Columns

When I became chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, I promised that I'd partner with the American people to deliver solutions to the many crises facing families, farmers and millions of working-class Americans. That's why I brought the Ways and Means Committee to Yukon, Oklahoma, recently to hear directly from working Americans about the state of our nation's economy in the Heartland...

Banking must have been next on the to-do list of the things the Biden administration is planning to destroy. In two years, President Joe Biden and the wrecking crew of crazies, wokesters and career incompetents he has put into his government have screwed up every corner of America...

President Ronald Reagan once said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'" Shock waves are rippling through the country after the announcement of the second largest bank failure in the country's history last week -- Silicon Valley Bank...

Social media exposes all of us, but perhaps none more so than the former president of the United States. Donald Trump's Truth Social account is a daily advertisement for a sense of political desperation seemingly at odds with his position in a Republican field he currently dominates...

Are you ready for some "inside baseball" discussion about the political process? I hope so, because I feel I need to explain what's going on in Jefferson City, and why we haven't been able to bring an issue that's important to me, and a lot of Missourians, to a vote. I'd like to tell you about the Senate filibuster. Specifically, I want to talk about what's keeping us from passing Senate Bill 49...

On Saturday night, Mike Pence unleashed his anger at Donald Trump. "History will hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6," Pence declared at the Gridiron Dinner, a normally jovial event for prominent journalists. "Make no mistake about it: What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way. President Trump was wrong. His reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day."...

Budgets are about priorities. In the Biden administration's new budget, its apparent priorities are marred by problems. Here's the cheat-sheet version: Rather than containing explosive growth in spending, it would use a bunch of new taxes to wage class warfare...

The failure of three banks in the last two weeks, including Silicon Valley Bank on Friday and Signature Bank on Sunday, is a saga of utter government incompetence. Call these bank collapses Biden's Banking Busts. The Biden administration has been obsessing on woke causes while banks teeter toward insolvency...

Shakespeare has long been dismissed, with others in the Western canon, as a dead white male. Now, there's another, worse charge against the bard — he created the concept of whiteness. Yes, instead of standing in the line of literary giants such as Dante, Chaucer, and Goethe, Shakespeare is to be associated from now on with the likes of the 19th century French apostle of scientific racism Arthur de Gobineau, George Wallace, and — why not — the Oath Keepers...

JERUSALEM -- You walk into the Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem and the walls already seem to be closing in on you. That's by design. I've walked through the camps in Auschwitz and Dachau. At Yad Vashem, as Israel's museum is called, I didn't have the nerve to cry until we watched documentary footage of the liberation of some of the camps. ...

Recently there were some remarkable online videos of a Portland, Oregon good Samaritan confronting shoplifters and forcing them to dump loads of their pilfered goods. More stunning, however, was the sheer outrage -- of the thieves! They pouted. They screamed. They resisted. How dare anyone stop them from stealing anything they wished...

Welcome to our regime of political capitalism, where merit matters but political connections matter even more. In an unalloyed capitalist system, money flows to those who offer goods and services of value to consumers. In a political capitalism system, money flows to special-interest groups with friends in high places...

One of my primary goals is to advocate for Missouri families, as I believe future generations should be able to have the opportunity to grow up happy and healthy with the same opportunities that you and I have been able to take advantage of. With the price of everything from eggs to automobiles going through the roof, I know that more and more hard-working families across this state are being asked to make some tough choices about what their budgets can accommodate. ...

Presumably, Donald Trump will never produce the dark secrets promised about Ron DeSantis' past. But his team thinks it already has one -- the Florida governor once was a Reagan Republican. "There's a pre-Trump Ron and there's a post-Trump Ron," someone in the Trump camp told Axios. "He used to be a Reagan Republican. That's where he comes from. He's now awkwardly trying to square his views up with the populist nationalist feeling of that party."...

Families saving for college and encouraging their kids to aim for the top are getting scammed by the left-wing college industrial complex. Colleges distort and outright lie about who gets accepted, education quality and what it costs. If they were selling auto loans and used the same deceptive tactics, they'd be in jail...

If you search for "safe space" on the Foxnews.com website you'll get over 46,000 results. All of them aren't about those woke snowflakes who need trigger warnings and cry rooms. But a whole lot of them are. For instance, in 2017, shortly after Donald Trump's inauguration, Tucker Carlson grilled a college professor about a student who came into her classroom crying about the election. ...

I am writing in response to the recent article titled "Cape Girardeau school board votes to offer contract to next superintendent". Contrary to the article, the vote was not unanimous. To the motion made "to allow the board president to enter into a contract with...", my answer was the sole dissenting vote. My vote was not a reflection of any candidate, but rather a reflection of our process, given the board policy about the selection of the superintendent of schools...

"I became, at ten years old, a little labouring hind in the service of Murdstone and Grinby." Thus relates David Copperfield in the Charles Dickens novel of the same name. Of course, Dickens was a crusader against the exploitation of children. The edge is taken off the depictions of the heartless treatment of children in his fiction, though, by the funny and memorable portrayals of the malefactors, the upward trajectory of the lives of the likes of David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, and the knowledge that the practices that Dickens inveighed against are a thing of the past in the advanced world.. ...

Donald Trump has had a terrible couple of months -- and still leads national polls for the Republican nomination handily. Almost everything that he's done lately -- really, everything since he's left office -- should redound to his discredit, and yet he remains in a relatively strong position...

Last week, House Republicans took an important step in our efforts to hold President Joe Biden accountable for his wasteful spending that is fueling the worst spike in prices in a generation. With the support of 59 Democrats, the House came together to pass my Reduce Exacerbated Inflation Negatively Impacting the Nation (REIN IN) Inflation Act. That's right -- even House Democrats are sounding the alarm over Biden's out-of-control spending...

Last week marked 40 years since my mom died. Grief works in curious ways and comes in waves long after a loved one has passed. It shows up in unexpected ways. This year, for me, it showed up in my son's face. My son is 7 years old, the same age I was when my mother died. ...

Let's call it the "Biden way": When our president can't get his policies through Congress, he tries to impose them in other ways. Just look at his student loan forgiveness plan, which faced a stiff Supreme Court challenge this week, and his imposition of stricter "Buy American" provisions to the infrastructure-spending bill. Now, he wants to reshape corporate America by attaching the big string of "high-quality" child care to, of all things, semiconductor subsidies...

President Joe Biden's diplomats are negotiating a treaty with the World Health Organization to promote so-called global health equity. The premise is that in a pandemic or other worldwide disease emergency, Americans should not get better or faster health care than inhabitants of third-world countries. If Biden rams this through, Americans will suffer and die needlessly...

In April of last year, I wrote in The Missouri Times about the importance of accelerating broadband deployment and the need for more widespread high--speed Internet access in Bollinger County, which ranks among the least connected counties in Missouri. ...

The 2024 presidential race gets more exciting each day. Now 37-year-old entrepreneur business owner Vivek Ramaswamy has entered the race as the newest Republican candidate. Whether this political novice has a chance at winning the highest elective office in the land remains to be seen. But for sure he has something to say and contribute...

The House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party held its first hearing this week. In interviews and joint statements Chair Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., have made it clear they are determined to make this committee a bipartisan project. Going forward, they will have their work cut out for them...

First, they came for Roald Dahl. Anyone who thought the politically correct rewriting would stop at the irreverent author of such children's classics as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox" was, of course, sadly mistaken. The news that hundreds of changes have been made in Dahl's classics is now followed by word that Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, is getting an emergency rewrite as well...

In his last homily at Los Angeles' cathedral before he was murdered on Feb. 18, Bishop David O'Connell talked about Mary, the mother of Jesus -- and a pilgrimage we led to shrines in Portugal and Lourdes, France. The Los Angeles auxiliary recalled weeping in Lourdes. His own mother had died two decades before, and for the first time since he'd last seen her, he said he felt the loving welcome of a mother...

The Ukraine mess is daily looking more like the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, a meat grinder that took 500,000 lives. That three-year conflict became a savage proxy war and prelude for the belligerents of World War II. The Ukraine battlefield is proving to be a similar laboratory of death. New lethal weaponry and tactics are introduced, modified -- and always improved -- from drones to guided missiles to internet-fed artillery...

Donald Trump and a lot of cameras flew into East Palestine, Ohio, on Wednesday. Yes, it was a typical Trump photo op. Yes, they were his MAGA people. The mostly white working-class town on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border has nearly 5,000 souls, and about 70% of them voted for him in 2020...

President Joe Biden's "Put Americans Last" policy is on full display at the chemical spill disaster in Ohio. Fearing for their lives, local residents of the small town of East Palestine, Ohio, have been forced to evacuate their homes, their eyes burning, their skin mottled with rashes, their drinking water suspect — yet the Federal Emergency Management Agency refused to help for two weeks. ...

Earlier this month in a small Kentucky town, a small group of college students met informally at a school chapel. It wasn't flashy. The music was simple. There wasn't high production level of video and lights. But something unusual happened -- or should I say didn't happen. The service, which began on Feb. 8, didn't stop for two weeks...

Did you receive a flu shot this year? Where did you get it? If you're like a lot of people, you stopped in at your local pharmacy to get it while you were running your other errands. The fact that you were able to get your routine flu shot at the local drugstore is a relatively new thing. It wasn't always this easy...

Newspapers have been reporting on the demographic challenges in Asian nations like China, Japan and South Korea. Some expect China's population, for example, to be cut in half by 2100. If current trends continue, some of the same problems will sooner or later hit the United States, and they won't be fixed with family-style entitlement policies that cost huge amounts of money and distort the economy without increasing fertility...

Marie Kondo recently said that she's "kind of given up," and I'm so thrilled for her. Welcome to the world of go with the flow. If the glass is half full, then my house is half clean. Kondo told The Washington Post that the huge change happened after she had her third child. "My home is messy, but the way I am spending my time is the right way for me at this time at this stage of my life."...

The Republican Party's newest presidential candidate, former South Carolina Gov. and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, introduced herself by showcasing her roots as a child of immigrants. Haley's family, originally from India, immigrated to the United States in 1969 and settled in a small, segregated town, Bamberg, South Carolina, where she was born three years later...

A recent epidemic of airline near misses deserves both attention and reflection. In mid-December, a San Francisco-bound United Airlines Boeing 777-200 airliner, just a little over a minute after taking off from Maui, Hawaii, suddenly dived. It lost more than half its altitude and came within 800 feet of crashing into the Pacific Ocean before pulling up...

"Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics." That's a quote from Charles Peguy, a French poet, who died in World War I. Reflecting on his thinking, author Robert Royal recently explained on his website The Catholic Thing: "What he meant is that every powerful movement begins as a spiritual force, and then is 'incarnated' in concrete action."...

President Joe Biden tweeted last week that he will be a "nightmare" for Republicans who dream of cutting Social Security and Medicare. With this statement, Biden showed that he's either shockingly ignorant about these two programs and any Republican reform efforts -- or lack thereof -- or just another politician who washes his hands of what happens when he's out of office and the programs hit upcoming obstacles...

"I just don't get it." "Why is diversity such a big deal?" These are some of the comments shared with me in confidence from people willing to confess their true thoughts. Many people, especially in this community that is overwhelmingly white conservative Christian, truly cannot wrap their minds around why DEI -- Diversity, Equity and Inclusion -- is "a big deal."...

It is nearly 400 miles from Sikeston to Kansas City. That's about the same distance a Southeast Missouri resident would have to drive to get to Atlanta, Chicago or Des Moines. Despite this great distance, I think we all felt a sense of hometown pride watching the Kansas City Chiefs win the Super Bowl last weekend. ...

Per CNN and other media outlets, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ran his first campaign for Congress in 2012, he expressed support for "privatizing" Social Security. They predict, with little surprise, that this should provide red meat for attacks from former President Donald Trump and from Democrats, should DeSantis announce a presidential run...

Doctors and nurses are not racists. They're everyday heroes. But left-wing activists and their media allies, including The New York Times, blame health care workers for the poorer health outcomes of Black patients. That's a cheap shot and a lie. On Sunday, the Times published a front-page story based on an analysis of U.S. ...

You hear it all the time, including from me: Our politics is too partisan, too polarized, too divided. Why can't both parties work together for the common good? But it's worth pointing out that sometimes bipartisan consensus is awful. The worst form of elite agreement is usually the product of politicians pandering to populist sentiment. When both parties serve as vessels for popular passions, they ignore experts, the lessons of history and suspend their own critical faculties...

There was some outrage surrounding the "Unholy" performance of Sam Smith and Kim Petras at the Grammys, which involved Smith dressing up like the devil, against a backdrop of someone's cartoonish idea of hell. What deserves more reflection than Sam Smith's horned hat is singer Kim Petras. I confess both Petras and Smith are new to me. And I did a doubletake when Petras was heralded as a first transgender woman to win a Grammy...

It's best never to take White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre's word for anything, but we can presumably believe her when she says that the flying objects shot down by the United States in recent days aren't from an alien civilization. Although she left herself some wiggle room -- "there is no indication" of extraterrestrial activity, she said, displaying the weasel-word instincts of someone whose job involves dancing around the truth...

A few months ago, my pastor spoke about the importance of the broader Christian Church putting its faith into action to help young women facing crisis pregnancies. Espousing pro-life views is great, but it's vital for the Church to be the Church, putting Mathew Chapter 25 into practice...

After listening to the State of the Union address, Americans know why the latest Reuters poll has President Joe Biden at 41% approval. Vice President Kamala Harris polls even lower -- despite the obsequious efforts of the most biased media in history that has, in effect, merged with the Democratic Party...

People are uneasy about the debt ceiling fight. Many think it's unhealthy and a sign of poor fiscal management, and they are right. However, they should get used to it. These budget fights will keep getting more frequent and more intense. That's because no one wants to talk about budget restraints. The truth is that existing spending commitments are rapidly shrinking the share of the budget that politicians have control over as their appetite for spending expands...

The problem with young people today is no one teaches them history. If they knew what the East German government did to their Olympic women athletes in the 1970s and 1980s, for instance, they might understand why it's not fair for transgender women to compete against women in sports like swimming, tennis and surfing...

We try not to sit with our pain for too long. We want to fix what hurts. I made a mistake at work last week. I owned it, listened, apologized and learned. I know I'll do better next time. Accountability is important, but when it first happened, all I could muster in the kitchen when retelling it to my husband was, "I messed up and it's hard." He searched for ways to help, and I followed up again with, "I don't want you to try to fix it right now; I just need you to listen."...

If you've worked hard to afford a suburban house with a patch of lawn where your kids can play, you're under attack. The Biden administration and Democrats in New York, Connecticut and other states are fighting local zoning laws in order to build high-rise apartment buildings with "affordable" units in tree-lined, single-family neighborhoods. All in the name of equity, meaning everyone can live in a tranquil suburb, whether they've earned the money to pay for it or not...

Imagine a popular Republican governor from an important state. Despite intense criticism from the national media, he's notched some huge policy wins that are simultaneously popular with donors, base voters and conservative intellectuals. His key theme is fighting the Washington establishment and the institutions of progressive power. Then, fresh off of a historic reelection victory, he announces his intent to run for president in a campaign video...

A recent episode of a Disney+ cartoon has woke kids performing a skit around the theme: "Slaves built this country." The installment of "The Proud Family" series -- in which the kids find out the founder of their town was a slave owner -- is a cartoon version of "The 1619 Project," although "The 1619 Project" is cartoonish in its own right...

Julian Rubinstein and Terrance Roberts are an unlikely pair. Both grew up in Denver, but Rubinstein is a journalist and Roberts is an ex-gang-member-turned-activist who is now running for mayor. The two met after Roberts, at his own peace rally in Denver's Holly Square, shot active gang member Hasan Jones...

Last month, Father Isaac Achi was burned alive in his rectory by militants in Kafin-Koro, Nigeria. Another priest there, Father Collins Omeh, who was shot in the back but escaped. Before Achi insisted that Omeh flee, the two priests heard each other's Confessions. ...

Last week, I had the honor of speaking to Missourians gathered at the State Capitol for the eighth annual Human Trafficking Awareness Day. As a member of Missouri's Statewide Council on Sex Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children and also the Missouri Rights of Victims of Sexual Assault Task Force, which studied human trafficking as part of its work in 2020-21, I am committed to helping educate Missourians about human trafficking...

Recently an unarmed 29-year-old African American, Tyre Nichols, was brutally beaten to death by five Black Memphis police officers. They were charged with murder. All belonged to a special crime unit known as the Scorpions. Both the victimizers and victim were Black. The Memphis police chief is Black. The assistant police chief is Black...

Since Grover Cleveland was president, no one has accused the average politician of being principled or even consistent. Year after year, Republicans claim to care about fiscal prudence but, when in power, spend like Democrats. In their turn, Democrats insist that they want to engineer a transition to a green-energy economy, but their actions contradict this goal...

The IRS is so kind. Our most beloved federal agency has delayed until next year a new income-reporting law it has carefully designed to squeeze the last drops of tax revenue out of many of us. The new IRS rule is aimed at millions of self-employed people and small-business people who sell goods or services on places such as eBay, drive part-time for Uber or earn income through social media companies such as Airbnb...

I would like to offer our citizens a reminder of the city's financial accomplishments of the last year, and to share a picture of the goals and plans for 2023. There has been so much going on, and we will see so much in the future -- this is definitely not a comprehensive list of all that is going on in the city government and its departments...

We are entering the 12th month of a "special military operation" that was supposed to be over in well under 12 days. The Kremlin even told Russian officers to pack dress uniforms and medals for the intended military parades in Kyiv a few days after the shooting started...

Donald Trump hasn't been impressing anyone with his political acuity lately, but at least he is fully aware of one of his own vulnerabilities. His early attacks on the COVID-19 record of Ron DeSantis show that he knows the Florida governor has outflanked him on the populist right -- indeed, outflanked him in general -- regarding one of the most central issues of the last couple of years...

The average American home is almost 2,200 square feet. An average home in the United Kingdom is a minuscule 818 square feet, in Finland 880 square feet and in Germany under 1,200 square feet. Cramped. Americans have bigger houses and a higher material standard of living -- more appliances, clothing and cars -- largely because they can keep more of what they earn. The U.S. is a low-tax nation -- for now...

Under President Joe Biden's leadership, Americans never seem to get a break from the spiraling prices they face. Now, they are beginning to see the price for gasoline rising higher and higher -- again. This is troubling news for working-class families who are struggling just to put food on the table, clothes on their backs, and gasoline in their cars because of the cost-of-living crisis, which Washington Democrats created with their reckless, $10 trillion spending spree. ...

Once again, the nation is traumatized by horrible video of police brutally beating to death a Black man. Need I note the victim was Black? Would we be less or more traumatized if the victim were white? But the rule seems to be the victims are Black...

Former President Donald Trump for now certainly seems to have had more documents labeled "classified" at Mar-a-Lago in Florida than did President Joe Biden at his various homes in Delaware. Yet otherwise, the comparisons between the two cases, contrary to popular punditry, hardly favor Biden...

It's a stretch, but I think I know the real reason the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago. We've been told for months that the DOJ ordered a search of Donald Trump's home in Florida because he was not turning over a bunch of classified documents to the National Archives fast enough...

After a hiatus during the Trump years, Republicans are back in the mood for fiscal probity. It's very strange not to seriously pursue a deeply held goal when you have unified control of Washington, then to insist on trying to achieve much of it in one fell swoop when you barely have control of one chamber of Congress...

If you follow policy debates long enough, arguments you never thought you'd hear can become key components of the two parties' policy platforms. That's certainly the case when it comes to some Republicans and their new "never touch Social Security and Medicare" position...

I've never been a huge fan of hot chocolate. For some reason, I don't enjoy cauterizing the inside of my mouth after being duped by the deceptively-tepid whipped cream or marshmallow topping. These days, I mainly have hot chocolate when my three teenage daughters, who I'm pretty sure started drinking coffee as toddlers, invite me and my credit card to join them in the drive-thru of one of our roughly 200 local coffee shops. ...

Most people don't lie awake at night worried about the national debt. Unfortunately, that includes President Joe Biden and the spendaholic Democrats in Congress. They should be worried. Frankly, so should you, no matter what your politics. Economics is a science, and numerous studies by world-class economists confirm that when a nation's debt gets too high, it pushes the economy into decline. Inflation soars, jobs become scarcer and mortgage rates to buy a home are unaffordable. Ouch...

As tensions about raising the nation's $31.4 trillion debt ceiling build, the headline that should be flashing in front of every American is that our country is not working. Nothing is going to get fixed -- really fixed -- until we come clean about this basic, sad and distressing fact...

There's an understandable compulsion in the media and among Democrats to emphasize the differences between Joe Biden's classified documents scandal and Donald Trump's. The two cases are different in many important respects. The most significant is obviously that the former president refused to cooperate with the National Archives and Justice Department until a search of his home was deemed necessary. ...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stands accused of a long parade of horribles to which has now been added a new count -- allegedly opposing the teaching of African American history. Florida rejected the College Board's pilot Advanced Placement African American Studies course, and the decision has been treated in progressive quarters like the curricular equivalent of George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door...

Left-wing Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador recently praised a visiting President Joe Biden: "Just imagine: There are 40 million Mexicans in the United States -- 40 million who were born here in Mexico, (or) who are the children of people who were born in Mexico!"...

This year marks the 50th anniversary since Roe v. Wade. Obviously, this year people gathered in Washington, D.C. for the March for Life with a new focus, as the Supreme Court threw out Roe v. Wade, the decision that made legal abortion the law of the land, last year...

January 22 marks the 50th anniversary since the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade. This somber anniversary provides so many Missourians the opportunity to rededicate ourselves to fighting for the unborn. 2022 was a momentous year for those of us who believe life is a precious miracle from God...

Is Davos over yet? Is it safe to turn on our TVs without being scolded by formerly important environmentalists like old Al Gore or creepy young climate warriors like Greta Thunberg? Not quite (as of writing this column). All the virtuous public talk about stopping climate change, saving the planet and putting the dirty fossil fuel industry out of existence at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Switzerland officially won't end till Friday, Jan. 20...

Friday, Jan. 20, 2023, pro-life Americans attended the March for Life in Washington, D.C. Hundreds of thousands marched, as they have marched since 1973. But this year, it was different. This year, the march took place, for the first time, in an America where Roe v. Wade is no longer the law of the land...

The long and tedious battle for House speaker ended with the GOP arguably more focused on fiscal responsibility and cutting spending. To accomplish this, Republicans are demanding spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Asking for some future fiscal discipline before allowing Uncle Sam to borrow yet more money is well worth it, but carelessly chosen goals could derail the whole enterprise...

I got a note from my son's teacher saying he was not "meeting classroom expectations." He's in the first grade. The offense? Talking out of turn. My husband gave me that all-too-familiar look when I told him. You know, the look that means, "He gets it from you."...

America may not want a Trump-Biden rematch, but Donald Trump and Joe Biden sure do. A CNN poll late last year showed that 6 in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents want a different GOP nominee in 2024, and a roughly similar proportion of Democrats hope for a nominee other than Biden...

For several years now, I've been told that the old consensus of fiscal conservatism and limited government was dead. So, you might think I'm delighted by the sudden rebirth of tea party-style budget-cutting zeal on display in the GOP's brinkmanship over the debt ceiling...

My sister-in-law, a nurse on Cape Cod, wants to visit New York City and is struggling to find an affordable hotel. If she were a Venezuelan migrant who had just arrived in the Big Apple on a bus from the southern border, she'd have a shot at a room at the four-star Row hotel, steps from Times Square. Or a room at a SpringHill Suites by Marriott, a Holiday Inn Express or a Comfort Inn. Free of charge...

Copernicus surely had no idea when he got the Scientific Revolution underway in the 16th century that an unintended effect would be empowering agenda-driven bullies and fanatics. Of course, science is a pillar of modern life for which we should be deeply grateful. It has given us longer and healthier lives, incredible material abundance, and abilities that were unfathomable a few generations ago...

Have you ever been on a roller coaster and felt like your stomach was falling out of your body? That's the closest Gina can get to describing what it was like to see her unborn son, Jeremiah, on a sonogram for the first time. She was 17 and living with her grandmother. Jeremiah's father was facing criminal charges because of her age. Deciding not to have an abortion was "scary" -- because it was choosing not to make it all "go away," she says...

Don't worry, America. Big Media will never let Joe Biden get away with illegally taking classified documents from the White House in 2016 and stashing them at his office and in his garage next to his Corvette. The ace reporters at liberal places like the New York Times, CNN and NBC are already digging deep into the facts of Biden's mishandling of classified documents...

After 15 failed attempts, California Rep. Kevin McCarthy finally secured the House speakership. Many worry that the concessions McCarthy made to secure his victory -- especially commitments to restrain government spending -- make the upcoming prospect of raising the debt ceiling perilous. Indeed, some fear that Republicans will refuse to raise the limit if it isn't paired with restraints on spending...

Amid the post-mortems of the four-day, 15-vote marathon to elect Kevin McCarthy House speaker, I remind readers of the headline of my Nov. 30 column, "Kevin McCarthy, a Republican Leader for Complex Times." I thought then that captured our reality, and I think the process that followed confirmed it...

Republicans looked like they were heading for a no-win debacle on the House floor in their fight over speaker. Instead, Kevin McCarthy got over the top, achieving a long-held ambition after a daunting feat of political endurance, and his opponents got nearly every assurance and rule change they were seeking...

I listen to audiobooks and podcasts with headphones on while I clean. My son taps me on the shoulder to interrupt if he needs something. It's as simple as a pause button for my full attention. I reason that this is better than blaring whatever I want to listen to through the Echo...

The Mexican drug cartels are killing off our friends and family members with fentanyl manufactured in superlabs south of the border and smuggled into the U.S. President Joe Biden could care less. Biden is in Mexico claiming he's seeking the Mexican government's help to stop the carnage. Truth is, the trip is a dog and pony show. Photo-ops, empty promises and such will be followed by rapid backsliding...

Kevin McCarthy's epic struggle to become speaker of the House produced a lot of memorable images, but the most unforgettable was probably of Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., being physically restrained from going after Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., after Gaetz ensured McCarthy's 14th failure to get the gavel...

President Ronald Reagan once said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." He was exactly right. Government bureaucrats love to claim that the red tape they put in place is supposed to be for the greater good. ...

"The one who has hope lives differently." That comes from something Pope Benedict XVI wrote in 2007. He continued: "The Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known -- it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life."...

Not all conspiracy theories are created equal. The same people who pride themselves on rigorously insisting on the facts -- ideally, explained in the dulcet tones of an NPR anchor -- are happy to embrace conspiracy theories supportive of their own worldview...

Did someone or something seize control of the United States? What happened to the U.S. border? Where did it go? Who erased it? Why and how did 5 million people enter our country illegally? Did Congress secretly repeal our immigration laws? Did President Joe Biden issue an executive order allowing foreign nationals to walk across the border and reside in the United States as they pleased?...

Blissfully, for some people, COVID-19 was no more than a long, albeit frightening, inconvenience. For those whose health, finances and lives were permanently changed, the recovery is a work in progress. The pandemic impacted all of us differently, which also applies to many nonprofits. ...

Long after it has run its course on TV, the show "Yellowstone" will provide fodder for countless Ph.D. candidates in whiteness studies. In certain precincts, the verdict about the smash hit that has spawned a cottage industry of spin offs is in: The show is about whiteness, and particularly white grievance...