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When political power confronts moral authority

National Columnists

There are moments in political life when rhetoric stops being merely provocative and begins to test the boundaries of institutional respect. President Donald J. Trump's attack on a sitting pope invites comparison to one of the most consequential overreaches in modern American history: when former Sen. Joseph McCarthy turned his fire on the United States military and, in doing so, exposed the limits of demagoguery. That parallel is not casual. It is instructive. McCarthy's downfall did not come because he lacked support. At his height, he commanded headlines, shaped fear and ...

Iran — Taking a longer view of war

National Columnists

The prognosis of the Iran war is now so couched in politics that the public has grown tired and wants it all to go away. But in truth, the situation is so fluid that any accurate prediction is impossible. Yet there is good reason to believe in an eventual outcome quite favorable to the U.S. and one far better than the status quo ante bellum. The Strait of Hormuz Prior to President Donald Trump's most recent announcement that the United States would first blockade and then reopen and control traffic through the Strait, only a few ships were going through, mostly those aligned with ...

There's hope for every jurisdiction in America

National Columnists

San Francisco, a city long associated with exotic ideas, has been experimenting with cracking down on car thieves. Unlike some of the city's other adventures, this one is actually working out. Car break-ins are down 85% from 2023, and are down 50% the first three months of 2026, compared to the first three months of 2025. This is good news for residents and tourists, and bad news for auto repair shops that did a brisk business in new car windows. Smash-and-grab break-ins were such an ingrained part of San Francisco life that an argot grew up around them: Breaking into cars is ...

Little kids, big government

National Columnists

Child care got expensive — more than $13,000 per child, per year. So many people want government to pay for it. My state just agreed. New York will fund free child care. Yay! But wait ... what government does isn't free. Taxpayers pay. And taxpayers pay (SET ITAL)more(END ITAL) because "government rules have unintended consequences," says Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women's Forum. Washington, D.C. day care teachers must have a degree in Early Childhood Education. That can take two years and cost $22,000. "Of course you're going to have to pay a lot more," ...

Price controls will deny millions of credit cards

National Columnists

There's a famous scene in the movie "The Graduate" in which a young Dustin Hoffman receives this one-word bit of career advice from a businessman: "plastics." He wasn't talking about credit cards, but he might as well have been. Back in the 1960s only about half of Americans had credit cards. Today about 90% of us do. It's what I call the democratization of credit. This revolution in the way we pay for things benefits everyone: shoppers, retailers, online companies, banks, recordkeepers and so on. It's no exaggeration to say that credit cards are the grease that makes ...

Party may be over

National Columnists

There is lore about the 1862 meeting between Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," — the influential novel about slavery — and former President Abraham Lincoln. "So," President Lincoln is reported to have greeted her, "you're the woman who wrote the book that made this great war." History doesn't indicate whether Lincoln made these remarks out of admiration, irritation, regret or some combination thereof. It may be that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will come to mutter something comparable about the 20-year-old California woman, identified in court records as ...