While Gov. Jerry Brown blames the horrific death toll from California’s late-season wildfires, he and the state’s lawmakers have done little to discourage people from building homes in high-risk wildfire zones known as the wildland-urban interface (WUI). By shifting the cost of wildfire prevention and protection to general taxpayers, they send the wrong signals about risk to WUI homeowners.
The Christmas season is upon us and once again, the headlines in the mainstream news are replete with stories of secular intolerance of Christ’s mass. Leading this year’s Festivus parade is Jennifer Sinclair, the principal of Nebraska’s Manchester Elementary School who sent out a memo earlier this week to her faculty, staff, students and parents telling them that Santa Claus, Christmas trees, reindeer, the colors green and red, and even candy canes were considered offensive and would, therefore, be prohibited at her school.
Biographies written by a friend of the subject have warmth and immediacy -- often a sparkling immediacy. Think of Boswell on Johnson, or Elizabeth Gaskell on Charlotte Bronte.
Self-declared socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told Republicans that instead of "drooling" to go public with all her mistakes and missteps, they ought to instead "actually step up enough to make the argument they want to make." OK. Invitation accepted. So here goes: Socialists don't belong in American politics.
Was it a blue wave? A blue ripple? That "big victory" for President Trump? Or "a new day in America" for Nancy Pelosi? Well, the pundits have spent the last two weeks putting everything in the win and loss columns and the only thing they seem to be able to agree on is that there were some wins and some losses.
Nobody is as insignificant in the Washington pecking order as a freshman member of Congress just off the turnip truck and into a maelstrom of ignorance and uncertainty all about him. One member of a freshman class of not so long ago recalls arriving at Reagan National Airport, finding his way through the terminal maze to curbside, and hailing a taxi.
Would you vote for a politician who promised to both increase traffic congestion and increase your taxes — and yes, I wrote "increase." For those of us who live in Northern Virginia that is precisely what happened last week, when our state and local government officials announced with considerable fanfare that they had bribed Amazon — with billions of taxpayer money — to build one of its new headquarters in Virginia. With great pride, they also told us that they paid a much smaller bribe to Amazon per promised new job than did the New York governor and mayor. (Virginia Motto: We are not as dumb as New Yorkers.)
After two recounts — one by machine, the other by hand — after a concession speech by Andrew Gillum, the Democratic candidate for governor, which was withdrawn and then re-delivered; after hordes of lawyers descended on the state to argue that "every vote should be counted," including mail-in ballots with faulty signatures that were rejected the first time around, it's finally over.
As it goes in Mary Chapin Carpenter's song "Passionate Kisses," "Is it too much to ask? I want a comfortable bed that won't hurt my back, food to fill me up and warm clothes and all that stuff." The song's lyrics touch the basic economic necessities in America, not available to all, because some still are looking for opportunity and employment. Is it too much to ask? Congress shouldn't think so and neither should we.
It's an unfortunate reality in this day and age that higher education is failing to connect many Americans with fulfilling, high-paying jobs. People come out of college saddled with tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt and a degree that gets them nowhere. The picture is dire: According to one report, student loan debt is now more than $1.5 trillion nationwide, with 44 million Americans in debt.
The holiday season is almost upon us and with the end-of-year merriment comes a sobering report: Alcohol deaths are on the rise, claiming more lives than the national opioid crisis.
If you'd been at the Mark Hellinger Theater in New York on Feb. 18, 1987, you'd have heard the head of Compaq introduce the company's latest personal computer.
F.H. Buckley, a foundation professor at George Mason University's Scalia School of Law, a contributor to a variety of journals and author of three previous books, came to the United States in 1989 as an immigrant from Canada, believing that "Americans are the most generous and admirable of people," with an absolute faith in the truth and efficacy of the American Dream.
A common refrain when people lament violence, sex and f-bombs in movies, goes: "How did we get from the golden days of Hollywood to this?"
New imagery taken by commercial satellites shows that North Korea is continuing to deploy nuclear-capable ballistic missiles at undisclosed bases, according to a study released last week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Some rare good news as we emerge from an intense and exhausting political season: In 2017, investment in broadband rose by $1.5 billion to $76.3 billion. This reversed a decline of approximately $3.2 billion in 2015-16.
President Trump is being criticized by both parties for his continued pledge that he will not cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. Liberals are frustrated because they so desperately want to run TV ads against Mr. Trump rolling grandma over the cliff in her wheelchair.
In "The Magician's Nephew" from "The Chronicles of Narnia" series, C.S. Lewis tells us of the young boy named Digory who is sent on a journey by Aslan to retrieve an apple from a distant garden beyond the western mountains. The boy is told not to eat the fruit but rather to simply pluck it from its branch and return it to the Lion who intends to use it to plant a tree that will provide freedom, justice and protection to Narnia forevermore.
Somebody really should tell Max Boot to snap out of it. An intelligent, facile writer with a wide if not particularly deep range of interests, his obsession with Donald Trump has turned him into a fussing, fuming drama queen, a manic Captain Ahab in pursuit of a not-so-ferocious Great White Whale named Trump.
Until the 1980s, the majority of American voters -- save for those facing the most dire of extenuating circumstances -- had to physically travel to the polls to cast their ballots, and they had to do so on Election Day. We need to get back to those times.
Britain and the envious Europeans are discovering that breaking up is hard to do, particularly when the Europeans want to keep the house, the car, the bank account and give up only the kids. The particulars of the deal were written by the British themselves, so you might not understand why any of them wouldn't like it.
As we close out a year marked by data breaches at financial institutions, search engines and Cambridge Analytica's misuse of Facebook user information, conversations about open banking and data sharing have understandably, yet fallaciously, adopted a fearful tone.
