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President’s negotiation style gets results

National Columnists

Think about it. Heads of government do not normally reveal the texts of private communications from other heads of state. Yet that is what Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store of Norway did on the first weekend of the World Economic Forum in Davos. You could think of this as a hostile act of a statesman appalled that the American head of government does not know that the government of Norway does not decide who gets the Nobel Peace Prize. It is probably better to think of it as an intervention, by a sympathetic observer who has noticed that Donald Trump backs down from untenable ...

Children should be banned from social media

National Columnists

The debate over children and social media is often framed as a question of parental control or technological inevitability. It should not be. At its core, this is a moral question about what kind of society we are shaping, what we choose to protect, and what we are willing to sacrifice in the name of convenience, profit and false notions of freedom. Children under the age of 13 should not be on social media. Not because technology is evil, but because childhood is fragile and social media is not built for moral development. At this stage of life, children are still forming their ...

There comes time to choose sides

National Columnists

Sunday night I went to the local cinema to catch the 83-year-old film “Casablanca” starring screen legends Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. I’ve seen it many times, but on this occasion, it seemed to be sending me a message across the decades. The movie opens with a random roundup of the “usual suspects” in Casablanca, Morocco. Someone runs. The armed authorities shoot him in the back. It’s as though what happens in an African city in 1941 foreshadows moments we are seeing in American cities today: armed authority, fear and the casual use of violence. The film’s ...

Five takeaways from college football championship game

National Columnists

Hoo, hoo, hoo, Hoosiers! Seeing the Indiana University Hoosiers win the College Football Playoff National Championship Monday night was the culmination of a season filled with notable lessons. Here are a few from my perspective: 1. In sports — as in many other matters — the experts are often wrong. The same people who tried to justify the exclusion of Notre Dame from the college football playoffs dissed Indiana all season long, including leading up to and throughout the playoffs and even just before the national championship game. They were wrong about the talent, toughness and ...

Dairy farmers celebrate Whole Milk Act

National Columnists

When word reached the dairy farmers gathered at the Pennsylvania Farm Show that President Donald Trump had signed the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, cheers echoed through the cavernous 24-acre complex packed with farmers, thousands of attendees, and even a few goats, cows and horses. No one was more exuberant at the news than Dave Smith, executive director of the Pennsylvania Dairymen’s Association, a trade group founded in the late 19th century that supports and advocates the state’s largest agricultural sector: dairy farming. Less than 10 minutes before the announcement, ...

Most powerful weapon is truth, principles

National Columnists

Recently, Michael Reagan, the eldest son of President Ronald Reagan, passed away at age 80. His passing was duly eulogized by the Reagan Foundation and the Young America’s Foundation at the Reagan Ranch. Both noted that Michael, whom I had the privilege to know, devoted his life to writing and speaking about the American principles that so defined his father. No death is ever timely. But there seems something fitting that President Reagan’s legacy would be closed out with the passing of his oldest son in the year of the 250th birthday of our nation. At this time of such ...