It has begun. We are having a debate over socialism. Not over whether it’s fair to call Democrats socialists. Not over whether socialism has been good for Venezuela or some other faraway, unfortunate country. But no-kidding socialist policies right here in the United States. The press attention to a new study of the costs of […]
Op-Eds
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May the best women, or men, represent us
Have you heard? A woman who recently ran for president got nearly 3 million more votes than Donald Trump. Only the Electoral College — actually, a few thousand ballots in three key states — delivered the presidency to the current POTUS. And that was with an assist from Russia. That’s why much of the excitement […]
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Productivity boom may not be reality
WASHINGTON — Let’s travel back in time to 1995. Most Americans still remembered the calamitous inflation of the late 1970s (prices rose 13 percent in 1979). Many federal benefits, including Social Security, were (and are) tied to inflation. But was the inflation overstated, as many economists thought? If so, the economy might be doing better […]
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Montenegro serves as test for NATO resolve
WASHINGTON — Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently asked President Trump, “Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack?” It is a fair question — one that many Americans were asking following Trump’s performance at the NATO summit — and it deserved a better answer than the president’s musing on the […]
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UN will maintain presence in Somalia
Since April, 1992, an international peacekeeping or monitoring force of some type has attempted to reduce the mayhem in war-wracked Somalia. Subtract 1992 from 2018: you get 26 years. Prepare to add more. This week the UN Security Council voted to maintain the UN and African Union Somali peacekeeping operation (African Union Mission in Somalia, […]
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What's not to like about Trump policies?
Like a baseball team that is way behind going into the fifth inning, Democrats (and socialists) are hoping for the political equivalent of a rainout, so that the game President Trump is winning will be canceled, allowing them time to regroup. The president’s opponents are going to need more than that figurative cancellation, however; they’re […]
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Republicans think if Trump does it, it's not a crime
By Max Boot The Washington Post It is hard to exaggerate the potential significance of the news, first reported by CNN, that the president’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, can testify that Donald Trump both knew in advance and approved of the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower between his campaign’s high command and Kremlin […]
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President Trump's words carry no weight
Maybe you remember when Mexico was going to pay for the wall. You should. It was as recently as May. Donald Trump went to Nashville for one of those creepy rallies of his and renewed the vow he made ceaselessly during the 2016 campaign. Mexico, he promised, is “going to pay for the wall” along […]
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The Fed is not strictly ‘independent’
“The Federal Reserve is meant to be independent of parochial political interests. But it’s got to operate — I think of this as a kind of band, sometimes wide, sometimes narrow — within the range of understanding of the public and the political system. You just can’t go do something that is just outside the […]
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Dog has earned an early retirement
Dear Sombra, So you’re the German shepherd so good at sniffing out stashes of cocaine that drug traffickers in Colombia want you dead. Your story — how your laser-guided snout helped the Colombian National Police seize at least 9 tons of drugs, leading to 245 arrests — has gone global. You are also a gentle […]