Political Commentary

June 11, 2015

Ohio, New Mexico the Best Presidential Bellwethers By Kyle Kondik

The Buckeye State, long recognized as perhaps the nation’s premier presidential swing state, deserves its status. In the 30 presidential elections since 1896, Ohio has correctly picked the winner 28 times.

Ohio has company at the top though -- it beats out another top presidential swing state, New Mexico, by only a hair. Like Ohio, the Land of Enchantment has also only been incorrect twice, but because statehood arrived in 1912, its record is just 24-2, and thus it has a slightly lower batting average (92%) than Ohio (93%).

June 10, 2015

Teach for America's Professional Agitators by Michelle Malkin

It's increasingly difficult to tell the difference between Teach for America -- whose leaders are at the forefront of inflammatory anti-police protests in Baltimore, Ferguson, and now McKinney, Texas -- and left-wing activist groups such as Organizing for Action (President Obama's partisan community organizing army).

June 10, 2015

Green Lies By John Stossel

Millions go to SeaWorld to learn more about sea life and get closer to killer whales. But fewer go now because the documentary "Blackfish" exposed what one reporter called "the darker side" of SeaWorld.

The movie, which CNN bought and ran over and over, tells how greedy businessmen take baby whales from their mothers and imprison them in small aquariums, where the frustrated animals are a threat to each other and their trainers.

June 9, 2015

Who Lost Iraq? By Thomas Sowell

After the pro-Western government of China was forced to flee to the island of Taiwan in 1949, when the Communists took over mainland China, bitter recriminations in Washington led to the question: "Who lost China?" China was, of course, never ours to lose, though it might be legitimate to ask if a different American policy toward China could have led to a different outcome.

June 9, 2015

Hillary Clinton's Slide in Polls Leaves Her Vulnerable by Michael Barone

Despite everything, the often interesting analyst Jamelle Bouie writes in Slate -- "everything" includes "the email controversy, foreign donors and the Clinton Foundation" -- "Hillary is in good shape." Good enough to leave her party "still positioned for victory."

June 8, 2015

Empty Symbolism: Why the Freedom Act Sucks By Ted Rall

Marketed as pro-privacy reform of the rancid Patriot Act, the USA Freedom Act is about to become law. Though nothing could be further from the truth, many Americans will believe that the NSA is being reined in, and move on another issue.

The Freedom Act has been characterized as another vindication of Edward Snowden -- and, considering the fact that we wouldn't be discussing the balance between individual privacy rights and national security if he hadn't made the NSA's spying against us public, it is.

June 5, 2015

Who Can Play a Mixed-Race Role? By Michelle Malkin

Let's set aside whether Cameron Crowe's new movie, "Aloha," is a good or bad movie. Whatever the flick's merits or demerits, it has inadvertently helped expose the arbitrary, capricious and ridiculous demands of militant identity politics.

June 5, 2015

Are We In for Another High-Crime Era After the Response to Ferguson and Baltimore? by Michael Barone

Are we seeing a reversal of the 20-year decline in violent crime in America? A new nationwide crime wave?

June 4, 2015

The College Board's Sabotage of American History by Michelle Malkin

A stellar group of American historians and academics released a milestone open letter yesterday in protest of deleterious changes to the advanced placement U.S. history (APUSH) exam. The signatories are bold intellectual bulwarks against increasing progressive attacks in the classroom on America's unique ideals and institutions.

June 4, 2015

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is the Other Party By Alan I. Abramowitz and Steven Webster Emory University

Which candidate will emerge from the crowded Republican presidential field next year? Can anyone stop or at least slow down Hillary Clinton’s seemingly inevitable march to the Democratic nomination? Will Democrats be able to match the GOP in Super PAC spending? And will there be new revelations about Clinton’s e-mails or the Clinton Foundation’s fundraising practices?

These are some of the questions that are dominating discussion of the 2016 presidential election in the media and among Washington political insiders. What you need to know is that the answers to these questions, interesting as they might be, will have almost no bearing on the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

June 3, 2015

Socialist "Justice" By John Stossel

Protestors demand "social justice." I hate their chant. If I oppose their cause, then I'm for social "injustice"? Nonsense.

June 3, 2015

Paying the Price By Thomas Sowell

Baltimore is now paying the price for irresponsible words and actions, not only by young thugs in the streets, but also by its mayor and the state prosecutor, both of whom threw the police to the wolves, in order to curry favor with local voters.

Now murders in Baltimore in May have been more than double what they were in May last year, and higher than in any May in the past 15 years. Meanwhile, the number of arrests is down by more than 50 percent.

June 2, 2015

Why Must Americans Clean Up a Foreign Sport? by Froma Harrop

The competent Loretta Lynch can no doubt handle the job of cleansing professional soccer of widespread corruption. But why is that the U.S. attorney general's job? One must ask.

June 2, 2015

Is it Time for Civil Disobedience of Kludgeocratic Bureaucracy? By Michael Barone

Is there any way to reverse the trend to ever more intrusive, bossy government? Things have gotten to such a pass, argues Charles Murray, that only civil disobedience might -- might -- work. But the chances are good enough, he says, that he's written a book about it: "By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission."

May 29, 2015

Colleges and Universities Have Grown Bloated and Dysfunctional by Michael Barone

American colleges and universities, long thought to be the glory of the nation, are in more than a little trouble. I've written before of their shameful practices -- the racial quotas and preferences at selective schools (Harvard is being sued by Asian-American organizations), the kangaroo courts that try students accused of rape and sexual assault without legal representation or presumption of innocence, and speech codes that make campuses the least rather than the most free venues in American society.

May 29, 2015

Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge? By Michelle Malkin

How many times have you heard President Obama and his minions pat themselves on the back for their noble "investments" in "roads and bridges"? Without government infrastructure spending, we're incessantly reminded, we wouldn't be able to conduct our daily business.

"Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive," Vice President Joe Biden infamously asserted. "Private enterprise," he sneered, lags behind.

May 28, 2015

House 2016: Gridlock Ahead for a Possible Clinton Administration By Kyle Kondik

If Hillary Clinton wins the White House, there's a decent chance that she will achieve a historic first, but not the one everybody talks about.

Clinton could become the first Democratic president in the party's nearly two century-long history* to never control the House of Representatives while she's in office.

May 27, 2015

How the World Has Changed Since World War I By Michael Barone

Over the past year, I've been reading books inspired by the centenary of World War I, a war with horrific casualties painful to contemplate. What helps in comprehending the scale of the slaughter is a book by one of Bill Gates' favorite authors, the Canadian academic Vaclav Smil, "Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867-1914 and Their Lasting Impact."

Smil leads the reader through the invention and development of electricity, oil production and distribution, the automobile, steelmaking, the telephone, the airplane and the production of synthetic ammonia -- to his mind the most important because without it agriculture couldn't feed the world's 6 billion people.