I’ve been saying, at The Spectacle podcast and elsewhere, that I refuse to make any assumptions about the 2024 presidential cycle. And let me offer the further caveat that Republican voters and conservative activists, not to mention current and prospective officeholders who wear that “R” next to their political names, had better pay a whole lot more attention to the structure of next year’s political cycle than to the personalities and candidates involved.
Read MoreCategory: Commentary
Commentary: The Looming Economic Cauldron
The current confluence of economic conundrums elevates risks massively for the prosperity of Americans, especially those of modest means. These unprecedented, concurring economic contradictions flow directly from the dire mistakes of the 2020 virus panic.
Read MoreVictor Davis Hanson Commentary: Is the Left Happy That They Got Their Wish?
by Victor Davis Hanson America has been in a veritable cultural revolution since the 1960s. Nearly all our major institutions finally became woke — the administrative state, traditional and social media, universities, K-12, the corporate boardroom, entertainment, professional sports, and the foundations. So the Obama and the Biden administrations…
Read MoreCommentary: We Know Exactly What ‘De-Development’ Means
by Roger Kimball “The climate crisis,” said Al Gore at the U.N. a couple of days ago, “is a fossil fuel crisis.” “What climate crisis?” you might be asking, and you would be right to do so. Yes, it is impossible to turn anywhere in our enlightened, environmentally conscious world without…
Read MoreCommentary: The Year in Teacher Union Double Dealing
This has been an egregious year for the country’s teachers unions. Okay, you may be thinking, so what else is new? But 2023 has exposed them as hypocrites par excellence.
The National Education Association convention in July provides myriad examples. While one might think a gathering of teachers would be concerned with the lack of literacy in public school students, he would be dead wrong. This year’s NEA convention in Florida was strictly political, and sex- and gender-obsessed ideas were front and center.
Read MoreCommentary: Democratic-Run States Are Losing Population, Power, and Congressional Seats
For years, Americans who believe in limited government and putting the American people first have had to watch as states like California, New York, and Illinois have turned their cities into dystopian hellscapes and sent unhinged politicians to Washington DC to inflict their policies on the rest of the nation.
But something very interesting has been happening over the past decade and this trend is only accelerating – the most left-wing states are slowly losing power as their populations decrease and residents move elsewhere. California, New York, Illinois, and others are losing population as residents move to friendlier and freer states. What this translates into is a mathematical solution to leftism and centralized government control.
Read MoreCommentary: The Continuing Cultural Revolution
Christopher F. Rufo’s America’s Cultural Revolution is a landmark study of America’s radicalization since the 1960s. It is a carefully constructed work full of insights, which confirmed for me the conclusions that I had reached while studying some of the same topics. Rufo shows convincingly that certain radical thinkers, most of whom were American born, affected deeply and perhaps irreversibly American institutions starting in the 1960s. This study clearly avoids an interpretive perspective that I have repeatedly mocked, exemplified by those who pretend that American culture and politics were generally sound up until quite recently, perhaps until the point when LGBT enthusiasts turned from gay marriage to gender transitioning.
Read MoreCommentary: The Importance of Making Mistakes
A couple of years ago, I received a post-semester email from a student’s father. He was upset about his child’s final grade in my class, which had landed somewhere between a high B and a low A.
The grade was clearly not very low, but the student’s father wanted me to reconsider. Apparently, a specific assignment’s less-than-perfect score had kept his son from making the honor roll.
Read MoreCommentary: The Justice System Is Now a Weapon in Progressives’ Arsenal Against Political Enemies
Attorney General Merrick Garland gave his best Captain Renault impression on Capitol Hill in denying a double standard in how the Justice Department investigated (or didn’t) Hunter Biden (and his father) versus how they pursue his political rival. Shocked, shocked, indeed.
Those experiencing the less pleasant side of judicial double standards see rather clearly the woke hall pass.
Read MoreCommentary: American Pandemic ‘Samizdat’
On May 15, 1970, the New York Times published an article by esteemed Russia scholar Albert Parry detailing how Soviet dissident intellectuals were covertly passing forbidden ideas around to each other on handcrafted, typewritten documents called samizdat.
Read MoreCommentary: Fact-Checking Merrick Garland’s ‘Fair’ DOJ
It might go down as the whopper of the year.
During his opening statement to the House Judiciary committee on Wednesday morning, Attorney General Merrick Garland attempted to head off expected criticism from Republicans by insisting his Department of Justice is blind to politics. “[We] apply the same laws to everyone. There is not one set of laws for the powerful and one for the powerless. One for the rich and another for the poor. One for Democrats and another one for Republicans. The law will treat each of us alike.”
Read MoreCommentary: More Evidence That U.S. Intelligence Analysis Is Broken and Politicized
Last week, American Greatness reporter Debra Heine reported a bombshell story that a “highly credible” CIA whistleblower has told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the CIA “bribed” six of its analysts with significant financial incentives to change their initial conclusion that the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a biolab leak in Wuhan, China and to instead conclude that the virus emerged naturally.
Read MoreCommentary: Bill Will Keep Wisconsin’s Power Grid in State’s Hands and Out of the Control of Federal Regulators or Out-of-State Developers
Today, I introduced legislation to retain Wisconsin control over the safety and reliability of our state’s power grid instead of ceding that control to federal regulators and opportunistic out-of-state developers. This bill, known as Right of First Refusal, prevents fragmentation of the state’s transmission grid and retains the regulation and operation of the grid in Wisconsin.
Read MoreCommentary: Our Self-Induced Catastrophe at the Border
Since early 2021 we have witnessed somewhere between 7 and 8 million illegal entries across the now nonexistent U.S. southern border.
The more the border vanished, the more federal immigration law was rendered inert, and the more Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas spun fantasies that the “border is secure.” He is now written off as a veritable “Baghdad Bob” propagandist.
Read MoreCommentary: The Left’s FISA Reform Trap
Republicans have had a crash course since 2016 in the ways the power of the intelligence community can be abused. To take a few examples, four consecutive judges operating under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act approved wiretaps of a Trump adviser, Carter Page, relying without question on the partisan fictions of the Steele dossier. Michael Flynn was ousted after he was the target of an unprecedented leak of another FISA intercept. And 51 former intelligence officers intervened in the 2020 election to dismiss without evidence the Hunter Biden laptop contents as likely Russian disinformation.
Read MoreCommentary: American Public Says Biden Is Not the Leader America Needs to Fix the Country
A giant new poll delving deep into the public’s views on President Biden, Former President Trump, the U.S. economy and their own economic situation reveals a people deeply unhappy with the direction of the country under President Biden.
First, the latest CBS News/YouGov poll shows Trump beating Biden by one point 50% to 49%. While that’s well within the margin of error, other recent polls have shown Trump beating Biden by as many as six percentage points in the past three weeks. Whatever the metric, Trump is polling significantly better now than he was at any time in 2020, and that has Democrats worried.
Read MoreCommentary: Joe Biden’s Email Alias Escorted Phone Numbers of Top U.S. Officials to Hunter Biden
Authenticated documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop reveal that Joe Biden had several email aliases, such as:
Peter Henderson: [email protected]
Robin Ware: [email protected]
Robert L. Peters: [email protected]
Senate Confirms C.Q. Brown as Next Joint Chiefs Chairman
The Senate on Wednesday confirmed the nomination of Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown to chief as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Read MoreCommentary: Thank God for the Principled Senator Tuberville
These days, Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama is an endangered species in official Washington. That’s not because political hacks – in uniform and out – are taking every imaginable cheap shot at him, including that he is “endangering our national security” by holding up the promotions of some 300 officers.
Read MoreCommentary: The Hidden Agenda Behind Lockdowns
You can call it a “road diet,” or “15 days to stop the spread,” or a “fifteen minute city,” or a “smart city,” a “central bank digital currency,” or just an EV that comes with a virtual leash attached in the form of limited range and limited recharging options.
Read MoreCommentary: Voter Registration Charities Is a Massive, Overlooked Scandal
“Nonprofit voter registration” doesn’t sound interesting. Yet nonprofit voter registration, or the use of tax-exempt charitable organizations to conduct and fund voter registration drives, is one of the most important and underreported political scandals of our time.
Read MorePaul Sperry Commentary: Did Hunter Biden Lie to His Own Memoir?
In a raft of glowing reviews, Hunter Biden’s 2019 memoir “Beautiful Things” was celebrated as an “unflinchingly honest” (Entertainment Weekly), “confession and an act of contrition” (Guardian), that was “candid” and “doesn’t hold back details” (New York Times) of his substance abuse and broken relationships.
While describing the book as an “unvarnished confessional,” the Washington Post exalted it as a “harrowing, relentless and a determined exercise in trying to seize his own narrative from the clutches of the Republicans and the press.
Read MoreCommentary: Voter Registration ‘Charities’ Are a Massive, Overlooked Scandal
“Nonprofit voter registration” doesn’t sound interesting. Yet nonprofit voter registration, or the use of tax-exempt charitable organizations to conduct and fund voter registration drives, is one of the most important and underreported political scandals of our time.
Nonprofit voter registration, and the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) activities that usually accompany it, have become the heart of a billion-dollar industry in America. According to Candid’s Foundation Funding for U.S. Democracy database, since 2011 nearly 60,000 grants have been made for “Voter Education, Registration, and Turnout” and “Civic Participation,” benefitting 15,000 different organizations to the tune of $5.9 billion dollars.
Read MoreCommentary: Alzheimer’s Disease Is Partly Genetic − Studying the Genes That Delay Decline in Some May Lead to Treatments for All
Diseases that run in families usually have genetic causes. Some are genetic mutations that directly cause the disease if inherited. Others are risk genes that affect the body in a way that increases the chance someone will develop the disease. In Alzheimer’s disease, genetic mutations in any of three specific genes can cause the disease, and other risk genes either increase or decrease the risk of developing Alzheimer’s.
Read MoreCommentary: Jack Smith’s Real-Life Bogeyman
One must wonder if Special Counsel Jack Smith checks under his bed every night to make sure a large man wearing an oversized blue suit, long red tie, and MAGA hat isn’t there.
Smith, the public has been assured, is a nerves-of-steel prosecutor who has taken on some of the world’s most dangerous criminals during his time at the U.S. Department of Justice and The Hague. Following Smith’s appointment in November 2022, one former colleague swooned to the New York Times how Smith “has a way about him of projecting calm” and that “people look to him for steady guidance.”
Read MoreCommentary: The Migrant Surge is Coming to the Classroom
Democratic politicians and the liberal media made the first day of school all about welcoming migrant children. That’s sheer propaganda. Parents deserve the truth. The migrant surge is a disaster for their kids.
The surge will worsen our education system’s twin failures: plunging math and reading scores, and the failure to ensure newly arriving kids learn English so they can succeed, too.
Read MoreCommentary: 20 Historical Hobbies for $20 or Less
New hobbies can seem intimidating and—worse—expensive. The internet offers complicated lists and costly supplies for even the most basic of skills. We might feel that we can’t invest too much into a hobby—who knows if we’ll be good at it anyway?
In reality, many hobbies—particularly those that rely more on building a skill than on collecting items—begin with very few supplies. In fact, there’s a wealth of historical skills we can practice for entertainment, self-improvement, and practicality!
Read MoreCommentary: Bidenomics Is Hurting Families
It is no mystery that the core demographics for the Democratic Party include single women, blacks and Hispanics. In 2020, Biden won unmarried women 63 percent to 36 percent over former President Donald Trump, blacks 87 percent to 12 percent and Latinos 65 percent to 32 percent, according to the CNN exit poll.
Read MoreCommentary: A Time for Brave Words from Pope Francis
When I saw that Pope Francis would participate as a speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative this month, my heart sank.
Frankly, and I say this as a Catholic, former President Bill Clinton is one of the last people I would like Francis to prominently engage with.
Read MoreCommentary: Back to Homeschool
It began a few weeks ago: the back-to-school memes.
One featured dejected kids dressed in new school clothes waiting for the bus while elated parents look forward to an empty house. My favorite meme so far is one with a mom in mid-kick, child flying through the air toward a waiting school bus. Freedom, at last.
Read MoreCommentary: A Mother’s COVID Regret
One of the most alarming aspects of the new COVID-centric regime is how people have been deprived of the truth regarding potential harms of the COVID-19 vaccines and how citizens have been forced to get the vaccine due to bullying from medical authorities, the government, or an employer.
When the medical decision to get the jab, whether well-informed or not, is that of a parent making the choice for a child, such a potentially life-altering move might devastate two people, not just one patient. Good parents always want to do the best for their children, and making a medical decision for your child that might have terrible consequences is scary to consider.
Read MoreCommentary: Another Whitmer Fednapping Case Goes Boom
In another blow to the FBI’s concocted plot to kidnap and assassinate Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, a jury in Antrim County today acquitted three men indicted on state charges for their alleged role in the scheme.
Michael and William Null, twin brothers, and Eric Molitor were found not guilty of providing material support for an act of terrorism and unlawful possession of firearms. Jurors began deliberations Thursday afternoon following a 14-day trial before Judge Charles Hamlyn.
Read MoreCommentary: The Reason Most College Professors Lean Left
Studies have consistently shown a pronounced left-leaning political inclination among college professors. For example, a Harvard University survey last year revealed that of the 476 faculty members who responded, around 80 percent identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Meanwhile, 16.8 percent considered themselves “moderate,” a mere 1.46 percent identified as “conservative,” and none claimed to be “very conservative.”
Read MoreCommentary: Post-Postmodern America
When the progressive woke revolution took over traditional America, matters soon reached the level of the ridiculous.
Take the following examples of woke craziness and hypocrisy, perhaps last best witnessed during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution.
Read MoreCommentary: Rent Control Is the Wrong Solution for Housing Affordability
My family moved to the United States from the Caribbean in 1985. About eight years later, my parents saved enough to purchase a two-family home in the quiet outskirts of Boston far away from our crime-ridden neighborhood. As landlords, my parents charged modest rents—enough to “help with the mortgage”—and ensured that the first-floor apartment was always well maintained for our tenants.
Read MoreCommentary: Trump Taught Republicans How to Win
As House Republicans have settled back into Washington, D.C. this week fresh off a month-long hiatus, all eyes will turn to whether the party in control of the lower chamber can muster any resistance against the current regime running roughshod over the nation and blatantly interfering with the upcoming presidential election.
Read MoreCommentary: The Insatiable, Unaccountable, and Unsatisfied Bloodlust of the DOJ
Nejourde Thomas “Jord” Meacham was the sort of person the elites in Washington despise.
One of ten children in what appears to be a tight-knit family, Jord lived in rural Utah near the Nevada border working on his family’s ranch; he enjoyed fishing, hunting, and riding horses. “He was a big history buff. Listening to music was a big part of his life and young kids were drawn to him,” his obituary read. Jord is survived by his parents, siblings, grandparents, and “many aunts, uncles, and cousins.”
Read MoreCommentary: Ken Buck Is Wrong About the J6 Defendants
U.S. Representative Ken Buck’s big wet sloppy kiss to Attorney General Merrick Garland last week could not have come at worse time for the Colorado Republican.
Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the federal court in Washington, D.C. was in the process of ordering prison time typically applied to murderers, drug traffickers, and serial child pornographers for five members of the Proud Boys convicted of no serious crime related to January 6. A well-known gun storage company faced backlash for assisting the FBI in yet another armed raid against a January 6 trespasser. And a young man from Utah took his own life just weeks after his arrest on four misdemeanors for his participation in January 6, at least the fourth known suicide of a Capitol protester.
Read MoreCommentary: The Biden Administration Misleads the Public on the Vast Expanses of Land Needed for ‘Net Zero’
The Biden administration is misleading the country about the amount of land that will be required to meet its ambitious renewable energy goals, RealClearInvestigations has found.
The Department of Energy’s official line – echoed by many environmental activists and academics – is that the vast array of solar panels and wind turbines required to meet Biden’s goal of “100% clean electricity” by 2035 will require “less than one-half of one percent of the contiguous U.S. land area.” This topline number translates into 15,000 of the lower 48’s roughly 3 million square miles.
Read MoreCommentary: Washington Post Buried Proof of Joe Biden’s Bribery
After ignoring smoking gun emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop for more than two years, the Washington Post has finally reported they exist and are authentic.
Read MoreCommentary: America’s Fertility Crisis Will Only Worsen with the College Gender Gap as U.S. Follows Japan
Declining fertility in advanced economies is nothing new. Since birth control was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960, at the same time more women were entering the labor force and attending higher education, amid higher inflation, greater unemployment and a weaker economy, birth rates have plummeted significantly, from 3.65 babies per woman in 1959 to 1.73 by 1976, according to World Bank and Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Read MoreCommentary: Is Former Vice President Mike Pence’s View on Conservatism Correct?
Former Vice President Mike Pence in a speech before the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College and in an article in The Wall Street Journal warned Republicans and conservatives about the danger of populism. The former Vice President argues, in echoing Ronald Reagan’s 1964 address, that it is “a time for choosing” for Republicans whether to continue to follow the “siren song” of populism or return to true conservatism. It is clear that Pence is not only drawing a line in the sand and forcing a debate over conservatism, but also distancing himself from former President Donald Trump and those who support his policies. Nevertheless, Pence fails to understand that the conservative populism he is denouncing is actually rooted within the American conservative tradition.
Read MoreCommentary: The Left’s New Precedent of Impeachment and Weaponization Is Only Dangerous When Applied to Democrats
An impeachment inquiry looms and the shrieks of outrage are beginning.
The Left is now suddenly voicing warnings that those who recently undermined the system could be targeted by their own legacies.
Read MoreCommentary: Save America’s Military
A stunning, if absurd, indicator of the depths to which the Biden administration is taking the U.S. military was lit up on September 8th by Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. The Army veteran and senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee wrote Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin a letter dripping with well-deserved ridicule over a “recent decision to incorporate ‘gender neutral’ language into decoration and award citations.”
Read MoreCommentary: American Despotism and the Weaponization of the U.S. Constitution
America is now in the deepest, most dangerous constitutional crisis since the hostility in the 1850s that led to secession and civil war.
This constitutional crisis is so widespread and threatening that House Republicans must dramatically widen their investigations. Hunter Biden and President Joe Biden are only a tiny part of a spiderweb of corruption, dishonesty, criminal behavior, and state weaponization. The rule of law is steadily being replaced by a frightening new rule of power.
Read MoreCommentary: Joe Biden’s 9/11 Alaska Trip Is a Slap in the Face to the Nation
The Biden Administration has been flying cabinet and subcabinet members to and from Alaska all summer. From Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg to Interior Sec. Deb Haaland, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, and Health Assistant Sec. Rachel Levine, it’s been an impressive parade of diversity, equity, and inclusion sock puppets who regurgitate the party line.
The Big Guy himself arrives in state on Monday to – oddly enough – commemorate the anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Read MoreCommentary: The Rise of Unapologetically Partisan News Reporting
The Huffington Post was envisioned from its inception as a progressive answer to conservative talk radio and various right-leaning voices being amplified by new technology. Most specifically, it was designed as a counterpoint to the Drudge Report, a widely read and highly profitable website with populist sensibilities. The players involved in planning the new venture belonged to a select clique of Hollywood liberals and political activists in Arianna Huffington’s orbit.
Read MoreCommentary: Parents Must Teach Their Kids Discernment
Entertainment today is extremely accessible. We can watch videos and read articles whenever we want. Each of these pieces of media, however, has its own ideology. But often, we do not even notice this ideology that is being presented to us, or the underlying assumptions of the creators.
As Frances Schaeffer explained: “The results of [people’s] thought world flow through their fingers or from their tongues into the external world. This is true of Michelangelo’s chisel, and it is true of the dictator’s sword.” Everything people create is the product of their worldview, so being able to recognize the underlying beliefs in media and entertainment is an important skill.
Read MoreCommentary: Dems Rebut 2020 Rigging Accusations by Rigging 2024
The people most insistent on the purity of the 2020 election work feverishly on rigging the 2024 election. It makes one wonder.
This anti-democratic effort includes interpreting the suffrage-expanding 14th Amendment to deny suffrage to Donald Trump’s supporters in 2024. A Washington, D.C.–based group, for instance, sued in Colorado this week to prevent the name of the candidate favored by most Republicans from appearing on the ballot there. If the involvement of an out-of-state group did not serve as a clue, then its board comprising partisan Democrats — and a “Republican” who endorsed Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden for president — signaled the politics-by-other-means purpose of the motley crew. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington President Noah Bookbinder justified preventing the opposition’s preferred candidate from appearing on the ballot by maintaining that “it is necessary to defend our republic both today and in the future.”
Read MoreCommentary: 12 Defensive Gun Uses Show That Armed Citizens Make Communities Safer
As the nation continues to reel from historic violent crime spikes, many gun control activists turn reflexively to the same “bumper sticker slogan” policy “solutions” that fail to address real problems while often undermining the Second Amendment rights of peaceable citizens.
Last week, some Hartford, Connecticut, residents made headlines for taking a different approach. Instead of demanding that their fellow citizens abandon their rights to armed self-defense, they announced that they would henceforth start exercising those rights in a public manner to enhance community safety.
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