Featured Commentary category, Page 148
Pat Buchanan: Is Bernie stealing Trump’s ‘no more wars’ issue?
“The president has said that he does not want to see this country involved in endless wars … I agree with that,” Bernie Sanders told the Fox News audience at his April 15 town hall meeting in Bethlehem, Pa. Then, turning and staring straight into the camera, Bernie added: “Mr....
Jonah Goldberg: Mueller report offers little in black and white
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we live in a time when everything is supposed to be black and white. The weird, incestuous relationship between the media and the political parties incentivizes combatants to take positions on the 1-yard lines, if not in the end zones. But what if — and...
Michael Hiltzik: Surprise! Social Security has gotten healthier
The crux of the conservative attack on Social Security in recent years has been the claim that the program is on an unbroken path to insolvency. Monday’s release of the Social Security trustees’ annual report knocks a pillar out from under that campaign, for it shows that the program actually...
Patricia Murphy: Trump’s warning you: The socialists are coming!
Meet “socialist,” the hardest-working word in politics in 2019. The single word has helped upstart Democrats attract young and social-curious potential voters, given the paddles of life to desperate-for-a-cause conservatives, and led President Trump to an early and effective way to frame the re-election battle he wants to have with...
Cal Thomas: Congress & consequences of sanctuary cities
In the category of Mad magazine’s “scenes we’d like to see” comes President Trump’s threat to transport migrants to cities and states that have declared themselves sanctuaries. Apparently he thinks such a move would force Democrats in Congress who represent these places to vote to fund the wall along our...
Mark Reynolds & Hilary Schenker: Earth Day call to action on climate
As Americans observe Earth Day today, let’s take a moment to reflect on the power of the grassroots movement behind that first celebration in 1970, which led to dramatic changes that improved the quality of our lives through cleaner air and water. Shocked by the massive oil spill that fouled...
G. Terry Madonna & Michael Young: Political polarization threatens our stability
Love and marriage, as the old ditty has it, may not always go together, but incivility and polarization sure go hand in hand in contemporary American politics. It’s virtually impossible to separate them. More importantly, it has led to chronic dysfunctionality in government. Recently, in a rare moment, the Pennsylvania...
Antony Davies & James Harrigan: Pittsburgh gun ban just political advertising
Most people know that politicians of all stripes are rarely sincere. Case in point: the Pittsburgh City Council’s recent industrial-strength gun-control nonsense. This law was so tempting to those who posture for a living that even Mayor Bill Peduto and Gov. Tom Wolf had to get in on the act....
Phyllis Zagano: No women, no Catholic Church
In August 2016, Pope Francis named a commission of 12 scholars to study the history of women deacons. The commission — the first in the history of the Church to have an equal number of men and women — provided a report some months ago. Will the pope restore the...
Walter Williams: Pondering Democrats’ views on voting, guns & reparations
There’s a push to change laws to grant both criminals serving time and ex-criminals the right to vote. Guess which party is pushing the most for these legal changes? If you guessed that it was the Democrats, go to the head of the class. Bernie Sanders says states should allow...
John Stossel: Don’t fear 3D-printed guns
Are you very afraid? 3D-printed guns are coming. “Virtually undetectable!” shrieked CNN. “This changes the safety of Americans forever!” shrieked MSNBC. Does it? Six years ago, a company called Defense Distributed posted blueprints for 3D-printed guns on the web. The Obama State Department said that violated the Arms Control Act...
Donald Boudreaux: Reasons to be happy on Earth Day
April 22 of each year is now Earth Day. (I note that April 22 is also the birthday of Vladimir Lenin. Readers may draw their own conclusions.) The internet and airwaves will teem with gloom ’n’ doom, as warnings are heard of a coming calamity. Guilt-tripping will also peak, with...
Eric Nelson: Pennsylvania should be cautious about nuclear bailout
Normally, businesses use hard work to generate profit and, at times, big business uses lobbyists. This appears to be the strategy as the nuclear industry levels its crosshairs on Pennsylvania. In New York, its $500 million marketing assault secured a return on investment of $5.7 billion in higher energy prices...
Colin McNickle: Pennsylvania gaming expansion’s marginal returns
State-sanctioned gambling — “gaming,” in the parlance of its overlords — has seen marked growth in Pennsylvania. But as a new analysis by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy notes, the returns — initially sketched as the be-all and end-all on many fronts — remain marginal when considered in context....
Pat Buchanan: Pete Buttigieg & Christianity’s crackup
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” said Hamlet, who thereby raised some crucial questions: Is moral truth subjective? Does it change with changing times and changing attitudes? Or is there a higher law, a permanent law, God’s law, immutable and eternal, to which man’s...
Christine Emba: Congress should ease the pain of filing taxes
For the first time in a long time, I managed to do my taxes early this year. My refund check arrived by mail. Opening it, I looked down at the (paltry) sum, sighed and placed the letter into my bag. And then it blew away. Literally. It blew out of...
S.E. Cupp: The silver lining in Trump’s homeland security purge
“They are decapitating the entire department,” a Department of Homeland Security official ominously told The Washington Post of last week’s alarming purge that resulted in forcing the resignation of Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, pulling the pick to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement and firing the Secret Service director. President Trump’s ouster...
Michelle Malkin: False accuser Shaun King’s record of harm
This weekend, “journalist, activist and humanitarian” Shaun King gave the keynote speech at the annual Innocence Network Conference in Atlanta. The theme of the event, whose attendees work to prevent and undo wrongful convictions, is “The Presumption of Innocence.” It was just three months ago that King recklessly exploited the...
Cal Thomas: God & the Democrats
For the last 27 years, Democrats have been trying to win over evangelical Christians who last voted in large numbers for their party’s presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter, in 1976. At the 1992 Democratic National Convention, Al Gore gave it a go, but misquoted Scripture. In his acceptance speech for the...
Jonah Goldberg: Kirstjen Nielsen wasn’t right for Trump’s ‘bad cop’ role
Summoned to the White House last Sunday, embattled and apparently overwhelmed secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen arrived with a resignation letter in tow. “Despite our progress in reforming homeland security for a new age,” it read, “I have determined that it is the right time for...
Nathan Benefield: How to deliver what ‘socialists’ want
Socialism has hit the mainstream — or so we’ve been told. Yes, democratic socialists are winning elections, including recent Pennsylvania victories in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and Bernie Sanders is again a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. But does this mean Americans’ political views have U-turned from free-market capitalism? That’s...
John Stossel: Mark Zuckerberg’s cronyism
Please, regulate me! That was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s message to Congress recently. “Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree,” he wrote in an op-ed. “(W)e shouldn’t make so many important decisions … on our own.” It sounds so self-sacrificing. But give me...
Walter Williams: Tragedy of socialism
If one needed evidence of the gross ignorance of millennials, and their teachers and college professors, it’s their solid support for socialism and socialist presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders. Socialism has produced tragedy wherever it has been implemented. Last year marked the 40th anniversary of nearly 1,000 Americans perishing in...
Timothy L. O’Brien: Bill Barr is trying hard to be President Trump’s Roy Cohn
The attorney general of the United States is, we now know, quite sure of himself. Exhibit A: Spying During Senate testimony on Wednesday, William Barr was asked if, as Bloomberg News reported, he was planning to review how and why the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched an investigation into possible...
Vince Mercuri: Healing body, mind & spirit
Over 150 years ago, the seeds of a philosophy of healing were planted. In 1865, three Franciscan Sisters came to Pittsburgh from Buffalo looking for funds for their ministry. They opened a 15-bed hospital in a frame house to aid German immigrants in Lawrenceville. Over the years, the hospital grew...
