Columns
A GOP Civil War: Who Benefits?
By Michael Medved & John Podhoretz If the Republican Party descends into civil war over the next two years, a luncheon in October of this year will count as its Fort Sumter. On the second day of the wildly controversial government shutdown, GOP senators gathered for a private midday meal to discuss their next steps. Kelly Ayotte, elected by New Hampshire voters in 2010 as a Tea Party darling, stood up and walked toward her Texas colleague Ted Cruz. She was waving the printout of a mass email sent by the Senate...
Read MoreA Dissent on Disney’s Frozen—From Dr. Diane Medved
AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE FROM MICHAEL: My wife Diane and I agree on nearly everything, but we split sharply on Halloween (which we debate every year on the air) and on the virtues of the new hit movie Frozen (which we’ll only debate here, very briefly). I liked the film a lot and recommended it with few reservations. The animation and the 3-D effects register as richly imaginative and spectacularly effective, while the musical numbers count as lively and slick though, as Diane rightly notes, hardly...
Read MoreEmerging Consensus on Immigration
A new survey by the nonpartisan Public Religion Institute shows growing consensus on immigration, even as Congress stalls on reform. A stunning 77 percent support a path to legal residency or citizenship for immigrants currently living in the U.S. illegally. Sixty percent of Republicans and 73 percent of Democrats back pathways to citizenship. Only 18 percent of voters endorsed “tough enforcement strategies to identify and deport” illegals. Meanwhile, seven in ten said the 13-year-wait for citizenship under...
Read MoreDoes Your Success Hurt Others?
A New York Times story reports that “resentment simmers” in San Francisco because “orange construction cranes dot the skyline” and the local economy booms. The Times laments that “tech workers have, rightly or wrongly, received the blame” for “a city in danger of losing its diversity.” Only demented and doctrinaire liberals could embrace the idea that anyone deserves “blame” for soaring construction and an explosion of new businesses. One local resident mourns that all the new economic activity...
Read MoreObama: Hollywood Makes America Look Good
In his desperate efforts to distract the public from Obamacare’s disasters, the president appealed to his friends in Hollywood. “Entertainment is part of our American diplomacy,” he told a crowd at DreamWorks studios. “It’s part of what makes us exceptional, part of what makes us such a world power.” That was true 60 years ago, when Hollywood conveyed a wholesome, heroic vision of America, but consider the images in movies and TV today: popular entertainment portrays a world far more violent and...
Read MoreNot Just Radical; Also Blind
Seattle voters recently shocked city hall by dumping a veteran liberal from the city council and replacing him with militant socialist Kshama Sawant. Her platform demands government takeover of the top 500 corporations, including Boeing. Sawant said “if Boeing executives want to leave the state, they are welcome” but that “workers and the community” should take over their factories and make their own airplanes. She also told reporters that she left India at 23 and came to America for a software career,...
Read MoreThe Real Tragedy of November 22nd
The 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination stressed the familiar themes that his shocking murder meant a “loss of innocence” for the nation, followed by a new mood of cynicism and fearfulness that’s persisted to this day. In fact, such change is owed less to loss of Kennedy’s charismatic leadership than to the toxic conspiracy theories that spread within days of his death. Pundits promptly blamed the tragedy on “right wing hate” in Dallas rather than the assassin’s mental illness or Communist...
Read MoreMaking Lives Worse
The state of Oregon makes staggering profits by urging citizens to squander their money on Powerball, Megabucks, scratch tickets, Keno and especially, video machines. Those machines provide 86% of the state’s gambling revenue, and The Oregonian cites shocking studies showing “the biggest chunk of video-lottery players park in front of a machine and gamble alone until all their money is gone.” These problem gamblers ruin their lives with their addiction, while state government makes a net profit of more than...
Read MoreCATCHING FIRE Won’t Ignite Conservative Cause
It’s not surprising that the well-crafted Hunger Games sequel Catching Fire ignited the box office with its $161 million opening, but it does come as a shock that some outspoken conservatives have embraced the movie for perceived anti-Obama messages in its lurid images of a dystopian future. The right wing website Breitbart.com offered the headline: “’Hunger Games’ Sequel: Cautionary Tales Abound in Age of Obama” suggesting that “the notion of a bullying, omnipresent government quaking in its...
Read MoreMichael’s “272 Words”
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library asked notable Americans—including Presidents Carter, Bush (41), Clinton and Obama, Sandra Day O’Connor, Colin Powell and Steven Spielberg—to submit hand-written, 272 words essays in the spirit of our 16th President. Here is the text of Michael’s essay: In this sour season of division and disillusionment, Lincoln’s example matters more than ever. Americans need inspiration from his up-from-the-bottom...
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