The Earth shook this week. Am I the only one who felt it? I couldn’t believe what I’d heard, and so I listened intently to make sure I’d gotten it right. Sure enough, I had. While watching The Five on Fox News, I heard Bob Beckel, the only liberal to sit on that panel, say that the higher academic system should immediately stop admitting Muslims and maybe even Chinese students. What? Bob Beckel said what? I felt the Earth shift. He said those who are here should be allowed to remain and finish their education but that we should no longer admit Muslim, and maybe Chinese, students because they “get an education here and then go back and hack us.”
Liberal Fox News Pundit: Keep Foreign Muslim Students Out of U.S. Colleges
Bob Beckel’s all-encompassing solution.
From Cursing News Anchors to Baseball Players: When It’s OK to Swear on TV
And who gets to decide when it’s not.
If you ask me, the greatest moment of Julius Genachowski's soon-to-expire tenure as chairman of the FCC came on Saturday.
Shred Our Enemies, Not Our Constitution
The Boston bombing exposes just how much U.S. priorities are screwed up.
I’m exhausted. I’m tired of being tired. I’ve had my fill of manufactured crises and tragedy from our President, and I’m worn down by the actual crises and tragedies that seem to be happening almost monthly. The problem with exhaustion is, you want to give up. Bury your head. Surrender to the grind. But we cannot and we must not.
When Good People Do Bad Things
Friends describe Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a good kid. So why is he a Boston bombing suspect?
Gay Boy Scouts Deserve Gay Troop Leaders
For a mentor-driven organization, Boy Scouts of America sure doesn’t know how to lead.
A Trip Home to Boston After the Bombing
"If you’re a Watertown resident that hasn’t been on TV, you’re doing something wrong."
It was Friday night, and I was traveling north from Philadelphia to my native Cambridge, hours after the Boston area had been locked down. By then we had shifted from tragedy to thriller, and avoiding talk of the “manhunt” was not possible. The man sitting across from me on the train had been watching the marathon on Boylston Street when the bombs went off, and was heading back north from Newtown, PA to watch his daughter perform in a college play. He said he didn’t want to pass judgment, but jihad seemed to be the likeliest explanation.
Four hours later, I...
I Don’t Need Healing After What Happened in Boston and Neither Do You
Sweet Caroline, can we please reserve the "closure" for people who were actually there?
How Not Having Bronchitis Cost Me $1,500 at Lankenau
A trip to the hospital without health insurance.
Among Boston Bombing Conspiracy Theorists, Who Had Chechnya?
Will actual identified suspects stop crazy theories? Probably not.
After the terrorist attacks on 9/11, it took me about three days to find my first full-blown conspiracy theory about the specifics surrounding the event online. The way the World Trade Center towers collapsed, the story went, clearly indicated a controlled demolition planned by none other than our very own government. It was, in effect, the moment that the national paranoia bubble burst.
It’s been a tough decade or so for civil libertarians. Every big moment in America since 9/11 seems to have brought fresh humiliation for those of us who believe in things like “privacy” and “due process of law.” We’ve watched as our country—supposedly liberty’s beacon—resorted to torture, warrantless wiretapping, data mining, “national security letters,” targeted assassinations of Americans abroad, and a host of other measures designed to keep the police and government from abusing their powers over this. You can’t even go through airport security without getting virtually naked anymore.
The Real Threat to Marriage
Traditionalists should stop fighting gays and refocus their attention on the no-fault divorce.
In light of the vociferous and ongoing debate surrounding gay marriage, it's easy to imagine that self-described "marriage traditionalists" rose up organically in opposition to expanding the definition of marriage to include spouses of the same sex. However, you'd be wrong to think that. The marriage movement—which now claims, erroneously, that the incursion of gays and lesbians into its hallowed halls will weaken the institution—actually began as a response to a real threat to the contract of matrimony: the no-fault divorce.
This past week, before yesterday’s shameless display of ideological stonewalling cast a cloud of senselessness over the U.S. Senate, the New York Times ran an optimistic headline: “In Gun Debate, No Rift on Better Care for Mentally Ill.”
A Farewell to Margaret Thatcher, Last From a Great Era
How the Iron Lady and Ronald Reagan made the 1980s an unforgettable decade.
There is a fascinating book by Irving Stone entitled, They Also Ran, the story of men defeated for the presidency. Stone, an historian, also analyzes the races to determine if the voters chose wisely. It’s a fascinating concept, as readers are left pondering how history may have been altered had there been a different outcome—and how history would have changed had the winner not been victorious.
Boston Tragedy Deserves More Than a Moment of Silence
Whether it’s Boston or some other disaster, we try to solve it with talk, talk and more talk.
Sometimes, I wish we could all just shut up for a little bit.
If President Obama Only Reads the New York Times, He’s Like Most Americans
Most people who aren’t required to be informed would prefer not be.
Yesterday, in an article published in The New Republic, an unnamed former Obama adviser mentioned offhandedly that the President reads just one newspaper: The New York Times. That might seem like a lot to the average American—less than a quarter of whom even glanced at a newspaper yesterday—but when you're the top decision maker of a country as multifaceted and influential as ours, there's an expectation that you're considering a range of independent (as in non-administration) sources on topics of import. The story was picked up by a handful of media outlets and created a minor stir on Twitter before it was drowned out by the sound of explosions at the Boston Marathon.
Coming soon to a bookstore near you: The Diary of Justin Bieber. Or as I like to call it, Baby, Baby, Baby, Oh: Meet Me in the Attic, Anne.
Anthony Weiner Knows What Voters Need After a Sex Scandal
Study of Congressional scandals shows 81 percent of scandal-tainted reps still won re-election.
Wednesday, the New York Times Magazine did a favor to the headline writers guild, breaking the news that former Congressman Anthony Weiner is seriously considering a run for mayor of New York City. (The Post Thursday morning: “Weiner’s Second Coming.”) A week earlier, the similarly disgraced Mark Sanford won a Republican Congressional runoff in South Carolina, all but cementing his return to public office. The sudden viability of both candidates would appear somewhat surprising. They are, as the tabloids might put it, damaged goods. Sanford, the former governor of South Carolina, resigned in 2009 after copping to an affair with an Argentinean woman. Weiner followed suit in 2011, after he was caught sending naughty selfies to complete strangers, while his wife was pregnant.
3 Ways We’ll Communicate in the Future
Beyond the Facebook Phone: Telepathy, holograms, and the new Internet.
Ever since Alexander Graham Bell shouted “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you!” into his telephone back in 1876, it seems like mankind has been in an arms race to develop electronic communications technology.
4 Extreme Ways Companies Have Restricted Smoking on the Job
The cost of smoking cigarettes is only going up.
We are witnessing both the longest political dynasties and longest political rivalry in American history. There has been either a Bush or Clinton as president, vice president or secretary of state since 1980. We just started a short time-out with Hillary Clinton's resignation. But with Hillary the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination and Jeb Bush flirting with a run in 2016, the odds are good the rivalry of dynasties will soon pick up where it left off.
