Here’s an opinion that might as well be a fact of life: Men of all ages find beauty queens to be attractive. Yes, I know, it’s quite a newsflash. Remember, you read it here first. Yet judging by the media’s reaction when longtime sports . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full...
I met Judge Robert Bork once, in the summer of 1989, when I was interning at Accuracy in Media. I was working on a feature story for the Washington Inquirer, AIM’s weekly newspaper, about the Smithsonian Institution’s use of tax dollars to fund the performance . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the...
It has become commonplace to observe that the American people are now divided into two distinct camps, roughly approximated by the opposing voters in the recent presidential election. The Blues, concentrated in the Northern tier and Pacific states, are the progressives, marching on into the brave new world of . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
Bob Costas fired off a lecture during prime-time NBC coverage of the NFL that outraged some political commentators and fans. The speech was in response to a murder-suicide committed by Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher, 25, who killed Kasandra Perkins, 22, the mother of his infant . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
The crescent moon is rising over Deutschland. After France, Germany has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe. According to government statistics, approximately 3 to 3.5 million Muslims live in Germany. Of these, only about 80 percent are citizens. Most of the Muslim population trace their roots to . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
Following the AKP (Justice and Development Party) victory in February 2002, Turkey’s clout has been steadily increasing in the Balkans, the Arab world, and the predominantly Muslim regions of the former Soviet Union. Prime Minister Rejep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is pursuing a neo-Ottoman agenda that blends . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access...
The girly-men at the New York Times and a perpetually aggrieved feminist you’ve never heard of finally got what they wanted. In August, Augusta National Country Club, home of the storied Masters Tournament, finally admitted two women: Condoleezza Rice, a neocon secretary of state under . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the...
Eugene Dominick Genovese, r.i.p. Gene Genovese, 82, one the more important and controversial American historians of the 20th century, passed away quietly at his Atlanta home on September 26. A dockworker’s intellectually precocious son, who came up through Brooklyn College and Columbia University, Genovese embraced Marxism . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access...
Imagine a club where you have to earn $137 million per year to join, and which limits membership to 400 people. That, we’d all agree, is an exclusive club. Mitt Romney, for example, probably thinks he is rich, but he could not get in. He’d be told . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
The Golden State is now the Bankruptcy State. In late July and early August, California suffered a cluster of bankruptcies in three cities: Stockton, San Bernardino, and Mammoth Lakes. In 2008, Vallejo declared bankruptcy. Since 2010, 26 municipalities in the United States have filed for bankruptcy. The . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
What would the country be like if Congress added to every law it passed a section that said “No court of the United States or any state shall have power to review or interpret this act”? Such a proviso, popularly known as a “stripper,” prevents the Supreme Court from . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
Browsers of our metropolitan dailies are well aware of these papers’ attempt at rebranding our national holidays. Thanksgiving has become Immigration Day, and so has the Fourth of July. But, as we should have learned by now, it can get worse. Readers of the editorial page of the St . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
There’s a lot to be said—though as a conservative I hate to admit it—for the sheer passage of time. Change can elevate as well as degrade. We don’t have to believe in the bauble Progress in order to know that established orders require and invite . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the...
Dan Cathy, the CEO of the successful chain restaurant Chick-fil-A and a devout Baptist, has made the mistake of insisting that a spade is in fact a spade, and that can mean only one thing: He and his delicious chicken have to go. If only . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the...
Try an experiment next time you’re watching an old movie—say, one from the 40’s: Count the fat people. In Casablanca, for instance, you’ve got roly-poly Sydney Greenstreet. That’s it for corpulence. Bogart? Paul Henreid? Conrad Veidt? Straight up and down, like two-by . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article and...
The Kremlin has reacted to continuing protests over election fraud and what the protestors see as the illegitimacy of the regime by toughening the law on mass meetings and is beginning to wield the newly adopted law against protestors and the protest leaders. The protests have been centered in . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
So here we are a year and a half after the start of the protests of Tahrir Square in Cairo, which Tom Friedman and the rest of the Arab Springers had promised would give birth to a New Middle East, where democracy and liberal values would reign from here . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
On June 5, we lost not only one of our finest writers but a true American storyteller and one of the last of the book people. For Ray Bradbury, who passed away at the age of 91, was, like the remnant that Montag joins at the end of Fahrenheit . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
China’s emergence as the world’s second-largest economy dates to the then-radical turn toward “reforms and openness” adopted in 1978 at the Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee. The economic worldview of Mao Tse-tung emphasized the importance of agricultural peasant workers, a . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full...
Early elections were held in Greece on May 6, but the results have left the birthplace of democracy without a government. The leading liberal New Democracy party got just 19 percent of the vote and 108 seats in the 300-member Greek parliament. Their main opponents for the last . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
North Korea’s failed missile launch has created a pervasive sense of relief and a little smirking in U.S. and East Asian policy circles. The latest episode was Pyongyang’s fourth unsuccessful launch of a satellite since 1998, and it confirmed that the country’s missile program still . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the...
Writing recently in Forbes, Brian Wesbury continued a theme that is popular among Beltway Republicans, warning about the dangers of a consumption tax system known as a Value-Added Tax (VAT). Wesbury advances the specious argument that a VAT is bad because it would be placed “on top of . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
If you had bet me six months ago that the grassroots disaffection in the Republican Party, as demonstrated by the “Tea Party” movement, would guarantee a responsive nominee for president, you would have lost. I am no prophet, just an observer with some historical perspective. I would have bet . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
Ralph Walker Willis was a fireman, the author of five books, including My Life as a Jarhead (1999), and a contributor to Chronicles, but most of all he was a Marine. He was related to the famous mountain man Joe Walker, and, like Walker, Ralph was a tall, strapping . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
By the time you read this, nine Americans may well have declared the United States a nonentity. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court was supposed to decide on the constitutionality of Arizona’s SB 1070, the now-famous law that sought to stem the tide of . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full...
I read in a recent New York Times article of a new conundrum for Republican presidential candidates; to wit, what music they can play, and what music they can’t, at rallies whose purpose is the extrusion of Barack Obama from national political life. Songwriters and performers . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access...
Americans are likely to hear more about “insourcing” as the 2012 presidential campaign unfolds. President Barack Obama advanced the term during a February 15 trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “You’ve all heard enough about outsourcing,” he explained. “Well, more and more companies like Master Lock are now insourcing. They . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
When the people’s fundamental law is ignored by the legislature, the remedy is typically to elect new representatives to set things right. If the people’s fundamental law is transgressed by the courts, the correction is often not so easy. Many judges are appointed for life and never . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
As an American President prepares for his reelection campaign, he has to deal with a complex crisis in the Middle East. A radical regime is projecting its military power, trying to destabilize the pro-American governments in the Middle East, threatening the state of Israel, and aiming to achieve . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
It was a sad day for conservatives when, on December 5, 2011, Laurent Gbagbo rose to speak in the antiseptic courtroom of the International Criminal Court. Polite, old-fashioned (if a little verbose), well-dressed (but obviously not very well), the 66-year-old former president of Ivory Coast . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the...
Thomas H. Landess died from a sudden illness on January 9, 2012. He was 80 years old. His death was a shock to his family and his many friends. I last heard from Tom two days before his death, an event that was out of mind, so warm and . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
Thomas H. Landess, R.I.P. At 80 Tom was still producing every day more than a day’s worth of versatile work. His sudden passing in January struck like an unexpected calamity that portends the end of an era. We lost not only the truest of friends, but . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access...
In August 1997, Princess Diana died in a car accident. A few days later, Mother Teresa died. The death of Diana prompted an enormous outpouring of emotion. One writer, who had delivered a drunken diatribe against Mother Teresa during ABC’s televised coverage of her funeral, was unmoved, describing . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
Time’s choice for 2011 Person of the Year—the Protester—arouses many a consideration. The first Time-nominated Man of the Year was Charles Lindbergh in 1927, before everyone forgot that, on his flight, he wore a suit and tie. Times have changed. Hitler and Sta . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the full article...
President Barack Obama’s nine-day Asian and Australian tour in November was marked by a sudden outburst of bellicose oratory at the sixth East Asian Summit in Bali. China must “play by the rules” and stop her “military advances,” he declared, and the United States “will send a . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
California is like a beautiful woman who always falls for losers. In just the past 13 years, voters put on the governor’s throne Gray Davis, who was so bad he was dumped from power in the state’s historic 2003 recall. He was replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
Middle East historian William W. Harris described the Levant as the “eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt,” a geographical zone that includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and a “fractured cultural mosaic” of ethnic and religious groups.
Last week, we received word that Marion Montgomery was dying. He had been diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of cancer only days earlier and had already fallen into the deep sleep that so often precedes death. By the weekend he was gone. The funeral was held . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
Texas Gov. Rick Perry enjoyed one month as the heartthrob of the Republican Party. He announced his presidential bid on August 13, overshadowing Rep. Michele Bachmann’s narrow victory over Rep. Ron Paul in the Ames Straw Poll. By September 15, a Bloomberg National Poll showed him leading former . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
Clyde Wilson once remarked that, if one were to distill multiculturalism to its essence, one would be left with nothing at all. As he put it, multiculturalism means many fashions, mutable and discardable, but no culture. An unintentional corroboration comes from a recent article dismissing “declinism” in our northeastern . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
“That is what we honor on days of national commemoration—those aspects of the American experience that are enduring. . . . It will be said of us that we kept that faith; that we took a painful blow, and emerged stronger. ‘Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in . . . Subscribers...
Those who have an interest in the cultural survival of the West may note with increasing trepidation that the very things that have traditionally characterized it are being cannibalized alive. Australia is no exception to this general trend. The thought occurred to me recently while visiting the . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will return to the Kremlin as president in 2012, ending speculation on the fate of the “national leader” and of the “tandem” he had formed with current President Dmitri Medvedev. Medvedev nominated Putin on September 24 during the congress of the ruling United Russia . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
Much of the international politics of the 20th century revolved around the drive for national self-determination, such as that of the Serbs in the Balkans, setting in motion the crises that led to the Great War, or that of the Germans in the Sudetenland, aggravating the tensions that . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
This past summer, a headline appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal: “Kentucky terrorist arrests shouldn’t jeopardize refugee program, advocates say.” The first paragraph ran: “As U.S. authorities recheck intelligence gathered on refugees, resettlement agencies say the arrest of two suspected Iraqi terrorists in Kentucky should not jeopardize . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access...
Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old black man, was shot dead on Thursday, August 4, by police officers in Tottenham, a largely black and impoverished suburb of northeast London. Duggan was a member of the Star Gang, which has a reputation for carrying guns and dealing in hard drugs . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to...
I became acquainted with Peter Stanlis through my connection with The Rockford Institute, yet he is always associated in my mind with New Mexico, where our late mutual friend Jim Rauen had retired from his construction business in Chicago. Jim and his wife, Ann, were for many years benefactors . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe...
Peter Stanlis sometimes seemed stiff and formal; and he was, because he practiced his whole life the arts of a gentleman. This required a certain reserve, but one that never covered heavily the kindness of his Christian nature. Part of being a true gentleman is to understate one’s . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now...
“Viva Mexico! Viva Mexico!” As he spoke those words, murderer and rapist Humberto Leal felt the gush of pentobarbital run into his arm. Like the late, lamented Mexican hero José Ernesto Medellín, whom Texas executed in 2008, Leal and his legal backers, including the Mexican government . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access...
This is strange to say, but observation bears it out: Almost all publishers and most booksellers and librarians neither know nor care anything about books. Publishers don’t have a clue as to what is a good book or even a good-selling book. Whenever you run . . . Subscribers Only Subscribe now to access the...