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Keith Riler
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July 30, 2013
Bad LiesWe increasingly debate whether our leaders are incompetent or lying. Unfortunately, we need not choose. Consider that in March the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, answered questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee in the "lea...
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July 12, 2013
New and Classic MarriageThe clash of seemingly irreconcilable worldviews concerning single-sex marriage has resulted in a win-lose situation in California where, on the heels of the rulings by the Supreme Court, state government is racing to force the modern concept on all ...
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July 11, 2013
The Grim Effects of Liberals' Death-ObsessionQuestion: What do homeless dogs, poor babies, and the infirm elderly have in common? Answer: Liberals want them all dead. Static analysis, the absence of the virtue of hope, and a failure to realize that joy can exist in suffering are the h...
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July 1, 2013
Planned Parenthood: Strangely Hysterical over 0.045% of Its RevenueIf Mayor Bloomberg outlawed potato chips, most pizzerias would be unaffected. That's because potato chips represent a very small slice of pizza joint revenues. At the edge of the counter as an occasional add-on to regular sales, the chips...
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June 24, 2013
Texas legislature seeks to tighten abortion rulesThe Texas legislature is in special session and one item on the agenda is a bill banning abortion at 20 weeks, a tightening of the state's current 24 week ban. This 4 week tightening seems sensible, given that there are real ongoing debates about fet...
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June 19, 2013
An Ivy League professor gets it wrong on abortionBecause stupid is an ugly word, we try not to use it as an explanation of liberal behavior. Direct, but less harsh, descriptors like misguided, nanny state, meddling, arrogant, libertine and power-seeking are often used instead. But this is on...
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June 15, 2013
Random Social Evolution or Money Talking?The concept of social evolution is bogus, as is the naïve presumption of randomness that accompanies it. However, the elites who would steer culture toward libertinism and radical individual autonomy use this fraudulent language to mask their concert...
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June 14, 2013
Scaramucci Plans NYC Eatery With Elite Vibe for Hedge-Fund CrowdAnthony Scaramucci is teaming up with a restaurant owner and a former Morgan Stanley executive to open a Manhattan eatery catering to hedge-fund and private-equity professionals. The group, which includes restaurateur Eytan Suga...
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June 10, 2013
PS: BarackNow that we have definitive confirmation that the little man in the White House is the eavesdropping totalitarian we all suspected, I am liberated. Where appropriate, I have begun adding a PS to all emails and texts. Some examples follow: ...
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May 28, 2013
Obama's Shrinking Unit of AccountWhat Bill Clinton did for fidelity, Barack Obama has done for honesty and is now doing for responsibility. Using generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), I'll explain. Unit of account is a GAAP concept that refers to an entity for whi...
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May 19, 2013
Anise, We Have a ProblemThere is an argument that social issues shouldn't play much of a role in mayoral politics, and many in Houston are sympathetic to that view. But should such a view hold when your lesbian mayor reveals, in arrogant, disparaging, and militaristic ter...
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May 19, 2013
Sarbanes-Oxley Can Fix GovernmentRecent events strongly indicate that our government is broken and the need for reform urgent. We should never find ourselves having to choose between malfeasance and incompetence, as we now do. The main problems are clearly size (it...
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May 2, 2013
Doctor vs. Patient in TexasThere is a bill (SB 303) winding its way through the Texas legislature that upends the traditionally understood role of advance directives and medical powers of attorney. Specifically, the bill allows doctors to issue do not resuscitate orders (DNRs)...
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April 29, 2013
The Void of ReasonIf you missed it, President Obama gave a twelve-minute speech at the abortion giant's annual gala, and finished with, "Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you." There are so many things wrong with this, but let's focus on the fact that it d...
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March 28, 2013
The bogus 'legal separation' between Planned Parenthood's abortion and contraception servicesIn response to Texas' ongoing efforts to avoid subsidizing abortion providers, the federal government recently bypassed the state's Medicaid-based women's health program and granted Title X money directly to the Women's Health and Family Planning Ass...
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February 26, 2013
Drones and the Fugitive ConscienceThe tortured logic used by President Obama to justify drone assassinations of Americans, even 16-year-old Americans, has been met by surprise and consternation. For example, McClatchy reported that the Administration "jumbles international and U.S. ...
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February 24, 2013
Rumor mongering and innuendo by the press in advance of Vatican voteThe press is a sadder and sadder spectacle of itself and its increasingly obvious agenda. I have read these reports of pre-conclave Vatican scandal in the AP, the New York Times, USA Today, the Denver Post, the Houston Chronicle and numerous ot...
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January 27, 2013
The Virtue of the Fake ClinicOn my regular daily commute I drive by a free pregnancy clinic that does not perform abortions. It exists to care for mothers and their babies, and was located as an alternative to a nearby Planned Parenthood facility which has since moved. The othe...
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January 5, 2013
Gun Lists and Unintended ConsequencesThe imprudence born of liberal vanity will always produce foreseeable unintended consequences. It's a remarkable blindness that strikes those fully convinced of their indispensible role in the quest for utopia. And the more convinced, the less though...
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December 15, 2012
Obamish UpdateFour more years of Obama mean four more years of Obamish. Recall, Obamish is the President's unique and deceptive language. As I wrote in May: Obamish uses English, but it does so to confuse most listeners while really communicating with only ...
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December 4, 2012
Apply the BP Standard of Responsibility to BenghaziIs it just me, or do politicians apply higher standards to others than they do to themselves? For instance, there was that politician who thought it funny that billions in taxpayer money were wasted on poorly researched "shovel ready jobs;" while at ...
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November 25, 2012
The New Normal: Turning Back Cultural MarxismPost-presidential election commentary has focused on demographic trends. Another trend should also be noted, and that is cultural Marxism, a movement that seeks the elimination of codes of behavior, binding obligations, and moral standardsi....
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November 6, 2012
Catholics and the PollsGallup's latest and last presidential poll is out. It indicates a 1 point Romney advantage in the popular vote. It can be found here. As I was reading it, one item surprised me. In this latest survey, Catholics indicated a 52-45 preference for ...
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October 27, 2012
Obama's Second-Term Agenda: Poison for Suburban WomenRadNet, the country's largest imaging and diagnostic company, comments in its most recent investor presentation that mammogram volumes have been adversely affected by the weak economy and a "government taskforce changing the recommended age from 40+ ...
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October 16, 2012
Hillary falls on her sword for ObamaHillary Clinton's lame attempt to take the heat for President Obama's Benghazi debacle highlights the low standards this administration applies to itself. Five days after the attack, President Obama was still citing the film. Why? Clinton...
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September 23, 2012
Both-AndWe know that even an environmentally conscious country club member may not park a Prius on the golf course. Nonetheless, assuming she did, what would be a sensible response to the club's objection (multiple answers may apply): (a) move th...
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September 21, 2012
United Airlines is fast becoming Houston's most hated airline.United Airlines is fast becoming Houston's most hated airline. United's CEO Jeff Smisek couldn't wait to do a deal, finally sold the company and got his bigger corner office. On the heels of announcing the closure of the Houston headquarters, United ...
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September 7, 2012
See-Get: Choom Gang Economic TheoryWhen I read the other day that food stamps are being used to buy pop tarts, cookies, honey buns, candy bars, corn dogs, taffy, and cheesecake, it finally clicked: liberal economic and social policies reward stoners. In honor of the president's old ga...
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September 4, 2012
Dems embrace of Planned Parenthood could cost them dearlyAs the Democrats kick off their convention, perhaps they should heed the old saying that you are the company you keep. If this saying is in fact the case, the President and his party have some explaining to do. President Obama and his party hav...
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September 3, 2012
Bad News for Black FamiliesWhen we assess the President's post-election performance and the effects of his redistributive and regulatory policies, we find that, like a falling tide, he is sinking everyone. We also find that although Barack Obama has hurt all American fam...
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August 4, 2012
Yes Who Can?The upcoming presidential election is a choice between "Yes you can" and "Yes we can." Mitt Romney recently embraced his inner "Yes you can": Today, government at all levels consumes 37 percent of the total economy. ... And through the increasing co...
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July 30, 2012
Truck 793 - Built by the Obama DEAThe Houston Chronicle recently reported a noteworthy story. The story is noteworthy solely as a rare act of journalistic practice (the full article is well researched and a good read) but also as just another prominent example of imprudence, in...
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July 18, 2012
Barack Obama Versus YouOur President uses the first and second person pronouns, the words "I/Me/My/We" and "you," very differently. Here are some examples. First, "I": I still remember when I was first running for the state senate in Illinois. That's the essential p...
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July 16, 2012
Obama's curious notion of successSo President Obama just said: [i]f you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own...If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. This is a dogmatically absolute state...
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July 12, 2012
Safe, Legal, and Rare: Why Not Guns, Too?President Obama has an idea that can bring the contentious gun control debate to an end, in a manner that should be satisfactory to all sides. His idea is "safe, legal, and rare" [1]. Applied here, it means that guns should be safe, legal, and ...
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July 8, 2012
The Forgotten Solution to the Abortion DebateA recent article asked, "Why do more people choose abortion over adoption?" The author, Kristi Brown, commented: Countless women in the U.S. choose abortion over adoption for their unborn babies every year. When I sat in on counseling sessions...
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July 4, 2012
Preserving Our Pledge of AllegianceA prayer for this Fortnight for Freedom reminds us that we are "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." These cherished words from our Pledge of Allegiance now sound off-key and a bit unfamiliar. This admitt...
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May 31, 2012
The Right to Be AsianI am being discriminated against, and this injustice, this offense against human rights, must be remedied. A long-festering, unfair, narrow-minded prejudice is denying me equality with people born in Asia or of Asian descent. There are so many ...
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May 25, 2012
ObamishIt has taken some time and work, but our president has invented a new language. "Obamese" and "Barackish" aren't quite right, so let's call it "Obamish." Obamish uses English, but it does so to confuse most listeners while really co...
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May 24, 2012
Show Up Obama's Ignorance on Profit's Role in a Free EconomyBarack Obama is out knocking Mitt Romney's "profit maximizing" experience as irrelevant to the job of President and bad for individuals and communities. This line of thinking is sufficiently ignorant and incompetent so as to automatically disqualify ...
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May 13, 2012
Modern Gnosticism and the Family as ContractIt is often said that libertarianism would be fine, if not for children and foreign policy. The point is not to pick on libertarianism, but to inject common sense into the naïve effort to move traditional marriage toward an adult contracting mo...
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May 13, 2012
War on the Catholic ChurchWe know contraception's cheap and plentiful availability makes President Obama's HHS policy a falsely premised desperate political attempt to upset women and gain voters. This strategy hopes to create disunity in the Catholic faith community. T...
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May 11, 2012
Time Magazine's motherhood cover is a disgrace.Time Magazine's motherhood cover is a disgrace. It looks nothing like the real and loving act of a mother nursing her baby and is thus vulgar. The child is oddly and uncomfortably too old and large and both parties are coldly depicted without any tra...
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May 3, 2012
Obama's girlfriend 'compression'This whole "compression" thing has me bothered. In response to being caught in a published lie about his past dating life, the President offered a seemingly erudite and acceptable rationalization. Specifically, Obama has now told biographer Da...
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April 29, 2012
Barack Obama: Tearing Catholics to PiecesWhat is a liberal Catholic -- and especially a minority liberal Catholic -- to do? Personal corporeal subdivision is just not an option, and even if it were, which parts would be minority, which liberal, and which Catholic? Alas, the chal...
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March 24, 2012
Contraception MathBroadly distributed contraception won't reduce unintended pregnancies, though many resist this conclusion. Not to be deterred, herein I offer a new approach to demonstrate this fact. Before walking through the numbers, let's identify the assump...
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March 8, 2012
Damning statistical analysis of Planned Parenthood's businessAn intriguing analysis of Planned Parenthood's business model was recently published by a UK-based magazine. Planned Parenthood's years of operating history provided the basis for a thorough statistical analysis, providing useful clarity in thi...
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March 4, 2012
More than a contraception problemBy now you probably know of Sandra Fluke. She is the Georgetown law student who wants us to pay her annual birth control bill, which birth control she has testified can cost up to $3,000 a year. As she says, For a lot of students who, li...
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February 21, 2012
The environmental threat of Mardi Gras beadsNow this from the LA Times - "Mardi Gras beads cause environmental hangover." Forcing contraception on Catholics is one thing; but for Pete's sake man, leave the beads alone. Ignore this at your peril. For a view into a secon...
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February 16, 2012
The False Promise of Contraception"Contraception reduces unintended pregnancies" has joined its fantastic make-believe friends "death with dignity," the "efficacy" of embryonic stem cells, the "certainty" of man-made global warming, and the "positive" multiplier effect in the leftist...
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February 12, 2012
Viability for Me, but Not for TheeYou may not have heard the story of Amelia Rivera, a beautiful three-year-old Philadelphia girl in need of a kidney transplant. According to her mother, Amelia was denied a life-saving transplant because she was "considered mentally retarded."...
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February 8, 2012
Obama's War against CatholicsIn executing its HHS contraception edict, the Obama regime has simultaneously squelched Catholic military chaplains and promoted an inaccurate but state-sponsored version of "Catholicism." This scary, couldn't-happen-here stuff provides us with...
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November 4, 2011
OWS and DemocratsThe picture is now complete. The entire Democratic Party platform is encapsulated at Zuccotti Park and it is something to behold. In one scene, we have irresponsibility, entitlement, demands for hand outs and redistribution, a highly visi...
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September 2, 2011
Obama's Creepy Agency CreepPresident Obama has enlarged and shaped the missions of agencies across the federal government to his own purposes, in pursuit of the "fundamental change" he promised voters. The resulting agency creep is creeping me out. Totalitarians have a h...
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August 16, 2011
Keep Talking, Mr. PresidentGallup recently reported that President Obama dipped to a low in his favorable/unfavorable ratings. That news prompted this question: Is there a relationship between how much the president talks and his popularity? Presumably, the president's f...
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August 8, 2011
Savior of his world?According to the Wall Street Journal, the President has deemed his debt ceiling efforts sufficiently arduous to merit a promotion. President Obama has apparently made a sacrifice so great that we have been saved (again, as if that were necessar...
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August 8, 2011
Democrats ignore AAA countries' experienceCall me crazy, but if I wanted my AAA debt rating back, I would do what other AAA-rated countries do. Strangely, Democrats are pushing for higher tax rates as a way to address our debt rating woes. See Dick Durbin's statement: S&P's decisi...
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August 6, 2011
Harry Reid: pants on fireRegarding the US debt downgrade by S&P, from S&P: Standard & Poor's takes no position on the mix of spending and revenue measures that Congress and the Administration might conclude is appropriate for putting the U.S.'s finances on a sus...
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August 4, 2011
Latest shale gas assaultA Houston investment bank finds that a new front has been opened in the Obama Administration's war on shale gas and hydraulic fracturing. In its most recent monthly publication[1], Parks Paton reports: ...
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July 15, 2011
What Obama could sacrifice to protect Social SecurityWhen Barack Obama delivers on his threat to delay or withhold Social Security checks and veterans' benefits, we should know why they were sacrificed. Here is a list of about $2 trillion in select expenditures which the President could likely sa...
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June 24, 2011
An Aristocracy of IncompetenceToday's liberal leaders have divested themselves of the responsibilities of duty and prudence, resulting in an aristocracy of incompetence. Liberal vanity and fondness for central direction, ends justifying means, unbridled experimentation, tac...
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June 1, 2011
Crowding OutTwo words explain all you need to know about our national economic debate. These words have the instant appeal of common sense. Economists worldwide know the words, yet a few of them, seemingly the more vocal ones, mysteriously reject the...
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May 17, 2011
Secularists, or Just Anti-Christians?The liberal activists we know as secularists do not behave as broadly as the term might imply. When held to their own standards of tolerance and fairness, these focused meddlers fail because, in truth, secularists are just anti-Christians....
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March 7, 2011
The wages of a social issues 'truce'A Houston district now knows what a politically expedient "truce" on social issues looks like -- a betrayal of a core constituency, the ceding of moral high ground and the dilution of a formerly united and strong voice. Mitch Daniels ...
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March 5, 2011
Obama's DitheringThere "is a corollary to the conception of being too proud to fight. It is that the humble have to do most of the fighting.[1]" Another corollary is that those too proud to fight are often cowards.The New Republic is surprised a...
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February 21, 2011
No Due Diligence on Abortion?The Texas legislature is considering a law requiring sonograms before abortions. The loudest voices objecting to this bill have evidenced a panicked desperation to embrace irresponsible ignorance and to alienate and dehumanize the baby in the w...
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February 13, 2011
Obama's simple-minded relativismDumb multiculturalism is the Obama Administration's foreign policy in the Arab world. From Barack Obama's Cairo speech:Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation ... over another will inevitably fail.... America does no...
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January 30, 2011
What's wrong with Peggy Noonan?Peggy Noonan's latest article, entitled An Unserious Speech Misses the Mark , expressed disappointment in President Obama's recent State of the Union address. Noonan is surprised and unhappy that Barack Obama is not focused on spending cuts, ap...
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January 23, 2011
The Tragedy of CPA terrible disease of potentially epidemic proportion has descended upon our country. Ceteris Paribus, a once-rare malady, has already stricken all of our left-leaning policymakers and, based on the results of the last presidential election, ma...
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January 17, 2011
Black love?Somebody's not getting the message.The new issue of Ebony magazine is entitled "Celebrate Black Love."St. Paul, a credible source, describes love as patient, kind, not jealous or boastful, not arrogant or rude, bearing all things and hopefu...
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January 11, 2011
Bill outlawing violent symbols missing a few thingsNormal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE ...
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January 9, 2011
Is American Society 'Evolving'?There's a whole lotta evolvin' goin' on. Sorry, Jerry Lee, but shakin' is out, and Barry O's evolvin' is in.While celebrating the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" on "Good Morning America," Vice President Joe Biden said:I t...
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December 17, 2010
The Adolescent LeftAs tempting as it is to view the machinations of the left in masterfully calculated Dr. Evil terms, today's progressive is better-understood as a ranting teenager, burdened with both a disordered view of freedom and typical adolescent entitlement iss...
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November 22, 2010
No, the Pope didn't condone condom usageNormal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE ...
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October 31, 2010
Fact challenged president brazenly lies about AIDS research fundingOn Saturday in response to hecklers, the President said, "We're funding global AIDS initiatives, the other side's not."To be kind, the man is not very precise. To be blunt, he's a liar.If by "the other side," the President m...
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October 21, 2010
Paul Krugman's Latest Terrible IdeaPaul Krugman‘s latest idea is so obviously bad, ill-conceived, and damaging that I was tempted to avoid wasting time on it. However, his most recent inane economic proposal merits highlighting simply to put to rest the oft-heard idea that these...
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October 15, 2010
Obama's pay grade has gone up?President Obama once opined that pre-born babies, and specifically their humanity, were "above his pay grade." Something has changed, possibly his pay grade, because the President recently offered an opinion about the pre-born, s...
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October 14, 2010
Obama's fatuous reaction to miners' rescueUndoubtedly many people across this country prayed for the safety of the Chilean miners and the consolation of their families. Anyone praying or well wishing surely greeted the recent headlines with joy. This is simple and pure empathy.Ou...
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October 6, 2010
Obama believes your paycheck is not your ownPresident Obama said something the other day that stunned me. This is a real accomplishment, given my already dim view of the man. In reference to Martin Feldstein's proposal that all tax rates be maintained at their current lower levels, th...
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August 24, 2010
Judge rules against embryonic stem cell researchNormal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE ...
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August 23, 2010
Obama's credibility the big issue in religion pollMuch has been said about the recent findings that 18% of Americans believe the President is Muslim, 34% believe he is Christian and 43% are not sure. Most commentary has thus far focused on the Muslim choice.Thomas Lifson and Byron York have co...
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July 17, 2010
Liberal BipolarityWe live in a temporary moment of liberal bipolarity, in which Teddy Roosevelt's trust-busting progressivism has run smack into Barack Obama's too-big-to-fail statism. Truthfully, the liberal vote has been cast for statist corporatism, and only the od...
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June 29, 2010
Kagan will be the Obama of the Supreme CourtNormal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE ...
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June 24, 2010
MSNBC's false narrative on Judge's offshore drilling moratorium rulingNormal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE ...
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March 17, 2010
Voting present - DC StyleIn the "Slaughter Solution," Nancy Pelosi is importing from the Illinois statehouse Barack Obama's signature legislative cowardice, the non-vote. This self preservation by way of non-representative irresponsibility violates the Constituti...
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January 20, 2010
Obama's Kool AidWill the Democrats continue to drink Obama's Kool Aid in the wake of the Massachusetts repudiation?No doubt, Obama lost Massachusetts. Nonetheless, Wednesday night on Fox, Susan Estrich offered an alternative hypothesis -- not the fault of Obam...
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January 10, 2010
The End of InsuranceBarack Obama's health care plan ensures spiraling costs and will convert health insurance companies into cost-plus health reimbursement utilities, or else bankrupt them completely. Health insurance as we know it (think home/auto/life) will no longer ...
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August 18, 2009
The Left's Favorite Enemy Conjured Up AgainMy lefty friends stare at me blankly when I ask why that outdated, goofy guy known as "The Man" is still at the core of their social doctrine. They insist theirs is a political orientation that is sophisticated and intellectual, appre...