Barney Frank, the 14-term congressman from Massachusetts’s Fourth, might be the most well-connected and secure Democrat in Washington. Ideologically speaking, however, for the past decade or so he’s seemed like one of the Left Behind. Frank hails from the retro-liberal wing of the Democratic Party that most thought had gone the way of the dodo after Bill Clinton’s second term. And … [Read More]

The party’s over, it’s time to call it a day. They’ve burst your pretty balloon and taken the moon away. It’s time to wind up the masquerade. Just make your mind up, the piper must be paid. The party’s over, the candles flicker and dim. You danced and dreamed through the night, It seemed right just being with him. Now you … [Read More]

When you read the Crunchy Cons, one name comes up again and again. As a political movement, the group has been spearheaded by Rod Dreher, and it to him that we owe the phrase “Crunchy Cons.” Yet although he has mounted a spirited defense of the group’s credo in his Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Culture and Its Return to Roots … [Read More]

My friend Dave Weigel has a revealing post at Reason’s “Hit & Run” blog about Ron Paul’s long-overdue endorsement of Chuck Baldwin. Weigel refers the scornful commentators at “Hit & Run” to some “unfiltered Chuck” detailing his opposition to the North American Union, multiculturalism, and abortion. In a second post, he quotes Chuck as stating, This MTV generation has lost its … [Read More]

Even the editors of Time magazine can occasionally display some some wisdom, and to begin the new year, they got two things right: first, they canned Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer; second, they named President Vladimir Putin "Person of the Year." Putin may not be very well understood in the America, but he’s certainly deserving of the prize. The recent Russian … [Read More]

The TV show Gossip Girl, now in its second season, chronicles the “scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite”—“elite” meaning private school kids and their families.  Replete with iphone-toting teenagers, haute couture and on-location filming, the show pretends to at least a surface verisimilitude. When it comes to underlying sociological realities, however, it offers nothing but the most fatuous distortions. For example: • … [Read More]

Is it fair that businessmen who fail in neighborhood stores have to close shop and often sell their homes, while Wall Street titans are spared the consequences of monumental stupidity and greed? No, it is not fair. Yet, Treasury’s Hank Paulson may be right. To save the sheep who might have been wiped out in a general financial panic, we may … [Read More]

Are GOP partisans as dumb as they seem? My answer to this query is “at least as dumb as turkeys, the mouths of which have to be shut when it rains, lest they swallow too much water and drown.” How else does one explain the continued enthusiasm shown by conservative-GOP activists for the “conservative” McCain-Palin ticket? Although for years conservatives of … [Read More]

For every call or email I’ve ever received pointing out that conservative talk radio is “just entertainment,” I have received dozens upon dozens more responses that reflect, almost to a T, the perspective of men like Limbaugh, Hannity, and all the rest. For years, conservatives complained about the impact of the liberal media on the voting public. They were correct. Conservative … [Read More]

As Aeschylus observed nearly 2,500 years ago, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” In the Palestinian territories, truth is being occupied by various factions and is in jeopardy of being eliminated altogether. Stroll down the streets of Gaza, and it all becomes evident. While in the United States, a kind of “censorship” is taking place as the more serious-minded newspapers … [Read More]