Column

Diligent English farmers of old once shared a motto about the blessings of work: "Industry produces wealth, God speed the plow." Indolent New York City union officials who oversee snow removal apparently live by a different creed: Sloth enhances political power, Da Boss slow the plow. Come rain or shine, wind, sleet or blizzard, Big Labor leaders always demonstrate perfect power-grabby timing…

This administration is abusive enough when it acts outside its constitutional authority, but it is even more tyrannical when it affirmatively thwarts the express will of the Congress on matters within the legislative domain. When Congress denied Obama authority to transfer money to the International Monetary Fund, he did so anyway, issuing an executive order promising to give that body $140…

You don't have to be a psychic who forecasts future events for supermarket tabloids to accurately predict what awaits the new congressional Republican class of 2011. The writing is already on the computer screens and in the TV teleprompters. A preview of coming attractions was trotted out during President Obama's last scheduled news conference of 2010. After spending most of the year worrying…

The metaphor “The War on Christmas” can be mocked – as if Santa and his reindeer are dodging anti-aircraft fire. But many of our public schools have church-and-state sensitivity police with an alarming degree of Santaphobia. Anyone who's attended a school's “winter concert” in December with no traditional Christmas music – not even “Frosty the Snowman” – knows the drill. The vast Christian…

Suppose what some call the "Christmas story" is true -- all of it, from the angels, to the shepherds, to the virgin birth, to God taking on human flesh. By this, I don't mean to suggest it is true only for those who believe it to be true, but what if it is objectively true, no matter what the deniers say? What difference would it make? Should it make any difference? The narrative and the…

Ho, ho, ho! Just in time for Christmas, the American Civil Liberties Union has launched a new salvo against people of faith. Even as billions around the world celebrate the birth of Christ, joyless, abortion-obsessed secularists never take a holiday. On Wednesday, the ACLU sent a letter to federal health officials urging the government to force Catholic hospitals in the U.S. to perform…

Last week, Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit set himself up as both judge and jury and found Conrad Black, once the head of one of the most illustrious publishing chains in the world, guilty of fraud and obstruction of justice in running his newspapers. That is somewhat of a comedown for our criminal justice system. Years ago, the Department of Justice had…

Harvard University Professor Stephan Thernstrom's recent essay, "Minorities in College—-Good News, But...," in Minding the Campus (11/4/10), a website sponsored by the New York-based Manhattan Institute, commented on the results of the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress test: The scores "mean that black students aged 17 do not read with any greater facility than whites who…

A few years ago, I was in China and, through the help of a friend, had the chance to spend a few hours with a senior editor of the People's Daily —the Communist Party's voice, and the most influential journal in China. The highly intelligent editor — himself, of course, a senior party man — was cool and dispassionate until we came to a discussion of the causes of revolutions. On that topic,…

When bureaucrats talk about increasing our "access" to x, y or z, what they're really talking about is increasing exponentially their control over our lives. As it is with the government health care takeover, so it is with the newly approved government plan to "increase" Internet "access." Call it Webcare. By a vote of 3-2, the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday adopted a…

There is some very dangerous – as in red-hot incendiary – hatred going on, and it’s being advanced by the national news media directly. The panel of judges for the Media Research Center’s Best Notable Quotables of 2010 found that theme time and time again while selecting the year’s worst reporting and punditry. PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley won “The Poison Tea Pot Award for Smearing the…

It's that time of year when we are reminded just how indebted we are to the left's mega-tolerant cultural warriors. Annually, they jolt us out of our complacency to notice how imposing, intolerant and dangerous Christmas and Christianity are. If it weren't for these valiant soldiers, this disturbing proliferation of Christmas celebrations and other Christian symbols would proceed unabated.…

The Republican congressional leadership congratulated itself for leading nine "moderate" GOP senators away from a cliff and back to solid footing by persuading them not to vote with Democrats on a 1,924-page, $1.2 trillion omnibus spending bill that has more pork in it than a pig farm. Instead, most Republicans went along with another bill, which President Obama quickly signed last Friday. It…

I must commend President Barack Obama for getting closer this year to conveying the true message of Christmas. But how does that saying go, "Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades"? This time last year, President Obama botched his yuletide yodels. Preceding presidents took pride in America's Judeo-Christian and Christmas heritage, but President Obama — on Dec. 24, 2009, with the…