Advertisement

Syndicated Columns

Opinion: What, exactly, was the IRS thinking?
May 15, 2013
Well, this is a fine mess. After years of moaning about various “conspiracies” against them, conservative activists finally have a real (i.e., not manufactured by Fox or inflated by Limbaugh) piece of evidence to take before the court of public opinion.
Opinion: Benghazi, IRS: Son of Watergate?
May 15, 2013
In his defense of President Obama, Press Secretary Jay Carney is beginning to sound a lot like Ronald Zeigler, Richard Nixon’s spokesman. Carney only has to use the word “inoperative,” as Ziegler did when incriminating evidence surfaced that proved his previous statements untrue.
Opinion: What Russia gave us on Syria: very little
May 14, 2013
Those who oppose greater U.S. involvement in Syria were no doubt relieved at the announcement that Moscow and Washington want to convene an international conference to end the country’s civil war.
Opinion: Panic diverts attention from real threats
May 13, 2013
It should’ve been the shot heard around the world. Chances are, you didn’t hear it. An ominous sort of history was made last week near Austin, Texas, but it seems to have largely escaped notice. There was some media coverage, yes, but less than, say, Lindsay Lohan’s latest stint in rehab, certainly less than you’d think for something whose ramifications will likely shadow us for years.
Opinion: Pessimism colors immigration debate
May 12, 2013
Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is a gooey confection of seasonal sentiment. It also is an economic manifesto that Dickens hoped would hit with “twenty thousand times the force” of a political tract. It concerned a 19th-century debate that is pertinent to today’s argument about immigration. Last week, a disagreement between two conservative think tanks erupted when the Heritage Foundation excoriated the immigration reform proposed by a bipartisan group of eight senators. Heritage’s analysis argues that making 11 million illegal immigrants eligible, more than a decade from now, for welfare state entitlements would have net costs (benefits received minus taxes paid) of $6.3 trillion over the next 50 years.
Opinion: Red lines and options eventually disappear
May 11, 2013
You know you’re in trouble when you can’t even get your walk-back story straight. Stung by the worldwide derision that met President Obama’s fudging and fumbling of his chemical-weapons red line in Syria, the White House leaked to The New York Times that Obama’s initial statement had been unprepared, unscripted and therefore unserious.
Opinion: Russia on board with Syria peace plan
May 10, 2013
It shouldn’t have been this hard, but Secretary of State John Kerry has finally gotten Russia to back the peace plan on Syria that it endorsed in principle last June. This isn’t a breakthrough but at least it’s a beginning.
Opinion: 2013 failures may be 2014 issues
May 9, 2013
Thirty-one months ago Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell affronted the media and other custodians of propriety by saying something common-sensical. On Oct. 23, 2010, he said: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” He meant that America needed conservative change from the statist course of Obama’s presidency (the stimulus, Obamacare, etc.), therefore America needed a president who would not veto such change.
Opinion: You can’t run away from life
May 9, 2013
Brenda Heist wanted to run away from life. Naturally, she went to Key West, Fla. The first time I was down there, I saw a highway sign that, for me, perfectly captured the meaning of that place. North, it said, with an arrow pointing the way.
Opinion: U.S. should heed Vietnam lessons
May 8, 2013
Thirty-eight years ago last week, I was among the last CIA officers to be choppered off the U.S. Embassy roof in Saigon as the North Vietnamese took the country. Just two years before that chaotic rush for the exits, the Nixon administration had withdrawn the last American troops from the war zone and had declared indigenous forces strong enough, and the government reliable enough, to withstand whatever the enemy might throw into the fray after U.S. forces were gone.
Opinion: Newspapers might get better with Kochs
May 7, 2013
“Mainstream media” are alarmed by reports that billionaires Charles and David Koch are considering the purchase of Tribune Company’s eight daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times.