SINCE THE ELECTION OF RONALD REAGAN IN 1980, Democrats passed NAFTA, neglected the Employee Free Choice Act and all but abandoned progressive taxation of incomes. They have, more or less, abandoned the idea that an important function of government is to balance society by keeping the gap between rich and poor from becoming too great. […]

“Half of writing history is hiding the truth.” — Joss Whedon THE QUOTE ABOVE HAS MANY APPLICATIONS. One of them is family history. Much of what one learns of their family’s history requires sorting out the myths and legends that accumulate over the years. Referring to them as “lies” may be too strong; half-truths may […]

FROM A NEW YORK TIMES PIECE OF LAST AUGUST by Timothy Egan (“Fifty Shades of Scalia,” Aug. 8), we are introduced to the Antonin Scalia of Citizens United v. the FEC, the Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates of corporate money in elections and overturned more than a century of precedent. This, we are […]

I am around a half-century old, and as such, was probably in the last cadre of Americans saddled with the notions of American manhood that would have been recognizable to D.H. Lawrence, who once wrote: “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer. It has never yet melted.” I have come to […]

By Matt Talbot ONE IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTING FACTOR of the current American economic predicament is that median purchasing power — that is, the inflation-adjusted pay that the bottom 80 percent of workers get — has not appreciably increased in over 30 years. People not making enough money to keep the economy growing means the economy can’t […]

By Robert Michaels I RECENTLY WATCHED TWO FILMS, “Human Trafficking,” with Mira Sorvino, and “Trade,” starring Kevin Kline. It was the first time I’d seen movies entirely devoted to sex trafficking. I was so disturbed by what I saw that I started to research the subject. I found some great online resources — the FBI, […]

“Today, I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office.” — President Obama, Feb. 23, 2009 THE INCOMING PRESIDENT HAD BEEN IN OFFICE for about a month when he made the above pledge, one that, like so many others, has gone unfulfilled. The blame game […]

HAVE YOU NOTICED HOW MUCH PRESIDENT OBAMA and his media acolytes love doom-and-gloom predictions? Whether it’s the extinction of polar bears or collision with a meteor, we are daily harangued with Chicken Little warnings. Usually, of course, these are about “man-caused” calamities. Increasingly of late, they’ve also been about “white man-caused” calamities. In his Feb. […]

THIS COLUMN IS BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION to the New Republican Party. Herein you will find a summary of a number of inspiring actions that surely confirm the existence in these United States of a stunning cadre of outstanding critics prepared to take over guidance of our nation in these troubled times. As introduction, surely […]