Defense Secretary Robert Gates leaves office this month as widely respected as any public figure in America today, appreciated for his willingness to return to public service at a moment of high danger in Iraq and to faithfully serve presidents of both parties.
Two years ago, in June 2009, the American economy emerged from recession, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. But as this week's Economist noted, with typical British understatement, "The recovery has been a disappointment."
Some of society's most intractable problems come not from its failures but from its successes. Often you can't get a good thing without paying a bad price.
The United States is a country that has been peopled largely by vast surges of migration -- from the British Isles in the 18th century, from Ireland and Germany in the 19th century, from Eastern and Southern Europe in the early 20th century, and from Latin America and Asia in the last three decades.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels did not attract as large a crowd when he spoke at the American Enterprise Institute (where I am a resident fellow) earlier this week as he did several months ago, before he disappointed admirers by announcing that he wouldn't run for president.
Napoleon is supposed to have said that the quality he most valued in his generals was luck. In the current race for the Republican presidential nomination, Napoleon's favorite would clearly be Mitt Romney.
The argument is being made in some quarters that, however unsuccessful Barack Obama's domestic policies have been, his record in foreign policy has been successful. But when you examine the claims of success, they seem a bit peculiar.
It irritates members of both groups when I note the similarities of the tea party movement that swept the nation in the 2010 election and the peace movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
To win just under 40 percent of the vote in a primary with five active candidates is pretty impressive, even for a candidate like Mitt Romney, who started off with significant advantages in New Hampshire.
"Is our children learning?" as George W. Bush so famously asked. Well, no, they is not learning, especially the history of their country, the school subject at which America's young perform at their worst.
By: Kevin Derby
| Posted: February 7, 2012 3:55 AM
In "The Book of Man," his new book offering readings to help educate boys, William Bennett offers a quick profile on U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., to illustrate two forms of polis -- democratic America and tyrannical communist Cuba.
By: Pat Buchanan
| Posted: September 9, 2011 3:55 AM
In Cairo in 1943, when the tide had turned in the war on Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, who had embraced Joseph Stalin as an ally and acceded to his every demand, had a premonition.
By: Pat Buchanan
| Posted: December 16, 2011 3:55 AM
For the Army and Marines who lost 4,500 dead and more than 30,000 wounded, many of them amputees, the second-longest war in U.S. history is over. America is coming home from Iraq.
By: Pat Buchanan
| Posted: January 20, 2012 3:55 AM
On Sept. 21, 1976, as his car rounded Sheridan Circle on Embassy Row, former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier was assassinated by car bomb. Ronni Moffitt, a 25-year-old American women who worked with Letelier at the leftist Institute for Policy Studies, died with him.
By: Kevin Derby
| Posted: January 11, 2012 3:55 AM
Pundits and his opponents in both the Democratic and Republican ranks continue to pummel Mitt Romney as one of the weakest GOP front-runners in recent memory.
