Sunday December 15, 2019

Latest Poll

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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'HEALTH: December 7, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Charen.gif\" style=\"width: 300px; height: 116px;\" />\nJosef Stalin is reputed to have said: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” In the hands of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, the deaths of thousands can be a partisan bludgeon.\n A NUMBER of scholars have pondered the recent rise in deaths of despair — those attributed to alcoholism, suicide and drug overdoses. Krugman sees a chance to make a crude red state/blue state comparison. \n “I looked at states that voted for Donald Trump versus states that voted for Clinton in 2016, and calculated average life expectancy weighted by their 2016 population. In 1990, today’s red and blue states had almost the same life expectancy. Since then, however, life expectancy in Clinton states has risen more or less in line with other advanced countries, compared with almost no gain in Trump country. At this point, blue-state residents can expect to live more than four years longer than their red-state counterparts.” \n So, vote Democrat, live four years longer? \n Krugman muses that many blue states expanded Medicaid and that obesity tends to be higher in red states. Residents of blue states also have higher levels of education. That’s about the sum of his analysis, but it’s enough for him to declare that the “conservative” diagnosis of what has gone wrong in America, i.e. that the decline of traditional values has had negative effects, is “dead wrong.” \n “Sentence first, verdict afterward” said the Red Queen. Comparing red states and blue states this way is facile. \n First, it’s essential to stress that the decline in life expectancy is a nationwide phenomenon that hits all ethnic groups and both sexes. Of the states with the worst statistics — West Virginia, Ohio, New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont — three are blue states, one is red, and one is purple. \n It seems dubious to assume that Medicaid expansion, which happened mostly within the past five years, could have had such a dramatic effect in so short a time. Some of the states that expanded Medicaid, like Louisiana and Alaska, have some of the highest rates of premature deaths. Only 14 states have not expanded Medicaid, and they are disproportionately poorer states in the Deep South. \n We do know that these “deaths of despair” as Princeton’s Anne Case and Angus Deaton dubbed them, are the result of behaviors. Unlike in poorer countries, where impure drinking water or infectious disease takes a large toll, our premature deaths arise from drug addiction, alcohol abuse and suicide.\n SUICIDE is on the rise, not just among middle-aged and older Americans, but among the young as well. Between 2007 and 2017, youth suicide increased by 56%, and suicide attempts quadrupled. The prime suspect here is social media. Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and their competitors can induce anxiety and depression among teenagers eager for peer approval. Many spend most of their waking hours unnaturally attached to screens, which deliver pleasure but also bullying and belittling. A high school teacher noted that the cafeteria used to be the noisiest room in the school. No longer. It’s now a tableau of darting fingers and uneasy eyes. \n Maybe social media is not the problem. It’s probably too soon to know. Human behavior is complicated. Some states have more guns than others (which contributes to suicide deaths). Some have more access to Fentanyl. \n There is no debate in the literature that the decline of two-parent families is associated with poorer outcomes for children (though divorce sometimes makes adults happier). And there is emerging evidence that loneliness — another effect of family breakdown — has become more of a public health problem than obesity. Men raised in fatherless homes are more prone to joblessness, drug addiction and a range of other troubles than those raised by two parents. They are also more vulnerable and damaged than their sisters who are raised in the same circumstances. \n Here’s the twist, and the part Krugman completely missed: Many of the people in blue states who are keeping the life expectancy figures up are actually living in a traditional way, even if they vote Democrat. The college-educated upper-third in America follows bourgeois virtues. They get an education, get a job, get married and have children, in that order. The blue states are full of them. New Mexico and Alabama, not so much.\n SO IT’S Krugman’s partisan point scoring, not the “conservative diagnosis,” that’s dead wrong.\n', created = 1576394881, expire = 1576481281, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:9f47d2075f12ab1d86bd99f2d06df497' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'MILITARY ETHICS: November 29, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Charen.gif\" />\nPeople often offer cynical interpretations of American support for Israel. It’s the malign influence of the Jewish lobby, or Israel is a colonial outpost of the American hegemon or Israel has brainwashed American policymakers. What these right-wing conspiracists, anti-Semites and committed leftists miss is that there isn’t any mystery about the bond between the U.S. and Israel. U.S. support for Israel, and vice versa, has been based on shared values.\n ISRAEL shares with the United States respect for human rights and the rule of law. Though often besieged by enemies who target innocent civilians in terror attacks, use their own civilians as human shields, and celebrate as heroes terrorists who massacre unarmed men, women and children, Israel does not sink to that level. Though Israel vigorously defends herself, she does not resort to targeting civilians, nor to indiscriminate bombing (despite accusations to the contrary). And — this is crucial — when Israeli soldiers go too far and kill unarmed Palestinians, Israel does not name public squares after them. They are tried and punished. \n It is never easy to hold one’s military to account. Within Israel, soldiers tried for war crimes have had their supporters and trying them is controversial. But Israel’s willingness to hold itself to high standards marks it as a civilized country. \n War crimes and abuses are part of war. No country is pure. What distinguishes the good guys from the bad is how the nation responds to those transgressions. \n President Donald Trump’s latest assault on America’s moral standing was his decision, over the objections of the military and the pleas of his own defense secretary, to pardon three servicemen convicted of, or charged with, war crimes. “We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill!” he tweeted. Note that Trump is not arguing that these cases are miscarriages. He’s saying war crimes should not be punished. \n Any number of current and former servicemen have bristled at this. We do not train our soldiers to be killing machines — and contributing to that stereotype is hardly pro-military. Veterans already face skepticism from potential employers out of misplaced fear that PTSD or some other combat-induced mania will incline them to murderous rampages. \n While war does require aggression and violence, the U.S. military abides by (or used to) the Law of Armed Conflict and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. As Fred Kaplan noted, “American troops are trained as much in when not to shoot their weapons as they are in how to shoot them.” Our troops receive intense training about avoiding civilian casualties.\n TRUMP’S pardons are a slap in the face to the dozens of Navy SEALs and others who risked their careers to come forward and report gross violations, and to the hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women who behaved honorably on the battlefield. Just as Trump offered a green light to Turkey’s strongman Recep Erdogan to slaughter our Kurdish allies, he’s provided permission to the American military to commit similar outrages. \n Trump does not understand morality — not in war, and not in peace. Glance at his pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an abuse-of-power poster boy. Arpaio arrested journalists who wrote critical pieces about him and even a county supervisor who got in his way. He sent a SWAT team to a suburban home supposedly looking for a cache of weapons. The goons wound up burning down the house and killing the family’s dog. No illegal weapons were found in the ashes. \n We are at our best when we refuse to countenance crimes by our own. On March 16, 1968, Chief warrant officer Hugh Thompson Jr. and two crewmen were flying a reconnaissance mission over a village in South Vietnam when they noticed the bodies of elderly people and children. It was My Lai. Seeing American soldiers advancing on Vietnamese civilians, Thompson signaled that his men would shoot if they killed any more. The massacre was halted. \n Thompson’s actions that day eventually won him the Soldier’s Medal for “heroism not involving conflict with the enemy.” His conduct is taught at West Point. \n As for Lt. William Calley, the only American soldier convicted of murder at My Lai, President Nixon altered his sentence to house arrest. But he didn’t pardon him.\n BUILDING an honorable ethic in the nation’s military has been the work of decades, even centuries. Undermining it can be the work of months. Admiral William McRaven has spoken up. Now would be a good time to hear from H.R. McMaster, James Mattis, Stanley McChrystal, Colin Powell, Joseph Dunford and as many others as possible who care to uphold what is right.\n', created = 1576394881, expire = 1576481281, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:7a881708069db30e8e441bf98409448a' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'ABORTION: November 22, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Charen.gif\" style=\"width: 300px; height: 116px;\" />\nCaitlin Flanagan has written a searing piece for the Atlantic titled “The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate: Why We Need to Face the Best Arguments From the Other Side.” Flanagan argues that neither the pro nor the anti side of the abortion debate reckons with the best arguments of the other side. She then takes the reader through some heartbreaking true stories. \n Flanagan is an affecting writer, and her plea that both sides of a bitter dispute offer more respect to the other is one with which I am in sympathy. But the argument she makes — movingly told as it is — is not quite convincing. \n Flanagan reminds us of what women faced in the 1950s. A 1956 article in Obstetrics and Gynecology chronicled four cases of women who had been admitted to hospitals after undergoing “Lysol” abortions. One woman was rushed to the emergency room by her husband. On arrival, she had a 104 degree fever and urine the color of “port wine,” indicating kidney failure. The husband confessed that two days prior, his wife had sought an abortion. The abortionist had injected the strong household cleaner Lysol into his wife’s womb. Flanagan writes: \n “Four hours after admission, the woman became agitated; she was put in restraints and sedated. Two hours after that, she began to breathe in the deep and ragged manner of the dying. An autopsy revealed massive necrosis of her kidneys and liver.” \n It was not an isolated case. The journal article recounted three other stories of women who had the same kind of abortion, and additional reports surfaced through other journals and court records. Women turned to Lysol because it was a common household product, would not arouse suspicion if a woman purchased it, and was marketed for years (in diluted form) as a contraceptive.\n FLANAGAN also conveys the many ways in which women could feel trapped into seeking abortions in the baby boom era. Some women had terrible pregnancies, post-partum depression, or traumatic birth experiences. Some were married to abusive men who might blame their wives for an unintended pregnancy. Women’s desperation was understandable and tragic. \n On the other hand, Flanagan writes, those ultrasound images leave us in no doubt — the fetus is a human baby. Flanagan’s response to the image of a 12-week-old fetus is this: \n “Here is one of us; here is a baby. She has fingers and toes by now, eyelids and ears. She can hiccup — that tiny, chest-quaking motion that all parents know. Most fearfully, she is starting to get a distinct profile, her one and only face emerging. ... \n “What I can’t face about abortion,” Flanagan writes, “is the reality of it: that these are human beings, the most vulnerable among us, and we have no care for them.” And so, she argues, the abortion extremists are “terrible representatives” of their sides. \n Extremists are always offensive, but there are two glaring problems with this characterization. First, it is dated. In the 1950s, and in every decade in human history before that, contraception was inaccessible and often unreliable. For married women, this meant repeated pregnancies and births even when the couple did not want more children. In addition, strong stigmas attached to unwed childbearing. Women were thus forced into a vise. They could not prevent pregnancies, but their lives could be destroyed by shame if they carried a baby to term while unmarried. This didn’t justify abortion, and many women bore the shame rather than resort to it, but the bind it placed women in was harsh. \n For good and ill, and I think it’s mostly for ill (but that’s a topic for another day), the stigma of unwed parenting is gone. Since the 1970s, contraception has become cheap and widely available. The Affordable Care Act mandates that contraceptives be covered with no out-of-pocket expenses for patients. At the same time, an estimated two million couples are currently waiting to adopt infants. \n But the second problem with Flanagan’s analysis is this: What do pro-lifers argue that is dishonest? They are saying the very thing that Flanagan says she cannot deny: The human fetus is a person, indeed, among the “most vulnerable” of people “and we have no care for them.” That is the essence of the anti-abortion case. They believe in the sanctity of life at every stage, and therefore believe that though crisis pregnancies are indeed severe challenges and can even be tragic, the “solution” of abortion is itself extreme.\n', created = 1576394881, expire = 1576481281, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:573fd2285fd3040b81622d0b94994252' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'FEDERAL SPENDING: November 8, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Charen.gif\" />\nWe don’t care. You can check Pew or Gallup or any other polling company. We are running deficits that ought to make us nauseated with worry — the federal deficit passed $1 trillion in September — but we’re not interested. Well, a majority of us anyway. About 48% of those polled by Pew in January said that reducing the deficit should be a top priority for the president and congress. As recently as 2014, 72% of the public agreed with that statement.\n REPUBLICANS (54%) are in favor of reducing the deficit at higher rates than Democrats (44%), but concern has declined among all voters. And the politicians? Well. \n President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign claimed that his policies would produce so much growth that the U.S. would enjoy a federal surplus of trillions of dollars. Trump also told the Washington Post that he would eliminate the $19 trillion federal debt “very quickly ... like within eight years.” \n But funny thing: You combine $2 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years with about $2 trillion in spending increases over the same period, and whadya know, even with decent economic growth (slowing now), you get federal deficits growing by 40% year over year, and that’s with full employment, no recession, low interest rates and no financial crisis. Current debt: $22 trillion. \n As for the Democratic candidates for president, “Saturday Night Live” captured it pretty well with Kate McKinnon portraying Elizabeth Warren. Asked how she could pay for her $34 trillion “Medicare for All” plan, Warren/McKinnon confides: “We’re talking trillions. When the numbers are this big, they’re just pretend.” \n That’s precisely how Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and, to an extent, Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden are treating the budget. They pick numbers out of the ether. Buttigieg would spend $1 trillion on climate policy, and some unknown amount to expand Medicare to “all who want it.” Biden is less disconnected from reality than his competitors, but he would increase education spending by adding $30 billion to Title I, and increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. As McKinnon put it, “Want to be red-pilled? Money doesn’t exist.” \n So why are the 48% who prioritize reducing deficits right and the spending gluttons wrong?\n ONE REASON is who we owe the money to. China holds about 8% of our debt. That gives them leverage. They’d pay a price if they dumped all of their U.S. bonds at once, but as former Rep. Tom Campbell points out, China is an autocracy, and can impose costs on its people more easily than we can. In a crisis involving Hong Kong or North Korea, they might exercise that option. \n Another reason for concern is what we’re spending the borrowed funds on. We’re not investing primarily in children, infrastructure, scientific research and other things that boost national income. We’re spending on elderly people whether they are needy or not — and most are not. In 2016, just 9% of Americans over age 65 lived below the poverty line. That compares with 18% of children. Yet Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid account for 84% of spending increases over the coming decade. \n When so much of our budget goes to debt service, we are misgoverned. The federal government currently spends more to pay interest on the debt than it does on the State Department, transportation, employment, training and social services. And because 40% of our debt is held by foreigners, we are sending money overseas rather than spending it at home. \n Interest rates are low, but there is no guarantee that they will remain so — and history suggests that interest rates fluctuate. Any emergency — fiscal, political, environmental or military — could place us in a situation in which lenders will demand much higher returns on bonds. There is simply no excuse for being so heavily indebted when the economy is strong and we are at peace. \n The larger the share of the economy that is taken up by government, the less efficient we become as a society and the more slowly the economy grows. A larger government also means more important life choices — like whether you can get a hip replacement at age 85 — are decided by politics. More politics translates to less freedom.\n TODAY, the Republicans are the fiscally irresponsible party and the Democrats are the fiscally insane party. But it’s not hopeless. Serious people on both sides of the aisle have proposed paths back to sanity. Let’s hope more Americans get serious about the need.\n', created = 1576394881, expire = 1576481281, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:3286fcb373fda421612860144a6633dd' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'IMPEACHMENT: November 1, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Charen.gif\" style=\"width: 300px; height: 116px;\" />\nHere’s a parlor trick: How many people can you name who were in favor of impeaching William J. Clinton and also favor impeaching Donald J. Trump? Or flip it: How many opposed Clinton’s impeachment at the time and now also oppose Trump’s?\n OF THE 14 House impeachment managers in the Clinton case, most have retired from Congress and one has died. None has endorsed the current effort to impeach President Trump. \n Former Rep. Bill McCollum cautions against a rush to judgment. “People ought to wait before they make judgment on whether or not there’s even an impeachable offense out here to be considered until all the facts are on the table.” So far, McCollum says, he sees a “really weak case.” \n James Sensenbrenner remains a House member. In 1999, he was particularly agitated over Clinton’s legal/constitutional claims: “We are here today because President William Jefferson Clinton decided to put himself above the law — not once, not twice, but repeatedly.” He was also outraged about Clinton’s lies: He “could have told the truth to the American people. Instead, he shook his finger at each and every American and said, ‘I want you to listen to me,’ and proceeded to tell a straight-faced lie to the American people.” \n Today, Sensenbrenner opposes impeachment. “From what we know now,” he said, “Trump did nothing wrong. And he did nothing wrong because he did not offer a quid pro quo to the president of Ukraine for any of this information.” \n Sen. Lindsey Graham was a House member in 1999 who became a household name during the Clinton impeachment. At the time he said: “Impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.” \n Today, of course, Graham has introduced a resolution condemning the impeachment inquiry on the risible grounds that it denies “due process” to the president. \n In 1999, Rep. Nancy Pelosi said: “What President Clinton did was wrong. It is grounds for embarrassment, not for impeachment.” The same was true of Steny Hoyer, Peter DeFazio, John Lewis and many more of the 71 lawmakers who were in Congress in 1999 and remain there.\n I SUPPORTED the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Was I blinkered by excessive partisanship, as former Rep. Bob Inglis now says he was? Possibly. I certainly despised the lying, and I opposed many of Clinton’s policies. But I believed then that certain lines could not be crossed without creating a dangerous precedent. In the era before #MeToo, many progressives took sexual misbehavior lightly. Some conservatives, myself included, were appalled that Clinton took advantage of a young intern and betrayed his wife and daughter. How much damage was done to the culture by the Democrats’ rallying cry, “Everyone lies about sex”? \n And contra Sensenbrenner, Clinton did more than lie to the American people, he committed perjury. Though his lie was “only about sex,” he did so in a sworn deposition — and that has to be a red line. Wouldn’t our culture be healthier if Democrats had not chosen tribalism over principle? \n Republicans today are flirting with creating their own awful precedent: That it’s a normal part of foreign policy for a president to bully another nation to create a false narrative smearing a political opponent. The accusation is not just that Trump was playing hardball with a foreign leader, but that he was attempting to subvert the 2020 election. Like Democrats in 1999, Republicans are now arguing that “everybody does it.” \n Clinton urged that his private behavior not affect our judgment of his conduct of the office of the presidency — even if that conduct led him into witness tampering and perjury. Trump is arguing that the full panoply of executive powers can be used for his personal political benefit — because he does not recognize any value higher than his own welfare. That’s why he persists in saying that the call with President Volodymyr Zelensky was “perfect” and that he did nothing wrong.\n IN THE END, by acknowledging his lie, Clinton at least permitted the Democrats who supported him to condemn his behavior as wrong. Trump is not doing the same for his Republican defenders. He’s forcing them to insist, with him, that black is white. It’s Orwellian.\n', created = 1576394881, expire = 1576481281, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:f74ae89f23d2c23a85f5fb8933a5acb4' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'ELIZABETH WARREN: October 18, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Charen.gif\" />\nIf you want to run for office, political consultants will hammer away at one point: Tell stories. People respond to stories. We’ve been a storytelling species since our fur-clad ancestors gathered around campfires. Don’t cite statistics. No one can remember statistics. Make it human. Make it relatable. Lincoln told stories. FDR told stories. Reagan told stories.\n WATCHING THE Democrats’ fourth debate Tuesday night, you could see the candidates implementing this advice. They’d mention Joe Blow in their state who said X, or Jane Blow who called their office with Y problem. They commonly use techniques like: “The voters I speak to aren’t preoccupied with the elite concerns of Washington or New York. The voters I speak to are concerned about...” and then the candidate fills in the policy he or she is touting. \n That’s OK, as far as it goes, but politics by anecdote should have some limits, because, as a wag once said, “The plural of anecdote is not data.” Relying on anecdotes alone is how you get the anti-vaccine movement and other dangerous delusions. “I knew a little boy who was totally normal and chatty until he got the MMR shot and then he became autistic.” That’s tragic, but the data show that across large populations, there is no link between vaccines and autism. On the contrary, vaccines are a key public health benefit. \n Politicians owe it to us to ensure that when they use examples, they are using them to illustrate larger truths, not to mislead. \n Elizabeth Warren fails this test. For someone who touts herself as a scholar, she resorts to anecdotes in a most disingenuous fashion. \n At the last debate, for example, asked to account for the cost of her “plan” to adopt “Medicare for All,” which would eliminate the private coverage enjoyed by an estimated 150 million Americans, Warren proffered stories: \n “So I have talked with the family, the mom and dad whose daughter’s been diagnosed with cancer. I have talked to the young woman whose mother has just been diagnosed with diabetes. I’ve talked to the young man who has MS. \n “And here’s the thing about all of them. They all had great health insurance right at the beginning. But then they found out when they really needed it, when the costs went up, that the insurance company pulled the rug out from underneath them and they were left with nothing.” \n Later, after asserting that only the wealthy and corporations would see their taxes go up under her plan, she cited the same anecdote: “And I will not embrace a plan that says people have great insurance right up until you get the diagnosis and the insurance company says, ‘Sorry, we’re not covering your expensive cancer treatments; we’re not covering your expensive treatments for MS.’”\n IS THERE a widespread practice of insurance companies rescinding coverage when people get serious illnesses? There are only two studies of the problem dating back to the early 2000s. One by the House Oversight and Investigations Committee found that three companies had rescinded 20,000 policies over the course of five years — sometimes for fraud but in some cases for trivial reasons. All were policies purchased on the individual market, not through employers. Another study, by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, found that between 2004 and 2008, some 27,000 policies were rescinded out of 6.7 million individual plans surveyed. That translates to less than one-half of 1 percent of policies. \n Does that mean it wasn’t a problem? Not necessarily. Doubtless there were injustices — serious ones — when people found themselves facing a medical crisis and had their insurance canceled. But there’s a reason that all of the data on this practice of rescission (which insurance companies claimed was fraud prevention) predate 2010. The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, explicitly outlawed it. As Healthcare.gov explains: “Under the Affordable Care Act, rescission is illegal except in cases of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of material fact as prohibited by the terms of the plan or coverage.”\n WARREN SURELY knows this, and thus, her tales of people’s insurance being withdrawn when they get sick are not illustrative examples of a serious problem; they are dishonest efforts to build a case for eliminating private health coverage. Elizabeth Warren, like Bernie Sanders, is an ideologue, enamored of government regulation of everything. Most Americans do not share her disdain for private health coverage. Eighty percent rate the quality of their care as excellent or good, and 69% rate their personal coverage the same way. \n They deserve leaders who will not attempt to mislead them.\n', created = 1576394881, expire = 1576481281, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:c2dfc0cd2fb6ec59559aee18788ffe52' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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Mona Charen

12/09/2019 - 12:42am

Mona Charen

HEALTH: December 7, 2019 Josef Stalin is reputed to have said: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” In the hands of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, the deaths of thousands can be a partisan bludgeon. A NUMBER of scholars have pondered the recent rise in deaths of despair — those attributed to alcoholism, suicide and drug overdoses....

On being the good guys

By: Mona Charen 11/30/2019 - 10:46pm

MILITARY ETHICS: November 29, 2019 People often offer cynical interpretations of American support for Israel. It’s the malign influence of the Jewish lobby, or Israel is a colonial outpost of the American hegemon or Israel has brainwashed American policymakers. What these right-wing conspiracists, anti-Semites and committed leftists miss is...

Is Caitlin Flanagan right about the abortion debate?

By: Mona Charen 11/23/2019 - 1:22am

ABORTION: November 22, 2019 Caitlin Flanagan has written a searing piece for the Atlantic titled “The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate: Why We Need to Face the Best Arguments From the Other Side.” Flanagan argues that neither the pro nor the anti side of the abortion debate reckons with the best arguments of the other side. She then...

The great missing topic

By: Mona Charen 11/09/2019 - 11:38pm

FEDERAL SPENDING: November 8, 2019 We don’t care. You can check Pew or Gallup or any other polling company. We are running deficits that ought to make us nauseated with worry — the federal deficit passed $1 trillion in September — but we’re not interested. Well, a majority of us anyway. About 48% of those polled by Pew in...

Impeachment for thee but not for me

By: Mona Charen 11/03/2019 - 8:12pm

IMPEACHMENT: November 1, 2019 Here’s a parlor trick: How many people can you name who were in favor of impeaching William J. Clinton and also favor impeaching Donald J. Trump? Or flip it: How many opposed Clinton’s impeachment at the time and now also oppose Trump’s? OF THE 14 House impeachment managers in the Clinton case,...

Elizabeth Warren is not honest

By: Mona Charen 10/20/2019 - 10:39pm

ELIZABETH WARREN: October 18, 2019 If you want to run for office, political consultants will hammer away at one point: Tell stories. People respond to stories. We’ve been a storytelling species since our fur-clad ancestors gathered around campfires. Don’t cite statistics. No one can remember statistics. Make it human. Make it...

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