I'm busily putting together the first installment of our year-end "best/worst" lists, and so am unable to write an original column today. Tune in tomorrow to see the result. For now, please enjoy the following, where I uncover a worldwide conspiracy that each and every one of you has participated in at one point or another in your lives. Yes, you! You're a co-conspirator just like all the others....

Read Complete Article »

It's that time of year when Congress actually gets things done, so they don't have to work through the holidays. This is always a powerful incentive, and this year is no different. Paul Ryan actually bargained with Democrats instead of following the hotheads in his party into another government shutdown, which bodes well for the future of the House of Representatives (and America at large). But, as with all big omnibus budget bills, this means all kinds of unrelated issues -- from health care for 9/11 first responders to whether we export oil or not -- are tossed into the giant, must-pass bill. And along with the wave of other single-issue items came some good news for marijuana legal reformers.

Read Complete Article »

Hillary Clinton is right. Last night, on Seth Meyers's late-night show, Clinton had this to say about Donald Trump's candidacy: "I no longer think he is funny." Earlier in the week, the Huffington Post announced that it was un-banishing Trump from the "Entertainment" section and would now properly cover him under "Politics." Arianna and Hillary are correct -- what started out as a hilarious joke is no longer even the slightest bit funny anymore.

Read Complete Article »

We took last week off for the holidays, so we've got a lot of ground to cover today. Sadly, this included two terrorist attacks in America, one in Colorado and one in Southern California. The truly sad part is that these mass shootings are becoming so common nowadays that within a few months most people will have forgotten them, as we all focus on fresher, more recent tragedies. Welcome to a very grim "new normal," in other words. Sorry to start off on such a heavy note, but such news is impossible to ignore.

Read Complete Article »

President Barack Obama's job approval rating took a dip downwards in November, to hit a new low point for the entire calendar year. Most of this was due to the panicky reaction the political world had to the Paris terrorist attack. President Obama's reaction to the attacks was fairly muted, spread out over an overseas trip which was followed up by a terse statement (rather than, say, a prime-time Oval Office speech) to America on his strategy for fighting terrorism and the Islamic State.

Read Complete Article »

Once again, a gunman has killed people for political reasons. Once again, he is described in the mainstream media using words and phrases such as: deranged, mentally disturbed, homicidal, gunman, shooter, criminal, murderer, and lone wolf. He may have been all of that, but one key descriptive word is conspicuously missing from most of the commentary: terrorist. Killing people who don't believe what you believe in order to further your political aims is, indeed, one of the definitions of terrorism. If the suspect involved had recently arrived here from Syria (or anywhere else in the Middle East, really), would the news networks be so cautious about calling him a "terrorist"? I seriously doubt it. In fact, if that were the case, he'd likely be quickly labelled an "Islamic terrorist."

Read Complete Article »

What with the lateness of the hour (and the fact that nobody's going to read much of anything tomorrow), I am hereby officially punting on writing today's column. We'll be relaxing for the rest of the week, in fact, as we celebrate the great American feast of Thanksgiving as well as all the other [...]

Read Complete Article »

President Barack Obama, in a recent interview, pointed out one of his own shortcomings in a bit of fairly accurate self-reflection. When asked the hardest lesson he has yet learned while in office, Obama responded: "You can't separate good policy from the need to bring the American people along and make sure that they know why you're doing what you're doing. And that's particularly true now in this new communications era." He went on to say, about his first few years as president: "a certain arrogance crept in, in the sense of thinking as long as we get the policy ready, we didn't have to sell it."

Read Complete Article »

Republicans, of course, do the whole fear thing very well. Democrats cannot hope to ever stoke the public's fear as effectively as Republicans. This is a well-known fact, but this week it was on display more than usual, because there are still 14 Republicans running for their party's presidential nomination. So what we witnessed was a race to the bottom, as each candidate tried to top the lunacy emanating from all the other campaigns.

Read Complete Article »

Imagine for just a moment that, right now, there were thousands of refugees from a land over the seas who not only wanted to come to America, but were actually now physically on the North American continent, heading north towards our southern border. In this scenario, the country they're fleeing has, in the past, dumped on American shores criminals and mentally disturbed people, in a wave of migrants. Up until the very recent past, this country was also officially listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. It actually sheltered terrorists who had committed acts of terror against Americans on American soil. And now 2,000 people from this country were trying desperately to get north to the United States.

Read Complete Article »