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.
Vice President Mike Pence's visit to the Indo-Pacific this week casts a spotlight on a region increasingly vital to global security and prosperity. State-based and private investors are investing vast amounts to build infrastructure and advance economic growth. For the emerging economies of the Indo-Pacific to realize their full potential, they must avoid economic traps.
Things haven't been going well for President Trump since last week's midterm elections, when the Democrats won majority control of the House.
Every evening, looking dapper in dark suit and tie, Ashok Bajaj visits each of his 10 Washington restaurants to make sure kitchens are running smoothly and patrons are happy. He is not a cook, but an entrepreneur with a vision of what Washingtonians enjoy eating today and tomorrow as well.
In Michael Connelly's crime thriller "The Late Show," he introduced us to a new character, Renee Ballard, an attractive, 30-ish dedicated and smart Los Angeles detective who was working the night shift.
Can you say banana republic? Fact is, the systems are crumbling. The gate-guards of principle are way too few and far between, way too quiet to be effective. And what's going to result from all this Election Day upset, soon enough, is a major shift in how U.S. elections will be conducted.
A cat has nine lives. A woman sometimes has more than that. The feline of the species keeps coming up with surprises and you can see them most dramatically in politics. Hillary Clinton, for example, has been reincarnated more times than Shirley MacLaine, and she may be about to see whether the third time really does have the charm.
Now that the 2018 midterm elections are in the history books (for the most part — what's up with you, Broward County?), two things are increasingly clear.
One doesn't have to be Roman Catholic or even Christian to recognize the great good the Catholic Church has done. America would be worse off were it not its pro-life stance and numerous acts of charity.
Amob of protesters associated with the radical left-wing group Antifa swarmed the private residence of Fox News host Tucker Carlson on the night of Nov. 7. They yelled, "Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!" The mob's apparent aim was to catch Mr. Carlson's family inside and so terrify them that he might temper his conservative views. Only Mr. Carlson's wife was home at the time. She locked herself in a pantry and called police.
Although Democrats gained ground everywhere but the Senate, President Trump won the midterm. While doubly counterintuitive — that opponents could advance and someone not on the ballot prevail — Democrats not only failed to knock Mr. Trump out in 2018, but set him up for 2020. Democrats won enough to make themselves relevant, but in doing so, also making a perfect contrast for the president.
The United States has been at war with China since at least 1947-49, when Chiang Kai-shek, his extended family and the Chinese Nationalist regime were air and boatlifted from mainland China to Taiwan, this after Mao Zedong's Communist forces prevailed against Chiang's Nationalists. During the Korean War (1950-53), large scale military combat between U.S. and Chinese forces actually took place; however, since then the war has largely been an economic one, and the Chinese have beaten the United States badly.
President Trump and the administration have long vowed to revive America as the world's leading energy producer. To fulfill this promise — as well as unofficial campaign promises — the administration announced in June that it planned to bail out coal and nuclear power plants at risk of being shuttered under the guise of national security, claiming saving these plants would bolster "grid resilience" and promote American "energy dominance."
Last week's surprise forced resignation of Jeff Sessions as attorney general of the United States set in motion a series of events that will soon resonate in all corners of the Department of Justice.
A quiet but deadly game is constantly waged in Washington and environs between CIA and FBI officers and their Russian counterparts.
Eight years ago this month, Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian, was prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to be hanged on the charge of blasphemy. She has spent the years since on death row. Now, Pakistan's Supreme Court has overturned her conviction on grounds of insufficient evidence. So this sad story turns out to have a happy ending, right? C'mon, you knew it wasn't going to be that simple.
I have been reading a most perspicacious book by my friend Andrew Roberts. It is just out, "Churchill: Walking With Destiny." It is terrific. In fact, I shall hazard the judgment that readers will not completely understand the greatest political leader of the 20th century (and one of the most endearing) without reading Andrew Roberts' Churchill.
With the Democrats about to take control of the House along with the funding for crucial programs in health care, education, natural resources and science, hysteria over global warming is about to get hotter.
Recently, The Economist published a short film titled "China: Facing Up to Hyper-Surveillance," detailing how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses facial recognition technology to advance state control through the abuse of power over its own citizens. The CCP suppresses those who criticize the party and those of different faiths, in the name of "decreasing [the] number of criminal offenses."
In addition to the Great White Media, Hollywood, academe and the Washington bureaucracy, Democratic partisan advantage is ruthlessly pursued through election agencies in many of our states. Their mission: The well-organized theft of elections through corrupt, low-level officials backed by the aggressive use of "law-fare" — often cloaked in the mantra of "counting every note." Like termites surmised by the sudden glare of a home-inspector's flashlight, its representatives are currently under scrutiny (but still burrowing hard) in Broward Country and Palm Beach, Florida as well as Georgia and elsewhere.
President Trump's tax cuts and deregulation are delivering as promised. Over the last year, GDP is up 3 percent.
