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Political Commentary

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October 20, 2017

Why Girls In The Boy Scouts Feels Weird By Ted Rall

I'm not a traditionalist. Progress is good. The fact that we've always done something a certain way is no argument for continuing to do it the same way.   

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October 20, 2017

Is Liberalism a Dying Faith? By Patrick J. Buchanan

Asked to name the defining attributes of the America we wish to become, many liberals would answer that we must realize our manifest destiny since 1776, by becoming more equal, more diverse and more democratic -- and the model for mankind's future.

Equality, diversity, democracy -- this is the holy trinity of the post-Christian secular state at whose altars Liberal Man worships.

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October 20, 2017

Democrats Yelp as Trump Upholds Constitution By Michael Barone

Donald Trump is criticized, often justly, for misstatements of facts and failure to understand the details of public policy. But in two of his most recent controversial actions, he has taken stands upholding the rule of law and undoing the lawless behavior of his most recent predecessor.

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October 19, 2017

Underneath It All: Elections for the Virginia House of Delegates By Geoffrey Skelley

While November’s political spotlight will shine brightest on the gubernatorial contest at the top of the Virginia ticket between former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie (R) and Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D), there will also be many interesting races down-ballot in the Old Dominion on Election Day. Not only will there be elections for the commonwealth’s two other statewide offices — lieutenant governor and attorney general — but all 100 House of Delegates seats will also be up for grabs. The General Assembly’s lower house will probably look a little different after Nov. 7, but the question is, how different?

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October 18, 2017

A CNN Smear By John Stossel

Did you happen to catch CNN's latest smear?   

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October 18, 2017

Trump Takes Wrecking Ball to the Swamp That Is D.C. By Charles Hurt

There is the old adage that if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. This has always been because the swamp contains the nastiest reptilian creatures that will just as soon strike you in the back as look at you.

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October 18, 2017

Beware the Rape Allegation Bandwagon By Michelle Malkin

"#MeToo" is the social media meme of the moment. In a 24-hour period, the phrase was tweeted nearly a half million times and posted on Facebook 12 million times. Spearheaded by actress Alyssa Milano in the wake of Hollyweird's Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal, women have flooded social media with their own long-buried accounts of being pestered, groped or assaulted by rapacious male predators in the workplace.

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October 17, 2017

Is War With Iran Now Inevitable? By Patrick J. Buchanan

With his declaration Friday that the Iran nuclear deal is not in the national interest, President Donald Trump may have put us on the road to war with Iran.

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October 14, 2017

What Would The U.S. Look Like if We Built it from Scratch? By Ted Rall

Imagine that there was another revolution. And that nothing big had changed. Demographics, power dynamics, culture, our economic system and political values were pretty much the same as they are now. If we Americans rolled up our sleeves and reimagined our political system from scratch, if we wrote up a brand-new constitution for 2017, what would a brand-spanking-new United States Version 2.0 look like today?

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October 13, 2017

Is Trump the Heir to Reagan? By Patrick J. Buchanan

Three decades ago, as communications director in the White House, I set up an interview for Bill Rusher of National Review.

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October 13, 2017

Today's Turn-of-the-Century Problems By Michael Barone

Is America in a new Gilded Age? That's the contention of Republican political consultant Bruce Mehlman, and in a series of 35 slides, he makes a strong case.

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October 12, 2017

Virginia’s Gubernatorial Race: Where Things Stand With Less Than a Month to Go By Geoffrey Skelley

The November of the year following a presidential election is always relatively quiet on the electoral front, with only regularly-scheduled statewide races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia. With the Garden State’s contest looking like a safe Democratic pickup and Alabama’s special election for the U.S. Senate not happening until December, coverage of the competitive Virginia race seems to be accelerating as it enters the final month before Election Day. This is only natural: gubernatorial elections in the Old Dominion traditionally ramp up around Labor Day, and now that the election is less than four weeks away, the candidates are beginning to go all-in on television ads, which attracts more notice inside and outside of the commonwealth.

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October 11, 2017

Let Them Leave By John Stossel

The United States was born when the Founding Fathers seceded from England.    

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October 11, 2017

Obama Lied. My FOURTH Health Plan Died. By Michelle Malkin

Cue the funeral bagpipes. My fourth health insurance plan is dead.

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October 10, 2017

Kevin Hassett Spanks the Tax Policy Center By Lawrence Kudlow

President Trump's new chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Kevin Hassett, walked into the lion's den last week with his first official speech. He used the moment to pound the leftist Tax Policy Center. It was a wonderful sight.

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October 10, 2017

Trump Embraces the Culture War By Patrick J. Buchanan

To attend the Indianapolis Colts game where the number of the legendary Peyton Manning was to be retired, Vice President Mike Pence, a former governor of Indiana, flew back from Las Vegas.

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October 6, 2017

Hugh Hefner Said His Critics Were Prudes And Puritans By Ted Rall

No one has ever accused Ross Douthat of excessive astuteness. "Donald Trump isn't going to be the Republican nominee," wrote in January 2016. Dude is paid to prognosticate politics. Even so, Douthat probably pulls down six figures at The New York Times, which doesn't grant me the courtesy of a rejection letter. So people pay attention to him.

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October 6, 2017

The Dead Soul of Stephen Paddock By Patrick J. Buchanan

What was his motive? Why did he do it?

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October 6, 2017

Both Parties' Extremists Seem Determined to Lose the Next Elections By Michael Barone

Almost no one disagrees that our two major political parties, the oldest and third-oldest in the world, have become increasingly extreme and estranged over the past decade. It's a startling contrast with the state of political conflict in the dozen or so years after the fall of the Soviet empire.   

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October 5, 2017

The Republican Senate Edge By Kyle Kondik

The U.S. Senate is a curious, unique legislative body for a lot of reasons. It has arcane rules, such as the filibuster, which limits the passage of most legislative items unless 60 members vote yes. Representation in the Senate is not based on population; instead, each state gets two and only two senators, meaning that California (the most populous state) and Wyoming (the least populous) have equal say in the Senate. Each get 2% of the Senate’s membership — two out of 100 senators — even though California has 12% of the nation’s people while Wyoming only has 0.2%. And unlike the House, where the entire membership is on the ballot every two years, only a third of the Senate’s membership is on the ballot each federal election cycle.