Columns ‹ Opinion
RAND PAUL PICKS WRONG TARGETS
Senator Rand Paul passionately decries the “militarization” of American police departments, but this initiative won’t work in terms of either policy or politics. Changes in policing since 2001, including more sophisticated equipment and better body armor, have occurred at the same time that crime rates continue to plummet: violent incidents went down more...
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RAND PAUL PICKS WRONG TARGETS
Senator Rand Paul passionately decries the “militarization” of American police departments, but this initiative won’t work in terms of either policy or politics. Changes in policing since 2001, including more sophisticated equipment and better body armor, have occurred at the same time that crime rates continue to plummet: violent incidents went down more...
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Resetting federal courts on a more neutral path requires GOP wins in 2014 and 2016
Conservatives who worry about the U.S. Supreme Court shouldn’t worry about if and when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg steps down and how the GOP will respond to that vacancy, but rather when Justices Antonin Scalia or Anthony Kennedy hang up their robes and call it quits.
Scalia and Kennedy are both 78, and while it is hard to imagine either of them laying...
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NPR’S BLINDNESS TO RELIGION’S ROLE
A new study from a Canadian university shows a sense of purpose producing better health and longer lives. But what does it mean to have a “sense of purpose”? Researchers from Carlton University concluded that even in old age those with “purpose and direction” reduced their risk of death in any given year by at least 15 percent.
In reporting this study,...
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NPR’S BLINDNESS TO RELIGION’S ROLE
A new study from a Canadian university shows a sense of purpose producing better health and longer lives. But what does it mean to have a “sense of purpose”? Researchers from Carlton University concluded that even in old age those with “purpose and direction” reduced their risk of death in any given year by at least 15 percent.
In reporting this study,...
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MARTINEZ CANDIDACY CAN ONLY HELP THE GOP
Conservative Governor Susana Martinez of New Mexico seems to be cruising to victory in her race for a second term, and if she wins the expected landslide she should consider a race for the presidency.
As a veteran prosecutor with an admirable tough-on-crime record, and as the wife and daughter of law enforcement professionals, she would provide a refreshing...
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Radical Islam: The Monster in the Room
It’s not the elephant in the room — it’s the monster in the room. Radical Islam is the monster, and it is on the march in the Middle East. And those who are suffering the most from radical Islam’s rise there are Muslims themselves, although Christians, Jews, and ethnic minorities of all kinds — gays too — don’t have it much better.
The pictures...
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Are Conservatives Always “Comfortable”? Liberals Always “Afflicted”?
The “Doonesbury” comic strip by Garry Trudeau has rarely delivered laughs in recent years, but it often provides important perspective on the peculiar worldview of wealthy, Ivy League, establishment liberals.
In last Sunday’s installment, veteran character Mark Slackmeyer, a gay radio broadcaster for NPR, provides commentary regarding the purported...
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THE BIBLE: WORSE THAN “MEIN KAMPF”?
Dan Barker, co-president of The Freedom from Religion Foundation, believes the Bible is a worse guide for human behavior than Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” He took that position on my radio show, when asked about a new effort by a conservative Congressman to give Bibles to all his colleagues as a source for inspiration. By insisting the Bible’s worse than...
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Unlike his ice cream, Doug Ducey won’t melt in Arizona’s political heat
Doug Ducey should be the next governor of Arizona.
Ducey leads in the polls, is the state’s very successful treasurer who led the effort to defeat a massive permanent tax hike, and is one of the founders of one of the state’s pre-eminent business success stories: Cold Stone Creamery, which has become an international brand employing hundreds of...
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Palestine Kills: Why Israel Must Destroy Hamas
by Brian Fahy & Garrett Fahy
Amidst another tense cease fire in Gaza this week, the world stopped to assess the reality on the ground. Israel estimates it has killed 900 Hamas terrorists – a redundancy – and destroyed 32 tunnels that Hamas previously used to infiltrate Israel and launch terror attacks against Israelis. 64 Israeli soldiers –...
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Should Americans Feel Guilt For “Disproportionate” Casualties in WWII?
Of all the stupid and malicious arguments against Israel’s self-defense war in Gaza the most ridiculous of them all involves the purportedly “disproportionate” nature of the conflict. According to this charge, the indisputable fact that more than 1,000 Palestinians have died in the fighting while Hamas has succeeded in killing “only” 60 Israelis...
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Lancet: a Home for Evil’s Useful Idiots
Two weeks ago, the British medical journal, Lancet, considered to be one of the world’s leading medical publications, published “An open letter for the people in Gaza.” Signed by four European doctors on behalf of 20 others (17 from Italy and three from the United Kingdom), the letter had virtually nothing to do with medicine. […]
The...
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The border bill House Republicans should have passed
Another week, another 50-car pileup on the GOP fog-enveloped highway known as the House Republican Caucus.
This time it was the border. Last time it was a cut to earned benefits by active duty military. The time before that spending. The time before that … well, who cares. Point is, this isn’t a surprise.
To call the House GOP the Keystone Cops is to...
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Hamas’s Co-Conspirators
It was a law designed to prosecute organized-crime outfits that were harming innocent civilians and businesses and in some cases strangling entire American cities. It was called the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, and the law was passed in the early 1970s. It helped put an end to an era of sprawling organized-crime families, to the Mafia as...
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“NO RED LINES” INVITES WAR IN UKRAINE
While American media focus attention on the ongoing war in Gaza, Europe faces the prospect of a far more devastating conflict in Ukraine. The effort to organize more costly sanctions against Russian aggression deserves support but it represents too little, too late. Putin’s regime doesn’t even hide its open backing for separatist thugs in Eastern Ukraine...
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