We celebrate the Fourth of July because that's the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, 242 years ago. You might call July 4 America's birthday.
The Declaration didn't just declare our independence from Britain; it vowed to create a government that respected all people's rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Republicans are right to call for tough measures to deter illegal immigration -- which means building the wall, ending the "catch and release" policy and challenging the harboring strategies of sanctuary cities.
"No Borders! No Nations! No Deportations!" "Abolish ICE!"
Before last week, these were the mindless slogans of an infantile left, seen on signs at rallies to abolish ICE, the agency that arrests and deports criminal aliens who have no right to be in our country.
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat its mistakes, blah blah blah, someone said -- Americans don't even pay attention to the news, so how the heck are they supposed to remember it after it becomes history?
For Nancy Pelosi, 78, Steny Hoyer, 79, and Joe Biden, 75, the primary results from New York's 14th congressional district are a fire bell in the night.
It became official just after lunchtime on Wednesday, just after the Supreme Court announced its final decisions of the term and went into recess. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the 104th person to serve on the court, is retiring, effective just after his 82nd birthday next month, after 30 years of service.
An already turbulent national political environment was rocked by another major development Wednesday afternoon: Justice Anthony Kennedy, the closest thing there is to a swing vote on the Supreme Court, decided to retire. President Donald Trump, who already got to appoint conservative Neil Gorsuch to the court after Senate Republicans decided not to consider then-President Barack Obama’s replacement for the deceased Antonin Scalia in early 2016, is now poised to pick a second justice, and one who likely will push the court further to the right. This comes on the heels of several key, 5-4 decisions released at the end of this year’s Supreme Court term that broke against the court’s liberal bloc.
"No ban. No wall. No borders at all."
I'm not surprised that mobs shriek at Trump administration officials in restaurants and that Maxine Waters wants more of that. I've watched this happen at American colleges.
If Trump's supporters are truly "a basket of deplorables ... racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic" and "irredeemable," as Hillary Clinton described them to an LGBT crowd, is not shunning and shaming the proper way to deal with them?
Last week, I testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on the state of the American labor market. I summarized my message in one sentence: For American workers, the job market has never -- or at least seldom -- been better. If you don't have a job, go out and get one, because jobs are out there for the taking.
"I would prefer not to." That was the invariable reply of the title character of Herman Melville's 1853 story "Bartleby, the Scrivener," when asked by his employer to perform a task.
"If you're ... pathetically weak, the country is going to be overrun with millions of people, and if you're strong, then you don't have any heart, that's a tough dilemma. ... I'd rather be strong."
If he does, the former coal magnate will be just the latest in a long line of Senate primary losers to run in a general election.
Confirmation bias damages reputations. It ruins credibility. It destroys lives.
Upset because Facebook and Google invade your privacy? Be glad you don't live in China.
Facebook and other Western apps are banned there. The government views their openness as a threat. So the Chinese use platforms like WeChat and Alibaba.
All of a sudden, everyone on the left wants "free markets in energy policy." As someone who's advocated for that for, oh, about three decades, this riff should be music to my ears. But is laissez faire energy policy really what liberals are seeking?
"It is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart," says former first lady Laura Bush of the Trump administration policy of "zero tolerance," under which the children of illegal migrants are being detained apart from their parents.
It has been a week full of wins for President Donald Trump -- at least for those who share Trump's view of the way the world works, and perhaps even for some who don't.
President Donald Trump appears to belong to what might be called the Benjamin Disraeli school of diplomacy.
The British prime minister once counseled, "Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel."
