In the era of social media — where videos gone “viral” are the currency of the realm — hyper-partisanship, and, dare we say, symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome everywhere, political harassment is in vogue. Trump administration officials are routinely heckled and harassed in public places, like restaurants. This obnoxious behavior is corrosive of our democratic society. Political differences here are supposed to be debated, discussed and ultimately voted on. Public harassment has no place in an open society.
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Some on the left are angry, if not apoplectic, that conservatives are turning the tables on them and co-opting one of their own tactics against liberal policies. But turnabout, as they say, is fair play: Self-styled “progressives,” it seems, aren’t the only ones who can unilaterally decide which laws they will or will not enforce and/or comply with.
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Q: In the past week, what have each of the following demonstrated:
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, Congress and the White House are at yet another constitutional deadlock, this time over how the United States should proceed in the ongoing civil war in Syria.
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A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic, Joseph Stalin is reputed to have observed. (And as one of the most prolific murderers of the 20th century, Old Joe should have known of what he spoke.) Likewise, losing 20 or even 100 bucks is deeply annoying. But losing $1 trillion? Why, that's mere statistic — indeed, to us mere mortals, $1 trillion is an unfathomable amount.
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Love makes the world go 'round, it is said, but it's money that greases its spin. When news arrives of a weakening economy, some looking out through the wrong end of binoculars can mistake a fly in the ointment for a wallet-ravaging behemoth. With proper perspective, there can be little doubt the U.S. economy under President Trump is on full throttle, and the roar means rising prosperity for American families.
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In its most common usage, the expression "Freedom isn't free" is intended to convey gratitude for the service of members of the military and to recognize that the freedoms we all enjoy are possible only because of the risks taken, and sacrifices made, by veterans and current members of the armed forces.
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If there are two sides to every story, they both deserve to be heard. In the epic tale of foreign influence in the 2016 presidential election, the narrative about Russia helping Donald Trump was exhaustively probed and ultimately debunked. As Americans gape at Democrats' current efforts to impugn and impeach President Trump, they should be mindful that the gathering political storm represents the party's desperate efforts to suppress the other side of the story — that it was Hillary Clinton's campaign, together with Obama administration officials, who conspired with foreign governments to steal the election.
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Joe Biden just couldn't quit Ukraine. When he served as vice president, Mr. Biden travelled more than once to Ukraine to strongarm the Slavic country into ousting its top prosecutor, one Victor Shokin. On his December 2015 visit to Kyiv and a subsequent March 2016 journey to the country, Mr. Biden brought with him what is commonly referred to as "leverage." The Obama administration threatened to withhold aid from the country, unless they canned Mr. Shoki. A lot of aid, too: Some $1 billion in loan guarantees. That was a serious threat to war-torn Ukraine, which can at times barely keep its own lights on.
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Sen. Charles Schumer forced a vote in the Senate last week that he knew would fail before the roll was ever called. It did, and rightly so. So much for the self-styled "world's greatest deliberatively body."
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Birthdays are occasions to celebrate, and also reflect. As the People's Republic of China turns 70, the nations of the world join China in awe-filled recognition of its rapid rise from an agrarian to a cutting-edge culture. Amid the fanfare, the cost of its historic reliance on repression must not be forgotten.
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Presidential wannabe Bernie Sanders is again dunking his spending bucket deeply in what he firmly believes is a bottomless federal well.
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America is rightly proud of its warfighters. They are the best at what they do, in peacetime and in battle. They keep us secure and are ready to answer the call any time the nation's interests are imperiled. And because they are, it is incumbent on both the taxpayers and policymakers to do our utmost to ensure they have the finest food, training and equipment possible.
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Impeachment is a fool's errand. But the beat goes on — that is, the one determined to beat down Donald Trump.
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No matter how ill-advised or how unmoored from the U.S. Constitution their policies and programs are, liberals refuse to take "no" for an answer. Their strategy is to wear down and outlast opposition to their bad public-policy prescriptions. Two prime examples: Liberals unsuccessfully pushed for decades, beginning with a 1972 federal lawsuit, for the legalization of same-sex marriage, until five unelected U.S. Supreme Court justices gave it to them by fiat in June 2015. Then there's the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, which was also first proposed in 1972. Radical feminists to this day are seeking to resurrect the ERA from the constitutional crypt, even though its ratification deadline came and went in 1979. (In a textbook example of changing the rules in the middle of the game — liberals then demanded and won a three-year extension of the deadline till 1982, but it still failed to garner ratification by the requisite 38 states.)
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Saving the world is the holy grail of each generation. Superheroes who used to come to the rescue in comic books now do it digitally. In this era of global consciousness, regular folks can roll up their sleeves and join the ranks of the adored. Now it's called saving the planet, and it doesn't require a cape and tights. The only prerequisite is a willingness to turn thumbs up for environmental activism, and the United Nations is all thumbs with its Climate Action Summit, a warm-up act for the U.N. General Assembly opening on Tuesday in New York.
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It's impossible to surf the Web without encountering ads promoting the sale of stimulants, weight loss pills, remedies for dysfunction, and other pseudo-pharmaceuticals. They're ubiquitous and, for the folks who sell these modern-day patent medicines, highly lucrative.
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Americans accustomed to the feel of a rock-solid republic may be vexed by tremors in the body politic. Some of the bad vibrations are clearly the repercussions of the two predominant political parties arrayed in thunderous battle against each other. Building in intensity, though, is a throbbing sense that the nation is losing its ability for holding fair elections to public office. On the threshold of the 2020 presidential campaign, voters must hold to account any faction scheming to fiddle with voting machines or with voters' heads.
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One of the questions in Philosophy 101 that leaves collegians scratching their chins asks: "If a tree falls in the woods, and there's no one there to hear it, did it make a sound?"
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Washington, D.C.'s congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, is perturbed by what she claims is a lack of interest in, and insufficient prosecutions of, so-called "hate crimes" on the part of the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
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New York, get ready for some traffic snarls. The 74th United Nations General Assembly opens this this week, with leaders of many of the world's nations jetting into Midtown Manhattan for meetings, speeches and debate on issues ranging from the Kashmir crisis to climate to development financing. Global leaders from Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to U.S. President Donald Trump are expected to join the festivities. The latter two are, in fact, widely rumored to be planning to meet on the sidelines.
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Thomas Jefferson said, "When angry, count to ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred." The nation could have benefited from such simple wisdom in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president rather than Hillary Clinton. Her dumbfounded supporters numbering many millions flew into a rage and have yet to return to Earth. Instead of counting to 10 or a hundred, the always-angry are counting on copious investigations to knock President Trump out of the White House.
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