Biden. On his 2010 trip to Israel, the vice president erupted in a bitter denunciation of the government in Jerusalem because of its settlement policies. But when Sen. Rand Paul, whom the Left likes to accuse of being the…
Huge Costs Confront Cubans Who Seek To Travel Under New ‘Migration Law’ Going Into Effect Today
By MARIA WERLAU,
January 14, 2013
Updates to Cuba’s “Migration Law” introduced to great fanfare last October, go into effect today. But, they are merely a bankrupt dictatorship’s latest scheme to fund its failed economy and confuse world public opinion with so-called “reforms. Soon…
By CONRAD BLACK,
January 12, 2013
The odds are that Iran will acquire a nuclear military capacity in the next year or 18 months. The subject has been bandied about for so long that the implications of such a step are now widely accepted with resignation — much as with North Korea…
Europe, Too, To Be Divided By a Common Language
By CONRAD BLACK,
January 10, 2013
The European Commission and the British government have agreed that the official language of the European Union will be English, rather than German, which was the other possibility. German is the primary language of more Europeans than any other…
Tipping Point at Hand as Israel Moves Toward an Indivisible Jerusalem
By MICHAEL FREUND,
December 20, 2012
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, much like any clash of civilizations, has a history rife with significant dates and anniversaries, many of which in retrospect proved to be decisive. From the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement to the 1929 Arab riots on…
Retreat by a Penny-Pinching America To Its Own Shores Is A Good Thing for Everyone
By CONRAD BLACK,
January 5, 2013
As the curtain fell on 2012, and America’s implacably inane “fiscal cliff” melodrama played out, all was symbolism and posturing. Following the last minute deal, the President led the nation in New Year’s revelry with a press conference that was a…
A Better Two-State Strategy Beckons for Israel
By CONRAD BLACK,
December 8, 2012
According to the CBC, 87% of Canadians approved the elevation of Palestine to observer status at the United Nations last week, and disapproved the stance of the Canadian government opposing this move. I assume that the CBC poll is reasonably…
By JEROLD AUERBACH,
November 27, 2012
Who won the Gaza war? According to the prevailing press narrative, besieged innocents in Gaza bravely withstood the withering weeklong Israeli rocket barrage until President Morsi mediated a cease-fire. End of story, except for the largely unnoticed…
History Will Change, As Israel’s Withdrawal From Gaza Emerges in a New Light
By MICHAEL FREUND,
November 22, 2012
Amid the extensive coverage of the latest flareup in Gaza, there is one critical issue that has been all but ignored by most of the mainstream press. For all the talk over the past few days regarding whether the IDF should return to Gaza, no one seems…
America’s Relative Position Slips Amid Gains by Nations It Did So Much To Help
Lost Tribe of Israel Will Return To Zion After Unanimous Vote By Government in Jerusalem
Jews, Christians Unite To Underwrite the Homecoming
By MICHAEL FREUND,
November 11, 2012
Israel’s government has passed a historic decision, one that paves the way for the return of a Lost Tribe of Israel to Zion. Resolution 5180, which on October 24 received unanimous ministerial approval, will allow 275 members of the Bnei Menashe…
Palestinian Arabs Set To Test Obama II With Demarche at United Nations
By BENNY AVNI,
November 8, 2012
“We hope that there will be a positive way of looking at this effort by the US administration,” the Palestinian Arab observer at the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told me, expressing a wish that America will favor a new Arab proposal for a General…
Nobel Prize Will Have To Change To Remain
A Distinct Honor
By CONRAD BLACK
October 23, 2012
As my good friend David Frum pointed out here recently, the award to the European Union of the Nobel Prize for Peace was not as mad as it seemed — at least, in theory. For thousands of years, Europe was the world’s principal theatre of war, as well as…
Plan Is Mulled To Give Jews a Place To Pray at Holiest Site — Temple Mount in Jerusalem
By MICHAEL FREUND,
October 17, 2012
A little more than a week ago, I ascended the Temple Mount together with a group of more than 50 Jews from Ra’anana’s Ohel Ari synagogue. All of us immersed in a mikva (ritual bath) prior to the trip, refrained from wearing leather shoes, and walked…
By SETH LIPSKY,
October 16, 2012
The death of Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, who succumbed to cancer Monday at the age of 89, is a moment to reflect on one of the great tragedies of the late 20th century. It would be inaccurate to blame the erstwhile king, even indirectly, for the…
By CONRAD BLACK,
October 15, 2012
Following the request of my editor in here Canada — not any compulsion to unburden myself of sectarian views — I am dedicating this column to the subject of the Second Vatican Council, which was opened by Pope John XXIII on Oct. 11, 1962, 50 years ago…
‘God Bless America, Again,’
As Yanks Go To the Polls
By CONRAD BLACK,
November 6, 2012
It is desperately difficult to think of anything new to write about the election, but equally difficult to write about anything else in this space this week. A recitation of what most readers will consider the obvious will be the mouse that emerges…
How Canada Has Eclipsed America In the Obama Years
By CONRAD BLACK,
September 22, 2012
As many commentators have opined, Canadians should not become smug because Canada has fared relatively well in the Great Recession since 2008. Canada has been as fortunate as it has been wise, above all in having the United States, rather than more…
Romney Appears AWOL on Afghanistan, as the Eastwood Doctrine Goes Unanswered
By IRA STOLL,
September 3, 2012
What does the Republican Party or its presidential nominee think about the war in Afghanistan? Good luck figuring it out from the party’s recent convention, which offered conflicting views. At the convention’s Thursday night climax, actor Clint…
A Farewell To Monroe, As America Steps Back and Turns Its Attention To Home
By CONRAD BLACK,
August 23, 2012
Despite my conviction that the Obama administration has been generally unsuccessful, I have some respect for its apparent judgment that the United States should step back from its previous level of involvement all over the world. It does appear that…
Feisty Feline Infatuates the Lord of the Manor
By CONRAD BLACK,
August 18, 2012
A great many strange and memorable things have happened at our Toronto house over the years I have lived in it, and we have entertained princes and rogues. But there has not been a more gripping and affecting drama than has occurred here over the last…
By MICHAEL FREUND,
August 16, 2012
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's selection of Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate earlier this week has shaken up the race for the White House. With his youthful demeanor, impressive command of policy, and affable personality…
Olympic Games Are Triumph of Britain, for All Its Setbacks a Serious Country Still
By CONRAD BLACK,
August 12, 2012
My first observation on these Olympics: The Canadians were robbed in their women’s soccer match, and the treatment of that team has been a disgrace. This, and the fiasco with the badminton players who threw matches to get an easier play-off run, are…
U.S. Now Facing Difficulties Dissenting Should Israel Strike A-Bomb Program at Iran
By CONRAD BLACK,
August 9, 2012
The recent visits of Republican presidential candidate W. M. Romney (I am still having a problem calling a possible president Mitt; Millard Fillmore almost creates a precedent for Willard M. Romney) and defense secretary Leon Panetta to the Middle…
How Serbia Could Emerge as a Bridge
By MICHAEL FREUND,
August 9, 2012
Imagine a country with a long and proud history that is regularly vilified by the international press. It faces mounting pressure to concede its ancient heartland and turn its back on a central part of its cultural and spiritual heritage. Surrounded…
Off Camera in Jerusalem, Romney Made a Historic First, Affecting His Hosts
By MICHAEL FREUND,
August 2, 2012
Surrounded by platters of fresh fruit, stacks of low-fat yogurt and piles of mediocre pancakes, I took my seat Monday at the breakfast roundtable in Jerusalem with presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. The event, which was facilitated by Republicans…
Olympics Romney Will Visit at London Is a Triumph of the Capitalism of Which He Is a Tribune
By IRA STOLL,
July 23, 2012
As a New Yorker whose home city’s bid to host the Olympics that will begin this week was defeated, I'm tempted to greet the arrival of the Olympic flame in London with at least a touch of derision. The whole enterprise is spoiled by biased…
UN, Amid Crisis in Syria and Egypt, Launches a Series of Actions Against Israel
By MICHAEL FREUND,
July 22, 2012
In recent weeks the United Nations has gone on the warpath against Israel, defaming the Jewish state and providing aid and comfort to its enemies. Indeed, in a series of moves, the world body has sent the Jewish state a clear and unmistakable message…
Thinking Through the Assassinations at Syria
By CONRAD BLACK,
July 21, 2012
The assassination on Wednesday of the Syrian defence and deputy defence ministers (the latter of whom was President Bashar Assad’s brother-in-law) and a senior general, raises interesting questions, and not just about the life expectancy of the…
By JEROLD AUERBACH,
July 11, 2012
With startling clarity an Israeli legal commission, chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Edmund Levy, has declared: “According to international law, Israelis have the legal right to settle in Judea and Samaria.” Challenging settlement critics…
By CONRAD BLACK,
July 4, 2012
It is an ever-growing matter of suspense how long it will take before there is general recognition of the fact that, although the spread of democracy is — next to its irreplaceable contribution to victory in World War II and the Cold War — America’s…
By SHMULEY BOTEACH,
July 1, 2012
Which is sadder I'm not sure — that Yitzhak Shamir died or that people didn't really know that he was still alive. For Shamir certainly was Israel's least appreciated Prime Minister amid presiding over some of the state’s greatest achievements. And…
Egyptian Confidence Trick Signals a Chance To Rewind America’s Foreign Policy
By CONRAD BLACK,
June 28, 2012
There cannot possibly be anyone left of sound mind who imagines that the Arab Spring was anything more than seismic shifts in various countries to remove unpopular despots; have tribal, sectarian, or ideological bloodletting of different levels of…
Victory of Islamist in Egypt Means Peace Treaty With Israel Is Dying
By MICHAEL FREUND,
June 27, 2012
The Middle East took a sharp turn for the worse this week with the accession to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In what was perhaps the worst possible outcome for Israel and the West, Mohamed Morsy, the Brotherhood’s presidential candidate…
Disdain Greets U.S. Shilly-Shallying on Syria
Kissinger Would Have Done Better Were He at State
By CONRAD BLACK,
June 21, 2012
It pains me to take issue in any degree with my very esteemed friend Henry Kissinger, with whose foreign-policy views I have almost always agreed, but I think some degree of intervention in Syria is justified. Dr. Kissinger wrote otherwise in…
By MICHAEL FREUND,
June 21, 2012
The announcement on Tuesday that a deal had been reached between the government and the residents of Beit El's Ulpana neighborhood will hopefully bring a peaceful end to an otherwise painful episode. After months of wrangling, the two sides reached an…
Germany Finds Its Hour, as Fate of World Economy Rests on Berlin, Washington
By CONRAD BLACK,
June 9, 2012
It is all coming down, in the Western economy, as it should, to Germany and the United States. As the American Revolution began in 1775, Prussia, the core of modern Germany, had just entered the ranks of the Great Powers under Frederick the Great. At…
If Romney Wins, America and Germany Would Be Poised To Lead the West to Better Days
By CONRAD BLACK,
June 7, 2012
Harold Wilson, in one of democracy’s anomalies, served as long as British prime minister as Winston Churchill and Viscount Palmerston — and longer than the elder Pitt, Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, Benjamin Disraeli, and David Lloyd George, who…
Showdown Brews Between Obama, Congress Over Accuracy of Count of Palestinian Arab Refugees
Question Could Prove Explosive
By JEROLD AUERBACH,
June 5, 2012
A showdown is brewing in Washington over how the number of Palestinian Arab refugees is being counted, and it could be explosive. This is because numerical accuracy would undermine claims by the Palestinians that before long, if their demands are not…
Spectacle of Unsuccessful Politicians at G-8 Brings Summiteering To a Low
By CONRAD BLACK,
May 22, 2012
The spectacle of the G-8 leaders in the bucolic verdure of Camp David, as they were strutting in their leisure attire capped by prudent sweaters against any non-fiscal Catoctin chill for photo-ops for those at home, could momentarily disguise what an…
Sarkozy Shows That Voters Punish Conservatives Who Fail To Deliver
By IRA STOLL,
May 7, 2012
Six takeaway lessons for Americans from socialist candidate Francois Hollande’s victory in Sunday’s election in France: Growth beats austerity. “Austerity isn’t inevitable. My mission now is to give European construction a growth dimension,” Mr…
Of Fatherhood and War: Benzion Netanyahu Doubted His Son Was Tough Enough To Lead the Jewish State
By SETH LIPSKY,
May 2, 2012
'Can you imagine what it must have been like having him for a father?" asked one of the writers for the Jewish Forward newspaper after an editorial dinner with Benzion Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu's son, Benjamin, had recently been elected prime minister…
How Benzion Netanyahu Helped Put in the U.N. Charter A Clause That Could Yet Save the Jewish State
By JEROLD AUERBACH,
May 2, 2012
Benzion Netanyahu, who died Monday in Jerusalem at the age of 102, has been widely scrutinzed this week for his myriad contributions to the history of Zionism in Israel and the United States. Yet arguably the most important one has been overlooked…
Fifth Republic in France Teeters in Spectacle of an Astonishing Election
By CONRAD BLACK,
April 21, 2012
The simultaneous election campaigns in France and the United States furnish an astonishing spectacle of the limits and hazards of democratic government. The French Fifth Republic, founded by Charles de Gaulle in 1958, is the most successful state in…
House at Hebron Becomes a Case of Dickensian, Even Biblical, Proportions
By JEROLD AUERBACH,
April 4, 2012
In the ancient city of Hebron, twenty miles south of Jerusalem, the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people are buried. When Sarah died, according to the biblical narrative, Abraham purchased the cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite…
Pope’s Visit To Cuba Stirs Hope As Palsy of the Castro Regime Grows More Aggravated
By CONRAD BLACK,
March 24, 2012
In regard to the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Cuba next week, the official version of events from the Vatican and from the cardinal in Havana, Jaime Ortega y Alamino, is one of uplift and celebration of the Church's progress since the visit of Pope…
Will America Abdicate Its Status as a Great Power?
By CONRAD BLACK,
March 8, 2012
The visits to Washington of the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, and, a day later, Prime Minister Netanyahu bring the question of the Iranian nuclear program to a head at last. President Obama came into office encumbered with the sophomoric idea that…
Nephew of Yasser Arafat Surfaces as Aide to Kofi Annan on Road to Damascus
By BENNY AVNI,
March 6, 2012
UNITED NATIONS — Yasser Arafat’s nephew, Nasser Al-Kidwa, will accompany former Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is scheduled to visit Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus this weekend. Mr. Al-Kidwa’s visit will renew a complex history of relationship between…
America Takes Canada for Granted at Its Peril
By CONRAD BLACK,
March 3, 2012
The estimable American military writer Max Boot, a guerrilla-war expert associated with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, wrote in Commentary magazine last month that Canada is a country that most Americans consider a “dull but slavishly…
Farewell To an American ‘Princess’ Murdered in Syria
By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM,
February 23, 2012
This is a personal tribute to a dear friend and highly respected colleague, Marie Colvin, the Middle East correspondent whose eye patch photos are all over the front pages today after being murdered by the Syrian regime yesterday at Homs. Marie lost…
West Falters in Defense of Christians, Who Are Being Persecuted in 131 Countries
Failure Now Resting Heavily on Would Be Protectors
By CONRAD BLACK,
February 8, 2012
Perhaps the gravest under-publicized atrocity in the world is the persecution of Christians. A comprehensive Pew Forum study last year found that Christians are persecuted in 131 countries containing 70% of the world’s population, out of 197 countries…
A Brilliant Reign Nears Its Diamond Jubilee
By CONRAD BLACK,
February 4, 2012
It does not seem like 60 years ago that my late brother said to our half-asleep parents as we departed early for school: “There was a bug in my cereal, and by the way, the King is dead.” A much admired man, only 56, there were some comparisons between…
How the Mufti of Jerusalem Once Impacted America’s Presidential Election — and Could Do So Again
By RAFAEL MEDOFF,
February 1, 2012
WASHINGTON — A Palestinian mufti has called for violence against Jews, Prime Minister Netanyahu is demanding Palestinian leaders disavow him, and America's presidential race could be affected. That could be the lead sentence of a news report from last…
Mothers Against Guns
Rally in New York City,
Start at Gaynor Statue
By SETH LIPSKY,
June 14, 2014
What a spot from which to start an anti-gun rally — the statue of Mayor William Gaynor. He is the only mayor in the history of the city to have been shot. It was from in front of the bust of Gaynor that the second annual march for stricter gun…
Waltons Derided by N.Y. Times
As Its Own School Charity Fails
By IRA STOLL,
April 29, 2014
Not since Matt Taibbi’s 2009 Rolling Stone-Goldman Sachs “vampire squid” reference has a journalistic cephalopod analogy touched such a nerve. I am speaking of this past weekend’s front-page news article in the New York Times — ostensibly, at least…
NY Wage Bill Would Double
Federal Minimum Pay
For Employers Out of Favor
By IRA STOLL,
April 21, 2014
The latest innovation in left-wing political economics is legislation that would raise the minimum wage in New York State to $15 an hour — but only for a select group of employers unlucky enough to be targeted by politicians. The bill’s champion, New…
Charter Schools Emerge
As Proof of the Strategy
Of Putting a Priority
On Student Achievement
By JAMES PIERESON,
March 27, 2014
By now, everyone following the debate over charter schools in New York has been made aware of just how much money is flowing into these institutions. The conspiracy theories are rampant. WNYC radio ran a story called: “Who Is Behind the Pro-Charter…
Mr. X Returns — And Makes a Confession
By MR. X
February 24, 2014
How did I suddenly become the enemy? I’ve never committed a crime. I pay my taxes. I’m a responsible husband and father. I even give up my seat on the bus if an elderly or pregnant woman — excuse me, person — gets on. That doesn’t make me a saint, I…
De Blasio’s Dilemma: Too Many Rich People or Too Many Poor People?
By LIZ PEEK
November 11, 2013
Where exactly does Bill de Blasio want to take New York? During the campaign, Mr. de Blasio focused on income inequality – but he seems much more concerned about New York having too many rich people (“nearly 400,000 millionaires!”) than too many poor…
Political ‘Specter’ Haunts Appeal of Stop-and-Frisk Case, Federal Judges Warn
By SETH LIPSKY,
October 30, 2013
If Bill de Blasio were really smart — and he may turn out to be — he’d upend the stop, question and frisk case by going into federal court with a request to switch sides. He’d tell the court he can handle the NYPD and has no interest in having it run…
DeBlasio’s New Twist on Columbus Bodes Ill for Group Politics Here
By ANDREW WOLF,
October 19, 2013
Columbus Day turned out to be an illuminating moment for those of us watching the man who is all but certain to be new York’s next mayor, William DeBlasio. He chose the holiday to waffle on the great Italian navigator, a hero to many…
By LIZ PEEK,
October 15, 2013
Times are bleak for Giants-loving Republican New Yorkers. OK, there are only about 16 of us that meet that description, but we have feelings, too. Joe Lhota’s campaign for New York City Mayor is not only failing to get off the ground, it appears to be…
Move by Giuliani, Mukasey in Policing Case Underscores Alarm at Slowness of City
By SETH LIPSKY,
October 3, 2013
What an astonishing move by Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Mukasey in asking a federal appeals court to admit them as friends of the court on the side of the city in the stop, question and frisk case. The filing, made quietly Monday, comes amid growing…
Giuliani, Mukasey Enter Case Over Stop, Question, and Frisk, Warn of Risk To Public Safety
By JOHN V. BENNETT,
October 2, 2013
Citing the risk to public safety posed by a federal judge’s ruling against New York’s stop, question, and frisk policing program, the city’s former mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, and a former U.S. attorney general, Michael Mukasey, are calling on an…
Voters May Yet Come To Regret DeBlasio and Move to Lhota, Suggests Our Man in the Bronx
By ANDREW WOLF,
September 18, 2013
When it comes to electing the chief executive of the city, New Yorkers are prone to abandon their party preferences. It has been 24 years since voters have selected a Democrat as mayor. This dearth of Democrats has led to something of a municipal…
Obama and de Blasio, Separated at Birth, Or So It Seems as Similarities Come Into Focus
By IRA STOLL,
September 9, 2013
The man New York Democrats seemed poised to choose this week as their candidate for mayor, Bill de Blasio, sure has a lot in common with President Obama. Both men were born in 1961. They both describe their fathers as alcoholics and say they were…
Libel Case Puts Spitzer on the Spot Over Bullying
By SETH LIPSKY,
August 8, 2013
If Eliot Spitzer wins the race for city comptroller, his first job may be defending himself in court. Last month a libel suit was quietly filed against him in a state court in Carmel by Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the biggest of the tycoons Spitzer…
Cuomo Tax Plan Draws Support From Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Strands Non-Favored New Yorkers
By IRA STOLL,
June 17, 2013
The chief executives of GE, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase are lining up behind a plan by the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, for what the governor calls “Tax-Free New York.” Ordinary New York taxpayers, watch out. The whole episode is…
How History Beckons For Anthony Weiner To Run for Mayor in New York
By ANDREW WOLF,
May 16, 2013
In 1977, I was publishing a small newspaper in the Bronx, the Parkway News. There was a mayoral candidate who wasn’t being taken seriously. He was destined to become a footnote in a field dominated by such names as Bella Abzug, Herman Badillo…
By SETH LIPSKY,
March 14, 2013
Can we draft Justice Milton Tingling, the state judge who just issued a permanent injunction against the Bloomberg ban on large sized sugary soft drinks, for mayor? Yes, Tingling would probably be horrified at the thought. But the best way to think of…
Christine Quinn, in Vow To Block Wal-Mart, Veers Away From Bloomberg, Business
By IRA STOLL,
March 11, 2013
In a city where the unemployment rate is 9.1%, above both the statewide and national average, you’d think that mayoral candidates would be competing to attract businesses and jobs. And in a city where the cost of living is so high that the city pays…
How Ed Koch Leapt to the Head of the Field and Won The Heart of New York
By ANDREW WOLF,
February 4, 2013
Ed Koch I first encountered in 1973, when he was a member of Congress. I had, of course, heard of him, but hadn’t met him. I was hanging around at the time with a group of “reform” politicians with roots in Greenwich Village. Koch was famous for…
Mayor Koch, Self-Proclaimed ‘Liberal With Sanity’ Who Led New York From Fiscal Crisis, Is Dead at 88
By BENJAMIN SMITH,
February 1, 2013
Edward Irving Koch, the mayor who steered New York City out of a desperate fiscal crisis and forged a new, middle class governing coalition, died after being admitted to New York-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital this week, his spokesman told the…
Will Pro-Life March Come to New York?
By SETH LIPSKY,
January 26, 2013
Four days after President Obama was sworn in for his second term, another large crowd hit Washington — pro-lifers who came by the busload to mark the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, which overturned two centuries of…
Tipping Point Is Neared as New York Faces Threat of Strike by School Bus Drivers
By IRA STOLL,
January 14, 2013
America is approaching the point where the government employee unions are so powerful that even the liberals think it’s getting out of control. It used to be that taking on public-sector unions was the job of conservative Republicans like President…
How Macchiarola Set a Standard for Schools — Without Mistaking
Himself for God
By ANDREW WOLF,
December 19, 2012
Frank Macchiarola, who passed away this week at the age of 71, is remembered for his successful five-year tenure as Chancellor of the New York City public schools, the yardstick by which his successors will be measured in the future. That tenure…
There May Not Be a Free Lunch, But That Was Some Dinner of the Ayn Rand Institute
By GARY SHAPIRO,
September 21, 2012
Vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan would have felt right at home yesterday here in Manhattan, where in the ballroom atop the St. Regis hotel, the Ayn Rand Institute had a dinner there last evening and where John A. Allison, incoming chief executive…
How Churchill Mobilized the English Language
By GARY SHAPIRO,
June 12, 2012
No line better summed up Winston Churchill’s eloquence than one delivered by President Kennedy, upon granting Churchill honorary American citizenship in 1963. “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle,” said the President, quoting…
Falling Traffic Congrestion a Sympton of Weak Economy
By ANDREW WOLF,
May 23, 2012
Urban traffic congestion is on the way down in most cities, according to a study recently released by a Washington State firm, INRIX. The data is based on monitoring GPS devices, maybe even yours, and reveals one interesting trend. If the economy of…
Just in Time for Opening Day, a New Season of Great Writing
By RICK RICHMAN,
April 11, 2012
Friday is Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, the start of a Spring ritual that brings with it a new season of great baseball writing – books and essays that seem to capture insights into life almost as effortlessly as a Willie Mays catch, even though (or perhaps because) they are about what appears simply a game.
Bloomberg USA: New York City Will Sue Sponsors of Legal Immigrants Who End Up on the Dole
By Staff Reporter of the Sun
March 31, 2012
NEW YORK — Mayor Bloomberg, in a startling departure from his pro-immigration stance, is testing a new program designed to chase down sponsors of legal immigrants who end up on certain kinds of public assistance, and the city intends to make the…
Top New York Labor Leader Moves To Long Island, Saves $30,000 in City Income Taxes
By IRA STOLL,
March 19, 2012
One of America’s most powerful labor leaders, teachers union president Randi Weingarten, has quietly moved out of New York City, a decision that saved her from paying more than $30,000 in city income taxes that she would have owed if she had stayed…
Turnaround Now Possible in the Bronx as Its President Comes Into His Own
By ANDREW WOLF,
January 19, 2012
This his has been a good month for the president of the Bronx, Ruben Diaz, Jr. When Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal for a shopping mall in the Kingsbridge Armory was defeated two years ago, largely due to Mr. Diaz’s opposition, he was widely demonized as a…
Weak Results on National Tests Are a Wake-Up Call for Parents in New York
By ANDREW WOLF,
November 14, 2011
New York State parents, teachers and students have gotten during the past few weeks a couple of wake-up calls about the quality of education here in the Empire State . Weak results on two nationally administered tests confirmed the worst fears of…
Shakespeare, Proust Join the Protests
By GARY SHAPIRO,
October 27, 2011
Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Emma Goldman are not on Wall Street, but they are there in spirit. Activists at the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York have set up what they call “The People’s Library,” where books can be borrowed and read…
Bloomberg’s Ambition To Be Treasury Secretary Seen Behind His Backing of Obama’s Jobs Plan
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW,
September 17, 2011
Mayor Bloomberg, in a radio interview on Friday, warned that high unemployment could lead to widespread rioting. That’s right. He actually said that. At a time when European cities have suffered massively from hooliganism, and at a time when U.S…
Religious New Yorkers at Risk of Government Action Under Same-Sex Marriage Law, Professors Warn
By Special to the Sun
June 15, 2011
NEW YORK — As the question of same-gender marriage in New York goes down to the wire at Albany, experts on the legal impact of the changes being sought are warning that religious exemptions in Governor Cuomo’s bill have fallen far short of what the…
Fool’s Errand? Tax Cap Activists Due Today To Test the Legislators at Albany
By DAVID PIETRUSZA,
May 9, 2011
The battle to gain a cap on taxes on property will come to Albany this afternoon, when activists are due to meet with the chiefs-of staff of the state’s most prominent Democrats — and aspire to meet with Governor Cuomo and Speaker Sheldon Silver…
Startling Study in Belgium Suggests Rate of Heart Disease Decreases With More Salt in Diet
Should Mayor Bloomberg Move To Brussels?
By ANDREW WOLF,
May 6, 2011
Maybe Mayor Bloomberg should move to Belgium. A startling study was just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It disputes the conventional wisdom that too much salt in the diet leads to all sorts of negative health…
Formal Search Needed for New York Schools Chancellor
By ANDREW WOLF,
April 10, 2011
From all we’ve seen, Dennis Walcott, Mayor Bloomberg’s choice as the city’s new schools chancellor is a fine fellow, a loyal deputy to the mayor, and a knowledgeable public servant. Loyalty and knowledge are admirable qualities, but are they all that…
The First Call Bloomberg’s New School’s Chief Needs to Make
By HENRY STERN,
April 7, 2011
We were surprised today to learn that Mayor Bloomberg dismissed his hand-picked Schools Chancellor, Cathie Black, after 97 infelicitous days as chief of New York City's school system. The mayor did not set a speed record, however, in dismissing a…
