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Michael Medved
Michael Medved is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host and bestselling author. His daily three hour show reaches 200 stations across the country and an audience of 4.7 million placing him, for ten years in a row, on the Talkers Magazine list of the top ten political talks shows in the United States. Michael’s columns on politics and media appear regularly in the Wall Street Journal, The Daily Beast and USA Today, where he is a member of the Board of Contributors.
Writer's WebsiteRepublican Gains in Syria Fight
The fight over authorizing military strikes against Syria has already damaged Barack Obama’s international standing and weakened America’s global credibility, but it could bring benefits to Republicans in Congress. Like the nation at large, the GOP remains sharply divided over the right response to Syrian war crimes, but the president has already received...
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An Island of Sanity Amidst Insane Violence
In Israel, elite security personnel recently broke up a Palestinian terrorist cell planning devastating attacks on Jerusalem’s popular Mamilla Mall. This fashionable shopping arcade near the Old City regularly boasts festive, diverse crowds—secular, ultra Orthodox and Arab Muslims together—so the plans for coordinated bomb attacks demonstrate Islamist...
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“The Dream” vs. Nightmares – 50 Years Later
The anniversary of 1963’s March on Washington rightly celebrated the spectacular progress of the black community. In educational outcomes, income, contributions to the culture and political influence, African-Americans have moved forward far more quickly and dramatically than the white majority.
In two areas, however, black realities have gotten much worse:...
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Politics Trumps Policy on Syria
As a matter of foreign policy it’s impossible to understand the president’s demented dithering on Syria but it’s easy to comprehend his partisan political strategy.
Since Republicans are sincerely split on the right approach to the Middle East, sending decisions to Congress will highlight those divisions – and re-enforce Obama’s master narrative that...
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A Governor Can’t Play Therapist-in-Chief
GUEST COLUMN BY DR. DIANE MEDVED.
Why would New Jersey governor Chris Christie make a point of signing into law a bill banning therapy to help minors shift their orientations away from homosexuality? If he’d done nothing, the bill would have become law anyway. But he chose to step forward and sign.
I’m just surprised he did it. Not because he...
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Worshiping Superheroes
Warner Brothers studio has proudly announced that for the first time, Batman (to be played by Ben Affleck) would be teamed with his fellow comic book icon, Superman (played by Englishman Henry Cavill). The last Superman movie, Man of Steel, struck many critics—including me—as a misguided dud, but still made $650 million worldwide.
In fact, comic book...
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Will Unbending Stubbornness Bring Political Success?
My wife Dr. Diane Medved is a psychologist and author of best-selling books on marriage and divorce, and she asks a crucial question about the current image of the Republican Party.
If you got involved with someone who was chronically angry, contentious, uncompromising and self-righteous, would you consider that individual a good bet for marriage? How well...
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Denying Demographic Reality
In debates over rebuilding the GOP, prominent voices in talk radio and elsewhere dismiss efforts to seek support among non-white voters. “We won great victories in the past without ever getting a majority of Hispanics,” they say. This ignores demographic reality: for their triumphs in 1984 and 1988, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush faced an...
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The Key to Conservative Unity
As Washington approaches another budgetary crisis, Republicans face the threat of crippling splits in conservative ranks. This is unnecessary, given broad GOP agreement on an agenda for the future: reduced federal spending, less regulation, tax simplification and a reduction in rates, defense of the unborn, strong national defense, plus roll-back of Obamacare...
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Chief Justice John Marshall on Federal Power
“We admit, as all must admit, that the powers of the Government are limited, and that its limits are not to be transcended. But we think the sound construction of the Constitution must allow to the national legislature that discretion with respect to the means by which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution which will enable that body to...
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Too Early for Predictions, But….
Chris Matthews has already declared a winner in the fight for the GOP presidential nomination, announcing: “I predict the hard right is going to take over the Republican Party in 2016 and that the nomination is going to Rand Paul.” This ignores history: since the birth of the GOP, Republicans nominated candidates from the party’s broad center 36 of 39...
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The Downside of Odd, Original Names
A Tennessee judge exceeded her authority by blocking a mother’s desire to name her baby boy, “Messiah.” But it’s easy to sympathize with a general discomfort with the current mania for odd, attention-getting, non-traditional names. Led by Hollywood celebrities who have imposed monikers like—yes—“Moxie Crimefighter,” “Pilot Inspektor,”...
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Taxation that Punishes the Poor
While expressing compassion for America’s poor, leaders of the left do nothing about two cruel, rapidly rising taxes that fall disproportionately on the destitute. Tobacco taxes have gone up more dramatically than any other form of taxation, and statistics indicate poor people are vastly more likely to smoke cigarettes than the middle class.
At the same...
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Don’t Give Obama What He Wants
As Republican leaders seek consensus on a strategy to block Obamacare, some insist that partial government shutdowns in 1995 and ’96 weren’t disasters for the GOP—despite the sweeping Clinton re-election victory that followed those confrontations. But the current president embraces the conventional wisdom that voters blamed Republicans for shutdowns last...
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“True Conservatives Win Every Time” Is (Alas) Only a Fantasy
A shorter version of this column appeared first in the WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Against all logic, some prominent potentates of the conservative movement promote the absurd proposition that right wing candidates who fail with GOP voters in Republican presidential primaries would magically succeed with Independents and Democrats on November ballots. This...
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Why Obama Is No Jackie Robinson
Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy likens President Obama to an immortal baseball hero as a “Jackie Robinson figure.” The professor told the New York Times: “Jackie Robinson breaks the color barrier and encounters all sorts of denigration, people spitting on him, and because he was a pioneer he had to be above it all.”
This comparison makes no...
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