Mark Steyn

STEYN: Talking the talk

The world turns. In Indonesia, the principal of a Muslim boarding school in Tangerang who is accused of impregnating a 15-year-old student says the DNA test will prove that a malevolent genie is the real father.

January 29, 2010

STEYN: On the precipice

I've been out of the country for a couple of days, so let me see if I've got this right: America's preparing to celebrate the first anniversary of Good King Barack the Hopeychanger's reign by electing a Republican?

January 18, 2010

STEYN: Stripped of reason

Not long after the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini announced his fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the British novelist suddenly turned up on a Muslim radio station in West London late one night and told his interviewer he'd converted to Islam. Marvelous religion, couldn't be happier, Allahu Akbar and all that.

January 12, 2010

Underwear bomber uncovers opportunities (part 2)

On Christmas Day, a gentleman from Nigeria succeeded (effortlessly) in boarding a flight to Detroit with a bomb in his underwear. Pretty funny, huh?

January 5, 2010

Giving and taking away care

Recently, during a bit of banter on Fox News, my colleague Jonah Goldberg reminded me of something I had all but forgotten. In September, during his address to Congress on health care, President Obama declared:

December 29, 2009

‘Very high up’ and really cool

The best summation of the U.N. climate circus in Denmark comes from Andrew Bolt of Australia's Herald Sun: "Nothing is real in Copenhagen - not the temperature record, not the predictions, not the agenda, not the 'solution.' "

December 21, 2009

Let him take another bow

It wasn't so long ago that Barack Obama's speeches were being hailed as "extraordinary" "rhetorical magic" (Joe Klein in Time magazine) that should be "required reading in classrooms" (Bob Herbert in the New York Times). Pity the poor grade-schoolers who have to be on the bus at 5 a.m. for a daylong slog through the 4,000-word sludge of the president's Nobel thank-you.

December 14, 2009

Obama’s surge — and withdrawal

If you happen to live in Kabul or Jalalabad, Ghurian or Kandahar, then a U.S. presidential speech about Afghanistan is, indeed, about Afghanistan.

December 7, 2009

Censoring contradictions

My favorite moment in the Climategate/Climaquiddick scandal currently roiling the "climate change" racket was Stuart Varney's interview on Fox News with the actor Ed Begley Jr., star of the 1980s medical drama "St. Elsewhere" but latterly better known, as is the fashion with members of the thespian community, as an "activist."

November 30, 2009

Ego of ‘O’: It’s all about him

My radio pal Hugh Hewitt said to me on the air the other day that President Obama "doesn't know how to be president." It was a low but effective crack and I didn't pay it much heed.

November 23, 2009

The line that isn’t drawn

Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, there was a lot of talk about how no one would hijack an American airliner ever again - not because of new security arrangements but because an alert citizenry was on the case: We were hip to their jive. The point appeared to be proved three months later on a U.S.-bound Air France flight. The "shoe bomber" attempted to light his footwear, and the flight attendants and passengers pounced. As the more boorish commentators could not resist pointing out, even the French guys walloped him.

November 16, 2009

The enemy at home

Thirteen dead and 31 wounded would be a bad day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan and a great victory for the Taliban. When it happens in Texas, in the heart of the biggest military base in the nation, at a processing center for soldiers either returning from or deploying to combat overseas, it is not merely a tragedy, as too many people called it, but a glimpse of a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what we have called, since Sept. 11, 2001, the "war on terror." Brave soldiers trained to hunt down and kill America's enemy abroad were killed in the safety and security of home by, in essence, the same enemy - a man who believes in and supports everything the enemy does.

November 9, 2009

A Caesar for the obsequious

Valerie Jarrett announced the other day that "we're going to speak truth to power."

November 2, 2009

Not standing tough or tall

Benjamin Disraeli's most famous advice to aspiring politicians was: "Never complain and never explain." For the greatest orator of our time, a man who makes Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and Henry V at Agincourt look like first-round rejects on "Orating With The Stars," President Obama seems to have pretty much given up on the explaining side.

October 26, 2009

Some things are best left unsaid, right?

Here is a tale of two sound bites. First: "Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark."

October 19, 2009

Peace in 12 days

The most popular headline at the Real Clear Politics Web site the other day was: "Is Obama Becoming A Joke?" With brilliant comedic timing, the very next morning, the Norwegians gave him the Nobel Peace Prize. Up next: his stunning victory in this year's Miss World contest. Dec. 12, Johannesburg. You read it here first.

October 12, 2009

Polanski case in focus

As the feminists used to say in simpler times, "What part of 'No' don't you understand?"

October 5, 2009

Defining away our differences

Half a decade or so back, I wrote: "It's a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice cream and a quart of dog feces and mix 'em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That's the problem with the U.N."

September 28, 2009

Who let the bears out?

Was it only April? There was President Obama, speaking (as is his wont) in Prague about the Iranian nuclear program and ballistic missile capability and saluting America's plucky allies: "The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles," he declared. "As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven."

September 21, 2009

The company he keeps

So why can't the silver-tongued post-partisan healer seal the deal on this health care business? Surely it should be the work of moments for the greatest orator in American history to whip up a little medicinal Gettysburg, a touch of Henry V in the Agincourt casualty tent, and put this thing away.

September 14, 2009