Column

Oscar nominees were announced this week. The AP highlighted the record number of nominations of “actors of color ” and “a record year for women.” Today, such declarations are important in this “woke” media world. Future Oscars will have actual quotas for minority groups. Actor David Oyelowo praised the new standards, saying, “Anyone and everyone who is on that list of marginalized groups that…

This week, President Biden's military declared its first war ... on Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Carlson had committed the great sin of pointing out the oddity of the fact that the Biden White House had been promoting brand-new uniforms for pregnant soldiers, rather than America's military efficiency in the face of a rising Chinese military threat.

When a politician promises to “tell the truth,” as President Biden did in his nationally televised address  last Thursday, you can add that statement to familiar ones lacking the ring of sincerity. They include: “The gun isn't loaded;” “the microphone is off;” “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” and “I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.”

How would reparations be funded? Conservative writer Michael Medved estimates that only 5% of whites in America "bear any authentic sort of generational guilt for the exploitation of slave labor." Why should anyone but Democrats pay? Scholar Dinesh D'Souza notes that all but a "handful" of slave owners were Democrats. The Ku Klux Klan, at its height of power and popularity, was known by the…

Washington -- Years ago, I had a great coach in high school who was given to Solomonic apothegms. One of his favorites was, "Forget your grandparents." By that, he meant forget the arguments that issued from your grandparents' grudges with other grandparents. The high school he coached at was highly diverse, sufficiently diverse to have frequent warfare among the differing ethnic groups. My…

The vaccine rollout crawls forward. Most of us will spend weeks, or months, waiting. Great Britain did better. As of today, one-third of the English are already vaccinated, twice as many as in America. Why? A big reason is that our government decided to rigidly follow its regimen for the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines: two doses, about a month apart. But why insist on two doses? The Moderna and…

This week, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced it would stop the sale and distribution of six classic volumes from the great children's author. Those volumes, said the company, violate its commitment to "messages of hope, inspiration, inclusion, and friendship." The books include portrayals of people "in ways that are hurtful and wrong."

I recently had to cancel a long-planned trip to South America, either because the countries I wanted to enter are closed or required up to a two-week quarantine in a hotel. It doesn't matter that I have been vaccinated and have repeatedly tested negative for COVID-19. Several countries in Europe I would like to visit are also closed. Ireland imposes a 2,000 Euro fine for anyone leaving the…

Every sport has its boundaries. Rules for playing the game may occasionally change, but the boundaries remain. In baseball, a ball hit outside the foul line is out of play. In football, a catch made outside the sidelines is ruled incomplete. All games must be played within boundaries. No one would think of erasing them. If they did, how could they ever expect an orderly contest? Boundaries are…

Washington -- We are all supposed to be against conspiracies. Yet what about a conspiracy to silence free speech? What about a conspiracy to shut down people who utter thoughts we disagree with? What about silencing communists? What about silencing Nazis? What about a conspiracy to silence Democrats or Republicans? What about silencing those who spout Trumpism? There are a lot of positions…

Politicians have too much power over our lives. Many used the pandemic as another excuse to take more. Early on, politicians declared that they would decide who was "essential." Everyone else was told to stay home. Much of the economy stopped. Millions were laid off. Then politicians relaxed the rules for industries that they deemed "essential." "You can't just call somebody essential without…

This week, The New York Times ran a long piece re-reporting a supposed race scandal from Smith College. The scandal, originally reported in midsummer 2018, featured a black student, Oumou Kanoute, who claimed that she was racially profiled while eating in a dormitory lounge. She suggested in a Facebook post that she was confronted by a campus police officer, who might have been…

Last week, I testified before the House Committee on the Judiciary's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties regarding H.R. 40: Examining the Path to Reparative Justice in America. In other words, reparations. This is the first part of the statement I submitted: "Reparations is the extraction of money from people who were never slave owners to be given to people who…

Today's environmental activists are so hostile to capitalism that they end up killing animals they want to protect. Like the African rhinoceros. Poachers kill them to get their horns, which can sell for as much as $300,000. Poachers mostly sell in China and Vietnam, to people who carve them into ornaments or sell them as aphrodisiacs. By the way: The aphrodisiacs don't work.