(Jonathan Drake/Reuters) Does it really make sense to smear people as “racist” for their intent to perform a work that acknowledges and criticizes racism? Washington College in Maryland has decided to cancel an upcoming performance of Larry Shue’s The Foreigner — because the play’s villains are members of the Ku Klux Klan, and that might

The Party of Youth and Diversity Keeps Getting Older and Whiter After getting so many things wrong in the 2016 election, it’s nice to be getting some right this time around: Kamala Harris’s announcement of the inevitable on Tuesday left the 2020 Democratic presidential field a little whiter for the wear, especially at the top.

Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of Google logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. (REUTERS/Dado Ruvic) Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced Wednesday that they will step down from their executive roles at parent company Alphabet. Page, Alphabet’s chief executive officer and Brin, the company’s

Hollywood is now obsessing about increasing ethnic and gender diversity. Good. There’s been nasty racial and gender discrimination in the movie business. Unfortunately, Hollywood has no interest in one type of diversity: diversity of thought. In most every movie, capitalism is evil. Greedy miners want to kill nature-loving aliens in “Avatar.” Director James Cameron says:

Nunes questions FBI director James Comey during a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee in March 2017. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters) Ranking House intelligence Committee Republican Devin Nunes filed a $435 million lawsuit on Tuesday against “the mother of fake news” CNN over a November 22 report, which alleged that disgraced Giuliani associate Lev Parnas is willing

Even for California government, where failing-up is a 72-font, doily-festooned entry dead-center on the office vision board, this epic fail was way over the line. Los Angeles County’s homeless czar is out of a job at the end of December – Merry Christmas! – for basically being an utter failure at his job. The leader

A man inspects a handgun at the NRA annual meeting in Indianapolis, Ind., April 28, 2019. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters) We gun nuts have long had our eyes on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. New York City, a challenge to one of the Big Apple’s myriad limits on firearm ownership. The Supreme Court heard

If the headline I submitted with this post has gotten past editor Paula Bolyard, you might be expecting something like this: “Twas the night before impeachment, and all through the dome, Not a creature was stirring, they’d all gone home. The gavel was placed in its drawer for safekeeping, And only the mice heard the

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends a news conference in Kiev, Ukraine November 19, 2019. (Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters) A senior Ukrainian official who resigned last week from her post claims the government knew the U.S. froze military aid to the country by the end of July, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. Olena Zerkal, who until her

We all know some individuals who are so obviously good and kind that we are certain if anyone were to dislike them, that’s all we would need to know about the person. We would immediately assume he or she is a bad person. To hate the manifestly good is a sure sign of being bad.

Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, takes his seat at a House Intelligence Committee hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, Nov. 13, 2019. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters) Public opinion seems to be shifting against the Trump haters. Having demanded Donald J. Trump’s impeachment ever since Election Night 2016, Democrats

The holidays are upon us and, whichever way you celebrate them, you are bound to run into someone who is easily offended by the way someone else celebrates. This is a brief discussion of not letting Christmas become just another victim of new media outrage culture. I’m also getting commitments from upcoming guests, the first

Congressman Duncan Hunter (R., Ca.) arrives for a motions hearing in his upcoming campaign financing trial at federal court in San Diego, Calif., July 8, 2019. (Mike Blake/Reuters) After maintaining his innocence for more than a year, California Republican Duncan Hunter will plead guilty on Tuesday to allocating campaign funds for personal use, nearly six

There’s a hilarious parody video making the rounds that shows Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) as Wile E. Coyote trying and failing to catch his roadrunner. I’m sure it violates all kinds of intellectual property laws and CNN will mercilessly hunt down its creators. In the video, Schiff concocts scheme after impeachment scheme and they all

President Donald Trump delivers remarks in Lexington, Ky., November 4, 2019. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters) Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is expected to appoint financial services executive Katie Loeffler to fill the state’s vacant Senate seat, according to Politico. Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson announced earlier this year that he would be leaving the Senate at the end of

The National Debt Clock in Manhattan, November 30, 2017. (Two years later, the figure is $3 trillion more.) (Shannon Stapleton / Reuters) Kevin’s post below has stimulated some thoughts in me, and so have his other recent writings on economics and government. I know I am not alone in this. I’d like to jot some

Visitors at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. (Jason Reed/Reuters) And there’s a reason we fight over it. There is no marriage as stable and enduring as that of ignorance and certitude. Years ago, I knew some crunchy progressives of the particularly nasty kind they cultivate in the few remaining blueblood enclaves of the old

Come out from among them, and be ye separate. — II Corinthians 6:17 The story does not begin in 1776. It does not begin with Concord, the Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, Common Sense, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution. It does not really even begin in the Dutch city of Leiden, where a

For some time now I have watched the immensely popular HGTV as a window on the culture—a large picture window letting in “lots of natural light,” as the rather silly and predictable house hunters are fond of saying—providing a cameo on the conventions of middle-class society. One notices, with few exceptions, that the wives tend

Voters line up outside a polling station in Hong Kong, November 24, 2019. (Marko Djurica/Reuters) As China’s authoritarian model begins to show cracks, the West must remain vigilant. You see it in the maps. In 2015, 1.4 million Hong Kongers voted in elections in which pro-Beijing candidates swept the city’s 18 district councils. Last week, 2.9

Judge Stephen Reinhardt 1979—President Carter nominates This Day Hall of Famer Stephen Reinhardt to a seat on the Ninth Circuit. 1987—In the aftermath of the Senate’s defeat of the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork and of Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg’s decision not to proceed with his intended nomination, President Reagan nominates Ninth

“We are a country that has economy, not an economy that has a country.” Stephen Miller, presidential advisor Since November 12, the MSM, self-described civil rights groups (including a handful of fringe Jewish organizations), and congressional Democrats have been running a new smear campaign against Stephen Miller, senior advisor to President Trump. Stephen has been called

“Our first contribution is one of omission. The time-honored stories of exploration and the biographies of heroes are left out.” Charles A. and Mary Beard, The History of the United States (1921) I am a historian by trade. One of the most important moments I experienced in my graduate training was when a professor explained

The Thing That Cannot Be Denied Happy Day After Thanksgiving, everyone. No, I mean that. Some links below deal with President Trump’s visit to Afghanistan, and that’s a good thing to discuss on this Black Friday. In modern American society we have a tendency to focus on the negative. Just look at online reviews of

(Shutterstock) 2004—Objecting to governing law on homosexuals in the military, many law schools restricted the access of military recruiters to their students. In response, Congress enacted the Solomon Amendment, which provides that in order for a law school and its university to receive federal funding, the law school must offer military recruiters the same access

Is it just me, or has it also occurred to you that Democrats, in this all-important year leading up to the 2020 election, rarely talk about policy issues? They are exclusively focused on removing President Donald Trump, and they only discuss policy during their somniferous debates. In the Democrats’ defense, their mainstream media bosses cover

On November 15, 2019, two of the foremost representatives of Christianity and Islam, Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb of Al Azhar—the latter was once named the “most influential Muslim in the world”—met and embraced each other again as brothers. “During the[ir] cordial discussions,” the Vatican announced in a press release, the two religious leaders

The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth, by Jennie A. Brownscombe (1914) (Wikimedia Commons) 2019—Happy Thanksgiving! Be grateful that the secular activists in the judiciary weren’t dominant when George Washington was president, or we’d never have this great, and deeply religious, American feast. In the words of Washington: Whereas it is the duty of all nations to

All the Thanks Happy Thanksgiving, my patriot friends! A genuinely brief Briefing today, as the last thing any of us need is a political hot take interfering with a righteous food coma. The feast I’m going to is going to have a fried turkey and a smoked turkey, so I will probably be passing on

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, October 10, 2019. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) Alleged bad thoughts are not crimes — at least not outside George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.” During special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, his legal “dream team” tried to make a secondary case that Donald Trump also