Year: 2019
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Sports and Culture
Ten good movies based on true stories
This is a companion list for a column of mine that will run in the Washington Examiner sometime between the beginning of Christmas week and New Year’s Day. I’ll leave you in suspense as to what the full column is about, but this list here consists of ten movies based…
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National Politics
On impeachment, where is nuance and statesmanship?
(Dec. 6) Where are today’s statesmen? Are there any? Evidence for their existence is slim. When a question as serious as impeachment looms, senators and representatives owe it to the public to put partisan hackery aside, to apply independent thought to the evidence, to avoid ideological cliches, and to try to…
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Gulf Coast Politics
Louisiana’s ever-changing John Kennedy
(Dec. 2) Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, now all over the news after a volatile verbal exchange with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, is a habitual shape-shifter. Pundits disappointed that the Oxford-educated media hound is suddenly parroting pro-Russian idiocy haven’t been paying attention. Kennedy is for Kennedy, no more and no less. Kennedy…
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National Politics
Schiff must say why he’s snooping in phone records
Note: A different version of this ran as an official editorial of the Washington Examiner on Dec. 5, here. What follows is a version with a very slightly different focus. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff owes the public some answers. Schiff should explain why and under what authority…
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National Politics
Republicans could gain politically by evicting Trump
(Dec. 3) As impeachment looms, Republican officeholders hitching their wagon to President Trump’s star may be making the wrong political bet. The safer option might be to work in concert to evict Trump from office quickly, giving voters nearly a year to get accustomed to Mike Pence as president. It is…
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Sports and Culture
Colleges on FIRE, or going to the dogs
Three pieces, all of them bad news from colleges. For the first two, follow the links embedded in the headlines…. Notre Dame students wants racial quotas on, yes, reading assignments. Really. (Dec. 1) Send these racialist scolds to bed without supper. Get FIREd up to save collegiate free speech (Dec. 5) Campus…
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Gulf Coast Politics
Bama Senate race will miss Merrill’s presence
(Dec. 2) The much-watched race for U.S. Senate in Alabama just got a bit less interesting but also a bit safer for Republican chances of victory. Republican Secretary of State John Merrill dropped out of the fiercely contested primary. Merrill announced on Sunday that he is withdrawing because his “path to victory” largely disappeared…
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Faith
A meet, right thanks giving
(Nov. 28) A passage in the 1928 Episcopal prayer book says this: “It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto thee, O Lord.” The word “meet” is an archaic adjective meaning, “precisely appropriate.” This Thanksgiving, let us…
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Sports and Culture
Send these Notre Dame students to bed without supper
(Dec. 1) A group of Notre Dame students has become the latest pack of scolds promoting senseless racialism in the name of ending racism. The proper response is to tell them to grow up already. Racialism is the practice of interpreting events or policies through the lens of race. Unlike racism, it is not…
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National Politics
HSAs with Medicare would be good prescription
(Nov. 26) A new, bipartisan effort in Congress wisely aims to reduce out-of-pocket medical costs for senior citizens without requiring a complicated, systemic revamping of the whole Medicare system. Here’s hoping the Health Care Savings for Seniors Act, co-authored by Democrat Ami Bera of California and Republican Jason Smith of Missouri,…