Column

"As much as I thought I was a freedom fighter trying to bring freedom and save lives," Chai Ling, a former student leader in the Tiananmen Square democracy protests of 1989, testified at a recent Capitol Hill hearing, "I did not realize how much I was turned into the same sinful being" as the Chinese leaders enforcing the country's one-child policy. The jarring admission came before a House…

Back in the 1970s, there was a lot of discussion about the way TV executives were grabbing ratings with female jiggle. “T&A,” it was called. The jiggle continues, but now it’s coming from somewhere else. So far, the hot new trend of the 2011 TV season is...dangling male genitalia. That’s full-frontal male nudity...hidden behind graphic effects. CBS was thrilled the September 19 premiere…

The Obama administration's crony green subsidy scandal is erupting like a solar flare in Washington. But do you know what your kids are learning in their environmental education classes about this red-hot taxpayer eco-scam? Chances are: not much. Instead, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Democratic apparatchiks at the National Education Association are disseminating solar power…

Liberals, whose entire political strategy is the smoke and mirrors of showbiz, have concluded that Rick Perry put in a poor performance at last week's Republican debate and has got to step up his debating technique to get back in the game. Actually, it wasn't Perry's "performance" that was a problem. It was his "answers."

Poor President Obama. His leftist backers have momentarily fallen out of love with him for not destroying the country fast enough. Obama must ask himself, "What would Hugo Chavez do?" Obama decided to embark on a personal rehabilitation tour. He first stopped by the annual awards dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus and told blacks to "stop complainin'. Stop grumblin'. Stop cryin'." Don'…

There isn't much about dysfunctional government that shocks me anymore, but this story did. According to a report by the Office of Personnel Management and reported in Ed O'Keefe's "The Federal Eye" column in the Washington Post, our government has been sending checks to dead people. "In the last five years," O'Keefe writes, "the Office of Personnel Management has made more than $601 million…

What's the common thread between Europe's financial mess, particularly among the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain), and the financial mess in the U.S.? That question could be more easily answered if we asked instead: What's necessary to cure the financial mess in Europe and the U.S.? If European governments and the U.S. Congress ceased the practice of giving people what they…

"I'd like you to convert Chicago," Father Robert Barron remembers his boss, Francis Cardinal George, archbishop of the Windy City, telling him about six years ago. The result of that charge will be airing on many PBS stations, starting this week. Barron, a Chicago priest and professor, has created a remarkable book and TV series called "Catholicism" -- which, in reintroducing a 2,000-year-…

In one of the least needed reassurances in modern political history, President Obama's top political man David Plouffe, "told Democrats late last week that the White House would not suffer from overconfidence. 'What I don't want to suggest is that we're sitting around and thinking everything is great,' he said." With the White House's own economists predicting 9 percent or worse unemployment…

It is clear from the way President Barack Obama has been talking about the federal budget recently, and about taxation since he came to office, that all the money that Americans earn belongs to the federal government. The key words in this conversation are "tax expenditures." Obama has lost a lot in tax expenditures, and he wants more of those tax expenditures back. He can spend that money, he…

The cultural and media snobs are trying to explain Texas to those who don't know the difference between a steer and a bull. If you fall into this category, a steer has been castrated -- a bull has not. I'll leave any analogy to East and West Coast elites for you to sort out. People who are from Texas, or have lived there, are devoted to it and I never truly understood why until I lived there…

For decades, liberals tried persuading Americans to abolish the death penalty, using their usual argument: hysterical sobbing. Only when the media began lying about innocent people being executed did support for the death penalty begin to waver, falling from 80 percent to about 60 percent in a little more than a decade. (Silver lining: That's still more Americans than believe in man-made…

During the recent GOP presidential debate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that Social Security is a "monstrous lie" and a "Ponzi scheme." More and more people are coming to see that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, but is it a lie, as well? Let's look at it. Here's what the 1936 government pamphlet on Social Security said: "After the first 3 years — that is to say, beginning in 1940 — you will…

If you thought the half-billion-dollar, stimulus-funded Solyndra solar company bust was a taxpayer nightmare, just wait. If you thought the botched Fast and Furious border gun-smuggling surveillance operation was a national security nightmare, hold on. Right on the heels of those two blood-boilers comes yet another alleged pay-for-play racket from the most ethical administration ever. Welcome…