NB Columns

Did I waste my time last Sunday? In the morning, I was reading "The New York Times," acquainting myself with precisely how the rich and famous live. The editors of the Times chose this story for its front page, so I figured they thought it important. It involved the Romney family and someone called Jan Ebeling. It turns out I could have spent my time otherwise.

On Sunday morning, the syndicated columnist George Will appeared on ABC News' "This Week" and, though I failed to watch it, he ruminated over Mitt Romney's fundraising and those donors whom he cultivates. George noted one donor in particular, Donald Trump. He called Trump a "bloviating ignoramus." That was not the end of it. Trump detected George's rude utterance somehow and leapt to Twitter, where he twitted — I presume that is the verb — that "George Will may be the dumbest (and most overrated) political commentator of all time." What an exciting exchange of ideas!

An election almost as important as the presidential election will be held next Tuesday, and conservatives aren't making a big deal of it, just as they didn't make a fuss over the 2008 Minnesota Senate election as Al Franken stole it from under their noses.

(Gov. Tim Pawlenty: "Minnesota has a reputation for clean and fair and good elections. We've got 4,100 precincts run by volunteers. They do a good job, and we thank them.")

The public sector unions are trying to oust Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker from office for impinging on their princely, taxpayer-supported lifestyles. If Walker goes down, no governor will ever again suggest that snowplow operators work when it snows. No governor will dare try to deprive public school teachers of their Viagra. Forget about ever firing self-paced, self-evaluated, unnecessary government employees.

Always leading the nation, California has already been bankrupted by the public sector unions. That's the country's future if Walker doesn't win, and it's not going to matter who's in the Oval Office.
Democrats know what's at stake. They're treating this election like the Normandy invasion. Meanwhile, Republicans are sitting back, complacently citing polls that show Walker with a slight lead.

The central issue in the fight between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church is the right of the federal government to redefine religious institutions as entities that hire and serve mostly people of their own faith. Secondarily, the fight is over forcing Catholics to pay for abortion-inducing drugs. But one looks in vain for the Church’s critics to even acknowledge this reality. It’s not contraception that is in play—“It’s the First Amendment, Stupid.”

The New York Times says the Obama mandate “specifically exempts houses of worship.” Try telling that to Donald Cardinal Wuerl who runs the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.; it is a self-insured entity and thus must be forced to pay for morally objectionable services. The Times says most American Catholic women do not agree with the Church’s contraception stand, but fails to mention that because of the Obama administration’s disrespect for religious liberty, support for Obama has dropped precipitously among Catholic women.

This weekend is Memorial Day Weekend when we remember, reflect and pay homage to all the men and women who have paid the ultimate price for the freedom and prosperity we call the American way of life.

Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day. It came into being after the Civil War as a day set aside to honor the Union war dead, but actually Southern ladies organizations and school children had decorated the graves of the Confederate dead even as the civil war was going on.

Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Using the 94 percent figure means that 262,621 were murdered by other blacks. Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation's population, they account for more than 50 percent of homicide victims. Nationally, black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it's 22 times that of whites. Coupled with being most of the nation's homicide victims, blacks are most of the victims of violent personal crimes, such as assault and robbery.

The magnitude of this tragic mayhem can be viewed in another light. According to a Tuskegee Institute study, between the years 1882 and 1968, 3,446 blacks were lynched at the hands of whites. Black fatalities during the Korean War (3,075), Vietnam War (7,243) and all wars since 1980 (8,197) come to 18,515, a number that pales in comparison with black loss of life at home. It's a tragic commentary to be able to say that young black males have a greater chance of reaching maturity on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan than on the streets of Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Newark and other cities.

WTHR, the NBC affiliate in Indianapolis, recently reported about how millions of illegal aliens are getting billions of dollars in U.S. tax refunds without having paid a dime in income taxes. The story instantly went viral because it's true. You won't believe what illegals are getting away with, and our government is enabling them.

Here's how it works.

Mitt Romney has pulled a point or two ahead of President Obama in polls of likely voters. In polls of registered voters, Obama has the advantage. The president's job approval ratings are hovering in the upper 40 percent range, which suggests a close race.

Looking at this information, partisan activists come to wildly different conclusions about what to expect on Election Day. Democrats tend to believe Obama will be re-elected, while Republicans are more likely to think he will be a one-term president.

It is one thing to talk about "fairness" when it comes to allowing gays and lesbians to marry; it is quite another to claim biblical authority for such relationships.

President Obama cited the "Golden Rule" about treating others as you would like to be treated, but in doing so he ignored the totality of Scripture and the Lord Himself, who alone gets to set the rules for human behavior.

With Mother's Day right at our back, I want to address one of the most extreme overreaches by the federal government into American homes that I've seen in a long time. Then I want to call on my own 91-year-old mother, who was raised in rural Oklahoma and worked in cotton fields with her family during the Great Depression, to help set straight the rural farm and child labor record.

After a national decry by American farmers (and all of us who support them), the Obama administration has just shelved its plan to severely restrict kids younger than 16 from working on family farms. But mark my words. As the feds often do, they merely are regrouping to march again on those great American homesteads.