A recent syndicated column by Thomas Sowell “Republicans in the Wilderness” includes useful advice but also misleading conclusions. According to Sowell, while “Republican moderates” Bob Dole and John McCain “lost disastrously to Democrats,” Republicans who have stood their ground, like Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, have been more successful politically. Victorious Republicans have understood that “far more Americans describe themselves as … [Read More]

Speaking on FOX News the same day Sanford dropped his bombshell, former Bush adviser Karl Rove said: “With all due respect to Governor Sanford, I’ve never thought he was a particularly strong candidate. If you looked just beneath the surface in South Carolina, for example, there were a lot of strong conservatives who were very upset with his performance in office… … [Read More]

People often ask me how I can write about Thomas Jefferson or James Madison, Abraham Lincoln or the American Revolution, the U.S. Constitution or the South.  Hasn’t it all been said?  Isn’t there already a mountain of books about them? They are right to think that a great amount of ink has been spilled on these topics.  Where a layman’s intuition … [Read More]

Rolling though picture-perfect hills and fields of maize and barley towards Wembury House, Devon, for the annual Hanbury cricket match. At times it’s a scene from a ‘50s film of a long-ago England, beautiful, tranquil and law-abiding, with glimpses of broad greens, riverside walks and winding country lanes. But then comes the announcement in an English I can hardly comprehend, however … [Read More]

The fascinating news that the ageing William F. Buckley, beset by bladder problems, developed the habit of opening the door of his moving limousine and urinating into passing traffic—revealed by his son, Christopher Buckley in Losing Mum and Pup, his unsparing memoir of his just-deceased parents’ final year—is almost laughably symbolic. CB himself—whose father certainly presented him with much more distressing … [Read More]

Obama is a heavy-duty planner; a command and control kind of guy. He aims to replace cumbersome, heavily regulated medicine—the kind Americans have now—with Kafkaesque, centrally controlled care. He’ll start small—a modest healthcare expansion totaling $2 trillion—and will proceed from there. During the recent ABC News Health Care infomercial, put on for the Big Man’s benefit, the president smirked: “If private … [Read More]

Misguided government policies have already dealt vicious body blows to our economy, but that hasn’t stopped politicians this week from launching two new kicks to the groin: a national health insurance plan and a carbon emissions regulation system called “cap and trade.” Even if these plans could achieve their desired ends, which is highly unlikely, I would have hoped Washington would … [Read More]

It has to be said that punching Perez Hilton is something that has crossed my mind more than once. I find this blogger about celebrities who has become a celebrity (although Z list as yet) in his own right insufferably annoying. Sorry. But there it is. It’s not particularly rational nor even an honorable thought, but the man just manages to … [Read More]

That a man whose entire career had been defined by his staunch fidelity to the American taxpayer would throw it all away by committing infidelity seemed like a fate fit for some other politician. In his political life, Sanford had never been a scumbag like Eliot Spitzer, a hack with something to hide like Larry Craig, or even remotely in the … [Read More]

PALM SPRINGS, Calif.—In just a few weeks time, California hits the wall. And Americans should take a good, long look at the fiscal and social wreck of the Golden Land, because California is at a place to which all of America is heading. In May, when five fund-raising proposals were put on the ballot, Gov. Schwarzenegger pleaded with the overtaxed Californians … [Read More]