Columns ‹ Opinion
Lee Habeeb
Lee Habeeb is the vice president of content at Salem Radio Network. He lives in Oxford, Miss., with his wife, Valerie, and daughter, Reagan.
Why Small Is Better
In what may be the most important poll in recent memory, Gallup asked Americans in December what they considered “the biggest threat to the country in the future”: big government, big business, or big labor. Seventy-two percent selected “big government,” a record high in the nearly 50 years that Gallup has been asking the question. You won’t be...
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The Media, the South
When will the leaders at Ole Miss finally learn? When will they finally figure out that some things are above the pay grade of college chancellors and administrators? When will they learn that no matter how hard you try to protect students from the stupidity and hatefulness of a very few people, stupidity and hatefulness will always be among us?
The goal of...
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Why don’t Americans know the real life stories of how wealth is created in America? And by whom?
How did it happen? How did a couple of Jewish kids from humble origins become two of the wealthiest men in America? They are remarkable tales, the stories of Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus and Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson. Stories few Americans know. Stories of how wealth is really created in our country. And by whom. Stories that could have happened...
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A&E’s Duck Dynasty Dilemma
It had never happened before. When big, powerful TV executives ask a star to apologize for what they deem inappropriate comments or behavior, the star simply complies. A team of publicists is assembled, the star does the obligatory apology tour for the press and promises never to do or say what he did or said again. Ever.
But the TV gods never met a man like...
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The Gospel According to Peanuts
Few headlines about network television make me giddy. Fewer still make me hopeful that all is good in the world. But back in August of 2010, I read the following headline from the media pages with great excitement: “Charlie Brown Is Here to Stay: ABC Picks Up ‘Peanuts’ Specials Through 2015.” The first of these to be made, the famous Christmas special,...
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Truckers under Siege II
It happens sometimes. You write something about public policy that hits home. That’s what happened when Betsy Morris of the Wall Street Journal told the story of Manuel Hernandez, a 50-year-old long-haul trucker whose living and way of life are under assault by bureaucrats working at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, an agency within the U.S....
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The Government’s War on Long-Haul Truckers
Manuel Hernandez is not a complainer. But lately, he’s got a lot to complain about. Excessive government regulations are making it harder and harder for him to earn a living. And he’s not sure what he can do about it.
Hernandez is not an energy executive being hassled by the EPA, a banker trying to cope with Dodd-Frank, or a doctor getting nickel-and-dimed...
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All-American Sharks
It’s an exceedingly simple show: A panel of potential investors — “the sharks” — sit in a row, taking business pitches from Americans of every imaginable stripe, and every imaginable walk of life. They are hoping to get those rich guys and gals — themselves a walk through the American diversity quilt — to fund their start-up businesses.
The show is...
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A Deficit of Stories
How did it happen? How did we wake up one day to find ourselves cast as the bad guys for trying to save future generations from a lifetime of indebtedness? Why are we punished for pointing out that if we keep spending more money than we take in, we won’t continue to be a great country? Why do Americans view the Republican party more negatively than they view...
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Don’t Detroit America
It happens every day. Businesses pick up and leave one state and move to another. So do citizens. They do it not because it’s easy or fun. They do it either to run from someplace or to run to someplace.
And businesses and people around the world are doing the same thing.
Which is why the GOP must start talking about Detroit. And mobility.
There was a day not...
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Islamist War on Christians
I’m waiting. I am a Lebanese Christian, and I am waiting. Waiting for CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, or Time magazine to really tell the story. To finally run this headline: “War on Christians Being Waged by Islamists.”
I’m waiting for someone in the mainstream media to admit the facts.
Matt Lauer and NBC News made...
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Big Mac Under Attack
How do some on the left hate McDonald’s? Let us count the ways.
In 2004 a little-known filmmaker named Morgan Spurlock decided to stuff his face with McDonald’s food all day, every day, for 30 days, and capture it all on film. What happened? Surprise of surprises, Spurlock gained weight — 24 pounds, to be precise. His cholesterol level shot up to 230, and...
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Till Duck Do Us Part
‘Till Duck Do Us Part”: That was the title of the most-talked-about television show in America last week. Was it a revamped version of Looney Tunes? An offering from Animal Planet? No. It was the season opener of America’s favorite TV family show, featuring the women of the extended Robertson clan organizing a formal wedding for the heads of the family,...
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Love and Betrayal
Love. It’s the most powerful word in the English language. When it is flanked by two pronouns, it becomes the most powerful sentence in the English language: I love you.
Those three words change hearts. They change lives. They change everything.
It doesn’t matter what part of the world you live in or what language you speak, there are the equivalents of...
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A White Person’s Reaction to Obama’s Trayvon Martin Speech
He could have been me. I could have been out on neighborhood watch in my community performing my duties on a rainy night. It could have been me following a young African-American male around in my neighborhood because I did not recognize him, and because my neighborhood had been burglarized by young African Americans. It could have been me lying beneath a young...
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Zimmerman: Guilty of Not Being Black
‘We are outraged and heartbroken over today’s verdict,” NAACP president Benjamin Jealous said in a statement moments after a jury of six women found George Zimmerman not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter.
That’s what it has come to for the NAACP. The Zimmerman case wasn’t about due process. It wasn’t about Trayvon Martin’s family...
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