Column

Can you believe anyone even organizes a "white privilege" conference these days -- seven years into Barack Obama's presidency? Well, you'd better believe it, and you should also know that at least one of the speakers at this conference is militantly Christophobic.

The Mafia, in its heyday, ran lucrative protection rackets. Pay them and your business would be kept safe from "unforeseen" threats. Don’t pay them and your business might go up in smoke with you inside.

I constantly hear that only Donald Trump supporters can understand the Trump phenomenon, as if it were inaccessible to nonbelievers, like the secret knowledge of ancient Gnostics. But I don't believe it's a matter of comprehension. 

Despite the fact that they are currently bitter opponents, there are a lot of reasons to believe Donald Trump and Ted Cruz could end up working together in the fall campaign.

What does a suffering military veteran have to do to force an unresponsive government to change its ways? How about self-immolating in front of his VA clinic?  Nope. Apparently, even this horror is not enough to move the inert bureaucrats at the Department of Veterans Affairs -- let alone the indifferent tango dancer-in-chief.

Professor Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He recently wrote an article titled "The hypocrisy behind the student renaming craze." Students, often with the blessing of faculty, have discovered that names for campus buildings and holidays do not always fit politically correct standards for race, class and sex.

Six months ago, I warned that Donald Trump's strengths could also be the weaknesses that would destroy his campaign. I think we're beginning to see that play out now. Trump has repeatedly said he is a counterpuncher -- that he won't initiate attacks against his rivals but if they were to hit him first he would hit back much harder. 

Occasionally I am asked if I ever considered running for political office. My response: "I did once, but I took two aspirin, lay down for a while and the feeling went away."

Neither political party can lay claim to purity when it comes to hypocrisy, but Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, as well as others in her party, has taken hypocrisy to new depths.

The House Speaker, the honorable Paul Ryan, recently expressed his hope for a more "confident America." He went on to say "we don't shut people down. If someone has a bad idea, we tell them why our idea is better. We don't insult them into agreeing with us." He spoke of the superiority of persuasion to execration. 

I really worry that the Trump movement is a misguided reaction to the abuses of power by the ruling class in Washington, D.C. In our dire predicament, we need to be very thoughtful about our remedy.

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni publishes occasional reports on what college students know. Nearly 10 percent of the college graduates surveyed thought Judith Sheindlin, TV's "Judge Judy," is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Less than 20 percent of the college graduates knew the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation. More than a quarter of the college graduates did not know…

Conservatives and other Obama critics are entitled to a big "I told you so," after Obama's stunning admission that he doesn't believe there's that much difference between communism and capitalism. 

It's not over. It's never over. After last week's deadly airport and subway bombings in Brussels, the Belgian government remains on high alert for jihad attacks and espionage at its nuclear facilities.