The polarizing atmosphere of the university has now spread to Congress. During the recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, we witnessed how college values have become the norms of the Senate. On campus, constitutional due process vanishes when accusations of sexual harassment arise. America saw that when false charges were
The Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and their endless sequelae have ended up as an epitaph for a spent culture for which its remedies are felt to be worse than its diseases. Think 338 B.C., A.D. 476, 1453, or 1939. The coordinated effort to destroy Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court required the
Are there any guiding principles that can make sense of the sensational news that now overwhelms the senses seemingly every hour? What is common to blaring headlines about the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination hearings, an anti-Trump "resistance" buried deep in the permanent bureaucracy and the improper behavior by top officials of the
We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America. —Barack Obama, October 30, 2008 By traditional metrics, Barack Obama’s presidency was mostly a failure. The economy, in a new first, never hit annualized growth of 3 percent. His signature domestic policy—Obamacare—caused chaos. Millions lost their coverage and doctors, and
Americans keep dividing into two hostile camps. It seems the country is back to 1860 on the eve of the Civil War, rather than in 2018, during the greatest age of affluence, leisure and freedom in the history of civilization. The ancient historian Thucydides called the civil discord that tore apart the fifth-century
Just when observers had concluded the desperate progressive opposition to Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court could not stoop much lower, it most certainly did. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), in the news recently for somehow unknowingly employing a Chinese spy as her gofer and chauffeur for 20 years, passed on information
Much of what we now know about the unethical and often illegal behavior of the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, and Department of Justice emerged due to the efforts of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Its chairman during its stunning disclosures has been Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who in turn has
The resistance to Donald Trump was warring on all fronts last week. Democratic senators vied with pop-up protestors in the U.S. Senate gallery to disrupt and, if possible, to derail the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) played Spartacus, but could not even get the script
Using funerals for political purposes has a long, but not distinguished, tradition. In 44 B.C. eulogist Mark Antony claimed to Roman mourners that he came to bury Caesar. But his speech created a frenzy and ended up ensuring a death warrant for the once "honorable" Brutus. In contrast, aside from the commemoration of
For months, I’ve been driving on different routes through the vast San Joaquin Valley back and forth from the California coast—and through the usually economically depressed small towns on and near the Highway 99 corridor through the Central Valley. The poverty rate in many valley counties is higher than in West Virginia. It
