Several of the 2020 Democratic primary candidates favored the abolishment of the Electoral College. Or, as once-confident candidate Elizabeth Warren put it, "I plan to be the last American president to be elected by the Electoral College." Furor over the Electoral College among the left arose from the 2000 and 2016 elections. Al Gore and…

Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York and other major cities are experiencing a breakdown of order – violence and conflict that is a mixture of left-wing revolution, racial unrest and old-fashioned crime. Whatever else they might have in common, all these cities are governed by progressive Democrats, and all owe…

In April of 2005, Senator Barack Obama took to the floor of the United States Senate and passionately spoke out against Republican efforts to end the filibuster. Then a rising star in the Democratic Party, Obama noted that despite the pressure partisans might feel, it was imperative to "rise above an 'ends justify the means' mentality because…

This month marks the 75th anniversary of the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, at Hiroshima on Aug. 6, and Nagasaki on Aug. 9. Each year, Americans argue about our supposed moral shortcomings for being the only nation to have used an atomic weapon in war. Given the current cultural revolution that topples statues, renames institutions, cancels…

There are three presidential debates scheduled before the Nov. 3 election. The first will be on Sept. 29 at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The second will be on Oct. 15 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, Florida. And the third will be on Oct. 22 at Belmont University in Nashville. Although the Kennedy-Nixon…

The tragically incompetent mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, appeared on CNN's "State of the Union" this weekend to deflect attention from the horror show unfolding in her city by blaming interlopers for its spiking murder rate: "We are being inundated with guns from states that have virtually no gun control, no background checks, no…

On July 5, 1987, columnist George Will excoriated aspiring presidential candidate Joe Biden as unfit for the job of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, let alone the presidency:   If Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., had a reputation for seriousness, he forfeited it in the 24 hours after Justice Lewis Powell announced his departure from the Supreme…

Cultural suicide used to be a popular diagnosis of why things suddenly just quit. Historians such as Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee cited social cannibalism to explain why once-successful states, institutions and cultures simply died off. Their common explanation was that the arrogance of success ensures lethal consequences. Once elites became…

An article in Politico got a lot of buzz in Washington, D.C., by reporting that Sen. Kamala Harris might not be a very strong front-runner, or even a front-runner at all, in the Democratic vice presidential selection race. Politico reported that 76-year-old former Sen. Chris Dodd, a member of 77-year-old former Sen. Joe Biden's VP selection committee…

Despite the occasional looting, chaos, property damage, trespassing, rioting, graffiti, assaults, arson and general mayhem, the media consistently assure us that antifa "protesters" are "largely peaceful." And since the majority of buildings in Portland, Seattle and Denver haven't been looted yet, who am I to argue? Of course,…

This week, a new Rasmussen Reports survey confirms that a lopsided majority of Americans “see media a lot more eager to help Biden than Trump.”   By more than three-to-one, an overwhelming majority also affirms that Biden “has received the best treatment from the media so far,” and a majority also “expects most…

In the 1960s and early '70s, the U.S. was convulsed by massive protests calling for radical changes in the country's attitudes on race, class, gender and sexual orientation. The Vietnam War and widespread college deferments were likely the fuel that ignited prior peaceful civil disobedience. Sometimes the demonstrations became violent, as with the…

President Trump has said many times that voting by mail – which will play a big role in this November's presidential election – is vulnerable to fraud. "There is tremendous evidence of fraud whenever you have mail-in ballots," Trump has noted. The November election, he added, "will be, in my opinion, the…

If you live in the suburbs, or you're a city-dweller eyeing a move to a quiet cul-de-sac where your kids can play, you need to know about Joe Biden's plan for a federal takeover of local zoning laws.  Biden wants to ramp up an Obama-era social engineering scheme called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, which barely got started before Donald…

On March 25, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo made one of deadliest mistakes of the coronavirus crisis, signing an executive order forcing nursing homes in his state to accept patients who tested positive for coronavirus. Around 4,800 New Yorkers died from COVID-19 in those nursing homes from March to May – approximately 25% of all fatalities…

The political left’s increasingly emboldened “cancel culture” marches apace, and if you consider its appetite for destruction voracious now, just imagine if November finds federal government control added to its expanding array of captive societal institutions.   Acquiring governmental power won’t placate the left…

The National Football League celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. This should be a time of self-congratulation for the brutal sport, which has no similar counterpart outside the United States. The NFL's megaprofits dwarf those of other professional sports in the U.S. The Super Bowl, not the World Series, is America's national sports event.…

Many Democrats, along with some in the press and a few Republicans, have expressed outrage at President Trump's commutation of political operative Roger Stone's jail sentence for lying to Congress and witness tampering. GOP Sen. Mitt Romney, the only senator ever to vote to remove a president of his own party, was particularly outraged. "Unprecedented…

Recently, I ran across a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer that lays out four racist words and phrases that should be banished from the English language. It begins like this: "Editor's note: Please be aware offensive terms are repeated here solely for the purpose of identifying and analyzing them honestly. These terms may upset some readers.&…

"Never trust anyone over thirty." So went the 1960s hippie mantra, never mind that it logically excluded such counterculture shamans as Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden before the decade ended.  Of course, logical fidelity wasn’t exactly the hallmark of that era of Pentagon levitation efforts and hygiene-deficient communes…

A TikTok video that recently went viral on social media showed a recent Harvard graduate threatening to stab anyone who said "all lives matter." In her melodrama, she tried to sound intimidating with her histrionics. She won a huge audience as she intended. But her video also came to the attention of the company that was going to give her…

The drive to make Washington, D.C., a state has been a favorite of some Democrats for years. Why wouldn't it be? If enacted, a new state, formed from deepest-blue D.C., would create two new Democratic senators and one new Democratic member of the House. For a Democrat, what's not to like? But while there have been lots of D.C. statehood bills over…

The old 2020 election was supposed to be about many familiar issues. It is not any more. Up until now, the candidates themselves would supposedly be the story in November. The left had cited Trump's tweets and erratic firings as windows into his dark soul. The right had replied that an addled and befuddled Joe Biden was not really a candidate at…

What do George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, Father Junipero Serra and Christopher Columbus have in common? None were Confederate generals, and yet all have had their statues torn down by mobs in the last few days – or, in the case of Roosevelt, had New York's Museum of Natural History announce that…

Mainstream media are sounding the alarm about the coronavirus cases spiking across the South and West. They're exaggerating the peril and trying to pin the blame on Republican governors and President Trump for reopening the economy too soon.  No surprise, Governor Andrew Cuomo is piling on, accusing states of playing politics instead of opening…

Unlike coups or political revolutions, cultural revolutions don't just change governments or leaders. Instead, they try to redefine entire societies. Their leaders call them "holistic" and "systematic." Cultural revolutionaries attack the very referents of our daily lives. The Jacobins' so-called Reign of Terror during the French…

As the country struggles to vanquish coronavirus, Americans are witnessing a bizarre phenomenon in which some authorities tolerate and even praise highly politicized mass gatherings while at the same time suppress small activities – like taking children to a playground – that are important to quality of life. The Centers for…

China is determined to block investigations of where COVID-19 came from. But worse, influential American scientists are going along with censoring any inquiry. They're declaring their "solidarity with the scientists and health professionals of China." That's a deadly problem. Conquering this virus and devising a vaccine will require unbiased…

The ancient Greeks created new words like "paradox" and "irony" to describe the wide gap between what people profess and assume, and what they actually do and suffer. Remember the blind prophet Teiresias of ancient drama. In the carnage of Athenian tragedy he alone usually ends up foreseeing danger better than did those with keen…

What seemed like a crazy slogan on the far left – "Defund the Police" – is threatening to become a reality in some cities around the country. On Sunday the president of the Minneapolis City Council announced that a two-thirds majority of the council now supports "ending the Minneapolis Police Department." Council…