My colleague Ashton Ellis was Johnny-on-the-spot two weeks ago in highlighting the utter lawlessness of the Obama administration’s move to gut a core requirement of welfare reform – but a fortnight later, it looks as if the implications are even worse than they first appeared. As Ellis and the Heritage Foundation both explained, Obama…

This year’s Fourth of July was a decidedly bittersweet affair. With the wound of last week’s Supreme Court ruling on ObamaCare still raw, it became more difficult to celebrate the idea of a nation founded on limited government without feeling like there was an excess of theater involved – like a family gathering where all of the guests…

Anticipating defections among his ranks, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) tried to put gun rights advocates on the defensive ahead of Thursday’s bipartisan vote to hold U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.  What Hoyer did instead was underscore how criminally culpable is the Obama Administration’s role in…

In “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe,” Douglas Adams wrote “It is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it … anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” While Adams was presenting…

Liberalism is dead. So says The American Spectator founder R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., who is invariably ahead of the curve in identifying macro-political trends. But is he correct this time? His track record is excellent. Decades ago he identified the “Liberal Crack-Up” before conventional wisdom recognized how insane the left had become…

It was the gaffe heard ‘round the world. If Barack Obama’s political adversaries had been allowed to script a moment that laid bare all of the president’s failings as an economic leader, they couldn’t have done much better than the moment last Friday when the Commander-in-Chief, appearing behind the lectern of the White House…

There’s an axiom in American politics that gets trotted out every four years: that the most presidential decision a candidate for the nation’s highest office gets to make prior to taking the oath of office is his choice of a running mate. What a wonderful world it would be if that were the case. The truth is that the selection of a running…

Even before he wrapped up the Republican nomination for president earlier this week with a victory in the Texas primary, Mitt Romney had much to be proud of. He has been a phenomenally successful businessman; the savior of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City; governor of a state with more than six million inhabitants, and a distinguished philanthropist…

Politico reports that Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee are tracking and publicizing every verbal gaffe Vice President Joe Biden makes.  If you know anything about the loquacious and unpredictable Veep, this is probably the biggest contribution to widespread job creation Biden has made in his entire…

The Obama Administration may abhor free speech, but it certainly delights in government-imposed speech.  Remember those silly “stimulus” construction site roadsigns from 2009 and 2010?  At $10,000 apiece according to ABC News, the self-congratulatory signs belauded “The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act” &ndash…

An announcement by the Federal Aviation Administration to ease restrictions on using unmanned drone aircraft inside the United States ignited a spirited debate among conservatives over whether to accommodate another extension of government power.  On Tuesday, the FAA published on its website the latest in a string of changes to the rules governing…

A plethora of recent news items show that the Obama administration’s various legal teams continue to lose cases, embarrass themselves in court, exacerbate racial tensions and trample repeatedly on basic, traditional standards of justice. Each of the following examples probably merits extensive individual treatment which space does not immediately…

Over the past few weeks, Barack Obama’s often-elusive past has elicited renewed public interest after twice becoming fodder for major national news stories. First, a close inspection of Obama’s 1995 memoir, “Dreams From my Father,”  revealed that the president – whose associates have widely mocked former Massachusetts…

Quote of the week comes from Jim Geraghty of National Review:  “The only truly popular thing Obama has ever done is to authorize a unilateral military strike in an unsuspecting country without U.N. approval.”  In that one sentence, Geraghty captures perfectly the hypocrisy, abandoned promises and broader dysfunction of the…

A new right-leaning star was born last weekend at the True the Vote summit in Houston, while the dynamo who heads True the Vote simultaneously achieved multiple goals related to ballot integrity. For a single 24-hour conference to achieve so much is remarkable, and deserves more attention than one meager column, alas, can give it. But let&rsquo…

During a recent speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, President Obama – who may as well have been addressing a campaign rally – made sure that his assembled media minions understood their designated angle for the upcoming presidential campaign. “As all of you are doing your reporting,” he instructed…

Hot on the campaign trail, Vice President Joe Biden is once again trying to prove that he is a product and friend of the working class.  The facts say otherwise.  Upbringing Let’s start with Biden’s biography.  During his nearly four decades as a U.S. Senator from Delaware, Democrat Biden perpetuated his image as an unlikely…

So Republicans are more knowledgeable than Democrats, contrary to what many would like to believe.  According to whom?  None other than the Pew Research Center, a left-of-center organization.  Moreover, Pew’s latest survey only reaffirms previous surveys demonstrating the same result.  In fact, the results weren’t…

The political right is right about vote fraud. The left has left all decency in the rearview mirror. Former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, among others, under the aegis of the American Civil Rights Union, will launch a new campaign on March 22 called “ProtectYourVote.us” to “prevent…

The position of Attorney General of the United States of America ought to command the highest level of respect. One of only four cabinet positions that can trace its origins to the administration of George Washington, it is among the highest stations in American life: chief law enforcement officer of a constitutional republic that stands, like no other…

To employ a metaphor from his beloved pastime, George Will just swung and whiffed.  Badly.  Last week, in a curiously defeatist commentary bordering on bizarre, the bow-tied dean suggested conservative acceptance of an Obama victory in 2012.  After summarily asserting that neither Mitt Romney nor Rick Santorum, “seems likely…

An important new book helps explain why the recent death of James Q. Wilson is a hard blow to America’s experiment with enlightened democracy.      In Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America, author Daniel J. Flynn profiles six Americans who used their exceptional learning to…

The United States needs a leader with a freedom agenda, and with the ability to explain it and persuasively promote it. The agenda would put ordered liberty front and center in American public discourse and, more important, as the guiding theme for all government action. (Or, better yet, inaction, in most cases). The agenda would start by respecting…

FROM: David Plouffe TO: President Obama TOPIC: Strategic messaging for 2012 reelection campaign Mr. President ~ In a few short months, our 2012 general election campaign will begin in earnest. Of course, the uncertainty in the Republican presidential field makes it very difficult to calibrate our strategy (at the moment, our best guess is that…

A year ago the conservative movement was fired up for a year-long celebration of Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday. Well, it didn’t really last a year, but this coming Monday, February 6, the Gipper would have been 101, and the longing for comparable conservative leadership will not disappear just because his centennial has passed. Indeed,…

As the first month of the Republican presidential race draws to a close, a fissure that has laid dormant within the party is coming to define the campaign: the divide between the conservative insurgency personified by the Tea Party and what’s conventionally referred to as “the Republican establishment.” The former has ricocheted…

Barack Obama had an open microphone and time to kill at Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, a scenario only slightly less distressing than learning that a serial arsonist is on the loose. What resulted was grandiose even by the standards of this endlessly self-referential chief executive: 65 minutes of blather punctuated by 75 personal…

The utter fecklessness of top conservative office-holders is stunning. Faced with what most of them call a make-or-break, now-or-never election, most of them are so brave, so ready to meet the moment, so willing to step up to the plate… that they sit on the sidelines, quaking in their boots, afraid to make a stand because they don’t want…

Over the course of the past three years, the Tea Party movement has reshaped conservative politics in America. By the closing days of the Bush Administration, the GOP was lost in a philosophical morass, having ceded ground to “compassionate conservatism,” runaway spending and government bailouts. Then, in early 2009, in an impassioned speech…

Okay, pretend I’m running for president. Here’s my platform. Personal income taxes: Flat rate, 20 percent. Same applies to dividends and capital gains. $7,000 exemption per person in household (no more than two adults age 18 or above). Full tax deductions for charitable contributions. Deduction for home mortgage interest for primary residence…