Columns

The Washington D.C. wheeler-dealers are making patsies out of the rest of us. Members of Congress get million-dollar-plus expense accounts, lifetime pensions and lavish perks, but for the greedy, that's not enough. They're also racking up big bucks trading stocks in the very same companies Congress regulates...

I have long opposed making voting mandatory, an idea that pops up every few years. I still don't like the idea. But it's become more attractive, at least as a thought experiment. The arguments against compelling people to vote -- as Australia and a handful of other countries do -- run from the constitutional (it's coerced speech) to the cultural (this is America, dagnabbit) to the practical and the partisan...

Glenn Youngkin promised to be on the side of parents as Virginia governor, and on his first day in office, he delivered. The Republican issued an executive order allowing parents to decide whether their kids will wear masks in school, and met an instant wall of resistance from Democratic-controlled counties and criticism from White House press secretary Jen Psaki. A Washington Post headline said Youngkin is "terrifying people."...

The omicron variant of COVID-19 has surged to the point that many school districts are back to remote learning. When the transition was announced in my son's school, I felt a rush of relief. Though he's fully vaccinated, I knew he would be safer at home from the highly infectious omicron variant. We've seen many around us suffer breakthrough cases and as a person with autoimmune disease, I really want to get through this pandemic without testing my luck with infection...

This year may be the last January March for Life. I've attended many of the annual anti-abortion gatherings in our nation's capital, and it's a sight to behold. There's always a big showing from North Dakota, thanks to the University of Mary in Bismarck. ...

We celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day on the third Monday of January -- this year, Jan. 17. On Aug. 28, 1963, King delivered one of the great speeches in American history, popularly known as the "I Have a Dream" speech. It is a speech that must be dusted off and studied anew today, because it contains the very message that our nation sorely needs to hear and digest now. A message that has been tragically lost and buried and replaced with great and destructive distortions...

From the moment COVID-19 appeared, the pandemic became inseparable from politics. Political frenzy was inevitable since the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have escaped from a level-4 security virology lab in Wuhan, China. The rapid-fire spread soon threatened to indict the Chinese communist government for nearly destroying the world economy and killing millions...

"The most dangerous pronoun discourse has nothing to do with gender identity. It's the undefined 'we' in public policy debates that's the problem." These are the words of Richard Morrison, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Morrison identified "the fallacy of we," and I'm often guilty of committing it...

Well, it looks like we're headed for autocracy, then. In his wisdom, Joe Biden decided to declare in his Georgia voting speech that there's a crisis in our democracy that can only be fixed if the Senate filibuster is eliminated to rapidly pass two sweeping Democratic voting bills on narrow partisan votes, an unlikely prospect that already looks completely dead...

Last January, newly elected President Joe Biden pledged to fight racism and unify the nation. Instead, during his first year he's imposed a harsh agenda of racism in everything from distributing pandemic-relief aid to allocating scarce medicines for COVID patients. Racial favoritism is affecting every way Americans are treated by this administration...

On Monday, Russian president-for-life Vladimir Putin explained that the "peacekeeper" paratroopers he sent to Kazakhstan to help quash civil unrest were part of his larger policy of preventing "color revolutions" in former Soviet-bloc countries. Putin made his remarks at a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which the New York Times described as "a body equivalent to NATO that includes six countries from the former Soviet Union."...

The Constitution must be defended — except when it must be jettisoned. We've heard much upon the anniversary of Jan. 6 about how Donald Trump wanted to distort the Constitution to get Vice President Mike Pence to try to throw the election to him a year ago...

As we await findings and conclusions of the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 attack, let's take a moment and do our own soul-searching about what is going on. The House Select Committee is engaged in Washington's favorite pastime — looking for whom to blame. The sidelight of this pastime is the pretense that things that are very complicated can be made clear and simple...

The new year often feels like an opportunity to correct past mistakes — for example, improving one's diet or quitting smoking. This explains why 25% of Americans, and 40% of those younger than 30, make New Year's resolutions. Based on the latest poll from The Economist and YouGov, the Biden administration should adopt a New Year's resolution, too. In particular, it should reconsider its domestic policy agenda. Americans aren't buying it...

On the wall at home I have a picture of my brother Rex and me in a tennis tournament as kids. In my office, there are pictures of us together in front of the house we grew up in, as well as photos together at business events. When I play ping pong or tennis or watch football with my daughters or, currently, do anything, my mind often turns to fond memories of growing up with a brother who loved sports, laughter and competition -- and who was a business partner for the past 20 years...

The fullness of time, and now the omicron wave, have made it obvious how preposterous the chief lines of criticism against Donald Trump were during the pandemic. It has been said, over and over, that Trump almost single-handedly killed Americans. Chris Hayes a couple of months ago called for a truth-and-reconciliation-commission-type inquiry into how Trump "willfully got hundreds of thousands of people killed." Willfully!...

"Be my Mommy!" the banner in the CVS window read, part of a display of surplus Baby Emma dolls. It was the fifth day of Christmas, and I noticed during Mass — shortly before I went to the drugstore to pick up prescriptions — one of the petitions during the service was for those struggling to have a happy, peaceful Christmas. ...

At the beginning of a new year, it's traditional to make a resolution or two. I have no such list for myself or others, but I do have a wish. For 2022 and beyond, I wish all of us who still cherish liberal values will band together to oppose the worrisome rise of authoritarianism around the world...

"Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise." Proverbs 6:6 Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard biologist who has died at age 92, is most famous for his contributions to evolutionary biology, but he built his career on ants. He wrote multiple books on the insects, including a 700-page encyclopedic work in 1990 that has to count as one of the least likely winners of the Pulitzer Prize ever...

One great mystery is the persistent refusal of those on the left to abandon what is clearly not true. That is, that the means for reducing the burden of poverty is more government spending. It all really started in the 1960s under President Lyndon B. ...

The Democratic Party used to call itself the party of working people and hail the "dignity of work." No more. Now Democrats want to guarantee people who choose not to work an income funded by the suckers who do the right thing by showing up for work, caring for their family and paying taxes...

The last two years have seen an unprecedented escalation in a decades-long war on the American past. But there are lots of logical flaws in attacking prior generations in U.S. history. Critics assume their own judgmental generation is morally superior to those of the past. So, they use their own standards to condemn the mute dead who supposedly do not measure up to them...

This time of year, dear readers, is when us writers curate lists. Some are about the best movies, top kitchen appliances or favorite new songs of 2021. This year, I'd like to recommend three books to read after the tumultuous events of 2021. My first is a new and important book by law professors Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick: "The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment." The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, and before it, no individuals of African descent -- including slaves and free persons -- could become U.S. ...

Washington, D.C., is now the epicenter of the pandemic. As of Dec. 23, it had 158 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents, a 541% growth in cases over the last two weeks. This was much more than Alabama, Mississippi or South Carolina, all of which had cases in the 20s or below per 100,000...

Christmas is a season, not just a day. And it only begins on Dec. 25. The Rockefeller Center tree and elves on shelves and all the rest can be deceiving. We were merely preparing for Christmas, and are now celebrating it, at least until the Epiphany. Others will celebrate until the feast of the Presentation in early February. It's a season that renews Christians' faith and hope, and reminds them of their capacity for joy...

On New Year's Eve, when I was a kid, at the stroke of midnight we would run outside and bang pots and pans with a wooden spoon to ring in the new year. Those were the modest homemade noisemakers of our small Kentucky town. As a teen, I would dream of being among the crowd in New York City when the ball dropped. I declared that's where I'd be for the year 2000. I wasn't. I was 25 years old and pregnant with my daughter. I slept right through it. Staying up until midnight had lost its novelty...

You know that old tale about the guy stranded on a rooftop during a flood who beseeches God to rescue him? A neighbor in a rowboat comes and offers to rescue him. "No, I've asked God to save me," the man says. Then a police boat makes the same offer, and he gives the same reply. Finally, a helicopter arrives, same response...

Joe Manchin and London Breed have nothing in common. One is an old-school Democratic senator from West Virginia, surviving and thriving in an increasingly red state; the other is the progressive mayor of San Francisco, a city that is a byword for cutting-edge left-wing politics...

The saying, "One man with courage makes a majority" has been attributed by historians to different sources. But regardless of who said it, there is one man who stands out today worthy of this description. It's West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. Manchin has been a one-man show in the Democratic Party, standing often in solitude, holding feet-to-the-fire of his president and his party's leadership, pushing back on the massive and irresponsible spending avalanche in the Build Back Better act...

Imagine knowing that the very act of going to a religious service would likely result in violence and death. In Nigeria, churches have been sent warning letters instructing them to shut down or face "ferocious" attacks. That's some Christmas card! In a perhaps not unrelated event, just before Thanksgiving, as U.S. ...

President Joe Biden has the misfortune to be president at the moment when corporate America has decided to get together and gouge American consumers. That, at least, is the story the White House and its allies, most prominently Sen. Elizabeth Warren, want to tell...

I'm sick and tired of wearing masks. I'm sick and tired of vaccine mandates. I'm sick and tired of hearing the dire warnings and broken promises of politicians and incompetent public health officials. For almost two years they've ordered us around like children and told us what individual freedoms we must sacrifice if we are to ever win the war against COVID-19...

Nikki Haley, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has served up a kind of Christmas present to the nation in the form of a new comprehensive policy book, issued by her organization Stand for America, serving up conservative solutions for our nation's many challenges -- domestic and foreign...

What is behind recent pessimistic appraisals of democracy's future, from Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff, Brian Williams and other elite intellectuals, media personalities, and politicians on the Left? Some are warning about its possible erosion in 2024. Others predict democracy's downturn as early 2022, with scary scenarios of "autocracy" and Trump "coups."...

Between the breaking news from the tornadic devastation in the Midwest, I worked on Christmas crafts with my kindergartner. The juxtaposition of hardship and the holidays reminded me of Christmastime with my daughter when she was young. My son is 15 years younger than his closest sibling. ...

Inflation has reached its highest level in decades. While we're not yet in a situation like we had in the 1970s -- and we can hope that the Federal Reserve will regain control before it reaches that point -- there are still plenty of reasons to be upset that inflation is getting so out of hand...

U.S. senators need to forgo the posh Capitol dining rooms and go food shopping in the shoes of ordinary Americans. Shoppers are panicking at the meat counter, where beef prices are up more than 20%. Nearly everything in the basket costs more. Most pols are clueless about the pain inflation is causing...

What the progressive culture elite wants, it usually gets. Single-sex bathrooms changing overnight to all-gender or non-gender bathrooms? Done. Illegal immigrants becoming known as undocumented persons? But of course. So, when it was decided in the precincts of fashionable opinion that the term "Latino" would be retired in favor of "Latinx," one could have been forgiven for thinking that this hideous neologism would, like so much else in American life, go from a fringe cause to mainstream soon enough.. ...

Like a lot of people, I get a ton of thirsty emails from Donald Trump. On Saturday, he sent this note: "See you in Sunrise, FL, in a little while and tomorrow, Orlando. Big crowds!" He was referring to the first installment of his road show with former Fox host Bill O'Reilly. Attendance was lackluster...

The "woke" movement was giddy after Jan. 20, 2021. The Left controlled both houses of Congress. Joe Biden was drafted as the necessary veneer of 1980s Democratic normality to ram through an otherwise hard Left agenda. All the major cultural, financial, economic, entertainment, and media institutions had played various roles in seeing former President Donald Trump not just defeated, but also impeached, twice. He was written off as persona non grata after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol...

The State of California has declared that it wants to be a "sanctuary" for abortion. The Golden State powers-that-be have assembled the California Future of Abortion Council (FAB) to make that wish a reality. Someone should have checked the acronym. ...

No CPAC invitation will be in the offing anytime soon, but Vladimir Putin has picked up admirers on the populist right, here and abroad, that he doesn't deserve. With Putin threatening to invade Ukraine, the Russian dictator will again become a top-of-mind concern...

Should we ignore the costs of the "Build Back Better" bill and simply focus on the benefits? Wouldn't that be nice? Unfortunately, the most constructive criticisms of the legislation reveal why the magical thinking behind this monstrously expensive spending package will not improve American society...

The University of Missouri recently celebrated the grand opening of the Roy Blunt NextGen Precision Health building on our flagship campus in Columbia. The NextGen Precision Health initiative is the university's number one strategic priority, and this building anchors the most ambitious research push in our 182-year history. The opening was a great success and attended by university leaders, elected representatives and even Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health...

I've seen the inside of a lot of therapy rooms and never, not once, has an important disclosure included confident eye contact. I've shredded soggy tissues with eyes cast down. I have chewed an unruly cuticle. Never have I wanted to look my therapist in the eye...

The left wants liberty for pregnant women but tells the rest of us to pound salt. On Monday, lame-duck New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced, "Omicron is here, and it looks very transmissible." So, de Blasio, ignoring scientific evidence that current COVID-19 vaccines will not stop the variant from spreading, decreed all private sector workers in businesses of all sizes must be vaccinated by Dec. 27...

After the pandemic forced many families to alter or cancel plans for get-togethers last year, many of us were looking forward to a more traditional holiday season this year. Instead, people are realizing they're either going to have to scale back their celebrations or be prepared to pay a lot more for them. ...

Things have not gone well for Vice President Kamala Harris. Not only is she less popular than her boss, but according to one recent poll, she even broke Dick Cheney’s record for most unpopular sitting vice president. But it’s worse than that. Cheney — fairly or unfairly — was unpopular because a lot of people thought he was in charge. He also shot a guy in the face. It was an accident, but still...

It should be a rule of thumb the Olympic Games shouldn’t be held in countries operating concentration camps. If this strikes you as an unreasonable demand, you aren’t suited to serve on the International Olympic Committee. The IOC has doggedly defended Beijing as the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics even as the Chinese Communist Party pursues its campaign of unrelenting barbarity against the Uyghurs...

There was a prevailing feeling of optimism as I stood outside the Supreme Court with the sun warming us on a brisk late fall day as oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the Mississippi abortion case, were to be heard. For those of us who gather outside the Court every January to mark the anniversary of Roe v. Wade with sorrow, hope was palpable...

At times, you might have been forgiven for thinking oral arguments over the Dobbs case were being held before the Health and Human Services Committee of the Pennsylvania state Senate, or some other legislative body. Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, involving Mississippi's ban on abortion after 15 weeks, is, of course, the most consequential abortion case to reach the Supreme Court in decades. The arguments, as you would expect, featured plenty of intricate legal discussion...

My brother is older than me and when I was in high school, he worked second shift. I'd stay up waiting for him to get home and we'd work on jigsaw puzzles on the floor of his bedroom late into the night. Later, we went through divorces at the same time, and we helped each other through our hard times. ...

The nonsensical coverage of the debate over paid leave continues. Apparently, opposing a federal paid-leave program is the equivalent of being anti-family or pro-suffering, or so we're told. We rarely get information about the full consequences of such a policy...

In a recent online exchange, the YouTuber Casey Neistat posted his fury after his car was broken into and the contents stolen. Los Angeles, he railed, was turning into a "3rd-world [expletive]-hole of a city." The multimillionaire actor Seth Rogen chastised Neistat for his anger...

The world is still COVID crazy. With their vaccine mandates, passports and mistreatment of the unvaccinated, free countries like Australia and Canada are turning into dictatorships. Now we have omicron -- a new variant of still unknown infectiousness and lethality that overnight panicked the world's governments and stock markets...

For the first five years, the single most expensive item in the House version of the Democrats' "Build Back Better," or "human" infrastructure, bill is a gigantic tax cut for millionaires and billionaires. This provision would lift the cap from $10,000 to $80,000 on income tax deductions for state and local taxes (commonly referred to among budget nerds as "SALT")...

A new COVID-19 variant, reported from sub-Saharan Africa last week, has caused many developed countries to halt travel from that region without delay. All except America, which, thanks to Anthony Fauci, dithered and ultimately put into place a tepid plan that into effect Monday...

Nike's latest TV ad is another slick paean to individual empowerment and prevailing despite the naysayers. Centered around Memphis Grizzlies star Ja Morant, the commercial features various people doubting Morant can keep up his stellar play, to which someone always cheekily replies, "Says who?"...

The Supreme Court will hear this week Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. At issue is the law in Mississippi banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. A decision finding the Mississippi law constitutional will fundamentally change the abortion regime in our country, defined by Roe v. Wade since 1973...

Over the last few weeks, Pope Francis has been pointing to St. Joseph, the foster father of Jesus, as a role model. At a time when the United States has some 440,000 children stuck in the foster care system, it’s a good time to be talking about foster parents...

Thomas Jefferson is on the outs. Columbus Day is a shadow of its former self. And Thanksgiving, perhaps most consequently, is under pressure. If this most American holiday is ever downgraded from its honored place on the national calendar, it will speak of a profound change in our self-definition...

It is ironic when Democrats complain about sensational use of language. Thanks to progressives, practically every white person in America has been labeled a racist. But now, Democrats are screaming because Republican Sen. John Kennedy suggested Saule Omarova, whom President Joe Biden has nominated to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — the nation's top banking regulator — might be a communist...

I quit Fox News after more than a decade as a contributor. So did my business partner and friend Steve Hayes. We explained our reasons on the Dispatch, a media company we founded. But the decision was a long time in coming. Like Ernest Hemingway's description of bankruptcy, it came gradually and then suddenly...

It started about a year into the pandemic and before vaccines were widely available. I was looking for my next book to read and my friend Christi told me I "had to read" Tara Schuster's "Buy Yourself the F-cking Lilies," so I did. It was exactly what I needed and right on time in so many ways. One chapter was about writing thank-you notes, and after a year of isolation, that sounded like a wonderful idea...

Millions of citizens long ago concluded that professional sports, academia, and entertainment were no longer disinterested institutions, but far Left and deliberately hostile to Middle America. Yet American conservatives still adamantly supported the nation's traditional investigatory, intelligence, and military agencies -- especially when they came under budgetary or cultural attacks...

Thanksgiving is a time for reflecting on all those things for which we are grateful. It seems particularly important now at the end of the second year featuring a pandemic and unprecedented restrictions. This past year also brought many abuses of government powers with long-lasting consequences. Americans' discontent is incredibly high, and some scholars worry that for the first time in over 150 years, we could be heading toward an epic slip downward...

Social and emotional learning is the latest trend at your child's school. SEL sounds beneficial, but that's a disguise. In truth, it indoctrinates kids with extremist ideas many parents don't condone. On Nov. 22, the Hartford Courant reported that West Hartford, Connecticut, elementary school parents are in an uproar. ...

The first time I ever wrote something with the intent of sharing it beyond the classroom was through 4-H. I grew up in a small town in northern Kentucky, right across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio. In both fifth and sixth grades, I earned a blue ribbon in the local 4-H speech competition and even got to compete regionally. ...

It ought to be possible to operate a retail store in one of America's largest and most iconic cities, but this most basic commercial proposition is in doubt in San Francisco. The erstwhile Golden City is beset by an ongoing tide of theft that is closing down retail locations and demonstrating again the city's unwillingness to govern itself...

The GOP has had plenty of reason for good cheer in recent months. Nothing can compare, though, with the glad tidings of a potential showdown between Vice President Kamala Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to be Biden's successor in 2024 should he decide not to run for reelection...

If you are pregnant and in need, come to the Catholic Church! That was the message of Cardinal John O'Connor 30 years ago when he founded the Sisters of Life in New York. That community of Catholic nuns were founded to protect and enhance the sanctity of human life. The Sisters today are in the New York metropolitan area, Phoenix, Denver, Philadelphia, Toronto and Washington, D.C...

President Joe Biden has united the American people — in disapproving of his performance, with 70% of Americans disliking the direction the economy is going and over 6 in 10 blaming him for it. The impact of inflation on people's pocketbooks and concerns over the expanding role of government are important in explaining those low approval numbers. A good time to change course is now...

The Washington, D.C.-based Federal Bureau of Investigation has lost all credibility as a disinterested investigatory agency. Now we learn from a whistleblower the agency was allegedly investigating moms and dads worried about the teaching of critical race theory in their kids' schools...

As Democrats regroup to try to pass their $2 trillion Build Back Better Act, pressure grows for shining the light of fiscal responsibility on all this. Given President Joe Biden's crashing approval ratings, there is some hint that the American people smell a rat...

How is inflation like critical race theory? A lot of voters have a hard time explaining how either works, but they know they don't like it when they see it. Obviously, it's a silly comparison on the merits. For starters, some voters actually like critical race theory while nobody likes paying higher prices. But, politically, the comparison is apt for two reasons...

It has come to my attention that throughout this whole process of presenting the facts for the city's financial information in regards to the use tax proposal, there are questions concerning the city's current revenue numbers. Our latest figures presented were through the end of fiscal year of 2019. I will give you the actual revenue figures in the chart nearby both for our fiscal year (June-June) and by calendar year and show the inflation rate for each year...

Working Americans got good news Nov. 12. They may not have to worry about getting laid off because of qualms about the COVID-19 vaccine. A federal appeals court suspended the Biden administration's attempt to mandate the shots at private sector workplaces with 100 or more employees...

I voted for the use tax in the city of Cape Girardeau on Nov. 2. My personal opinion is that all sales taxes (city, county and state) should be charged for any retail purchase regardless of whether the purchase is made from a local store or via an online website. ...

Joe Biden was never exactly a colossus bestriding the Earth, but he's been getting smaller by the day. A Washington Post poll over the weekend suggested his presidency is, for now, a smoking political crater. It had him at a 41% approval rating, despite the passage of his long-sought infrastructure bill that was supposed to buoy him and his party...

"History will figure that out on its own." That is what Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) recently replied to Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In a heated congressional exchange, Fauci derided the idea the COVID-19 pandemic was due to the leak of a dangerous virus, engineered in the Chinese Wuhan virology lab — and in part funded by U.S. health agencies, on the prompt of Fauci himself...

The experience of the last Democratic president who presided over a significant bout of inflation wasn't a happy one, and if the Biden White House isn't haunted by that precedent, it isn't paying attention. Arguably, galloping inflation did more than anything else to unravel Jimmy Carter's presidency...

"The quality of the punditry is abysmal." That's the title of an excellent letter recently shared with me and submitted to the editor of the Washington Post by George Mason University economics professor Donald Boudreaux. Indeed, newspapers are full of questionable statements about child care costs, paid leave and other economic matters that make me question the extent to which reporters and pundits have educated themselves on the topics...

In a new USA Today/Suffolk University poll, President Joe Biden's approval is down to 38%. Which looks pretty good compared to Vice President Kamala Harris, whose approval now stands at 28%. Democrats have just been reprimanded by voters, with the upset victory of Republican candidate and political novice Glenn Youngkin in the governor's race in Virginia, an almost upset victory in New Jersey by Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli, who came within 2% of the vote of winning, and revolts in school board elections nationwide, pushing back against critical race theory and COVID-19 government interventions.. ...

As a kid, I would go to work with my stepmom, who worked at the Museum of Natural History. I volunteered wherever anyone needed me. I assisted with children's programming, answered the phone and even got to hold the resident rainbow boa constrictor for visitors to see. It was fun, I made friends and it also gave me confidence, new skills and a sense of purpose before I was old enough to be gainfully employed...

Parents who never imagined running for office battled to win seats on local school boards last week; they won some, but lost many. Their fiercest opponents were the teachers unions. The media portrayed these school board races as culture wars, but more than anything they were struggles by parents to wrest control of the boards from self-serving unions. ...

Nov. 2 was a boffo night for the Republican Party, and not such a great night for Donald Trump. It's not as though the interests of the two are diametrically opposed, but they are in tension. To the extent that the GOP shows that it can thrive without former President Donald Trump being on the ballot or even at the center of attention, it undermines the idea that he, and only he, knows the secret to Republican success...

New scientific findings in the prestigious Lancet Infectious Diseases journal blow a hole in the argument that workers need to get vaccinated to protect those around them. The findings prove the foolishness of forcing police and other public employees to get jabbed or lose their pay. And President Joe Biden should retract his order to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to compel large employers to mandate vaccines...

Well, what do you know. Donald Trump finally did the right thing. He shut up, encouraged his supporters to flood the polls and stayed away from Virginia. By keeping his powerful big political butt out of last week's elections in Virginia, the ex-president actually made a huge and positive contribution to the devastating losses Democrats suffered there on Tuesday night...

The first thing to know about the "Let's go Brandon" thing is: It's funny. Or at least, it started out funny. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, here's how it started. In September, largely or even entirely in response to the Biden administration's botched handling of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, crowds at various sporting events started chanting, "[Expletive] Joe Biden!"...

Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat left-wing "squad" member in the House, attacked Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin for his opposition to the multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better Act. Manchin is "anti-Black, anti-child, anti-woman and anti-immigrant," according to Bush because of his opposition to this megaspending welfare bill...

The holiday season is identified as one of gratitude, joy and generosity. But all of that cheer can be hard to stomach when coping with compounding grief and stress, and this pandemic has left no stone unturned. I think of the famous Fred Rogers quote. ...

Growing up in the area, my family would make weekend visits to see grandparents and other family in Southeast Missouri's bootheel — Mississippi County to be specific. Sundays typically started with church followed by the 45-minute drive south on I-55 where we would enjoy a home cooked meal followed by fun outdoor activities and usually some work in my grandparents' garden. ...

"You put that in the wrong way," I said to my husband as I stood over him, watching as he loaded the dishwasher. "Are you backseat dishwasher-loading?" he asked me. "It's not a big deal," I said. "It's just that all the dinner plates should be loaded on the bottom, in the front, facing the same way."...

There's a crisis afoot in the land -- people are being rude to President Joe Biden. The trend of anti-Biden protesters chanting or holding signs saying, "[Expletive] Joe Biden," or the cleaner version that has come to signify the same thing, "Let's go Brandon," is being portrayed as a new low in American politics...

Ross Douthat has a powerful new book about his battle with chronic Lyme disease. In "The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery," he writes beautifully, with honesty and gratitude. I was overcome with emotion when I got to the part about our mutual friend Andrew Walther, who died a year ago...

For years, progressives mocked anyone who warned that the Democratic Party's move leftward would produce government officials who might push actual socialist policies once in office. I'll admit that for a variety of reasons I never found this extreme version of the slippery-slope argument convincing. ...

Democrats used to be the party of working people. Now, they sneer at people who work hard. Democrats pushing to pass the Build Back Better bill want a single parent with two kids to be able to take home well over $31,000 in cash and noncash federal benefits a year, tax-free, without having to work. The handouts are even higher in states that offer generous benefits. So why get a job?...

The joke goes that a slip of the tongue for a politician means that they accidentally said what they actually believe. Now Democrats are trying to clean up the mess created by Virginia Democratic candidate for governor Terry McAuliffe when he said in a debate on Sept. 28, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."...

Although Virginia has been a politically blue state for years, this year's election has the Democrats' governor facing a serious challenge. One of the reasons is that many Virginia parents are outraged by the "woke" propaganda their children are being subjected to in the public schools -- and the governor has sided with the education bureaucrats and the teachers union...

A specter haunts the Democratic Party -- the possibility of a Glenn Youngkin victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race. The former business owner and political neophyte is running neck and neck with Terry McAuliffe, the longtime Democratic fixture who is seeking a return to the governor's mansion after serving one term from 2014 to 2018...