Description: Horror of horrors! Lego has introduced a new line of gender-specific toys aimed at girls. I might not even have become aware of the controversy had it not been a topic of discussion on the all-female PBS talk show "To the Contrary," on which I frequently appear. That we are still debating the pros and cons of allowing boys and girls to prefer different play choices says a great deal about the failure of the feminist movement. Lego, which markets plastic building blocks for everything from "Star Wars" fighting vehicles to Egyptian pyramids, has now introduced a line aimed at young girls. The new toys include Butterfly Beauty Shop, Stephanie's Outdoor Bakery, and Olivia's House, all featuring recognizable girl figures with long hair and feminine outlines, unlike the squat, sexless figures that characterize many of the company's other building sets. More importantly, these toys depict girls engaging in traditionally female activities and roles: getting their hair done, baking, caring for children. The company says that it has introduced the new line because of customer demand. Little girls (or their mothers) apparently aren't lining up to buy Lego's Fangpyre Wrecking Balls or Pirates of the Caribbean. But feminist critics say that the real motive is to reinforce gender stereotypes and limit little girls' aspirations. In fact, it's the feminists who want to limit women's choices. Their message to girls and young women is: If you're not exactly like men, you don't believe in equal rights.

Description: Obama's latest homeowner mortgage relief plan is perfect for him: It both is consistent with his ideology -- duh -- and allows him to buy more votes with someone else's money, all the while pretending there is in fact such a thing as a free lunch. The painfully superficial liberal approach to poverty gets old, as does its corollary tenet that conservatives who reject liberals' failed ideas lack compassion. Indeed, Obama seemed to devote half the words in his prayer breakfast speech to proving that Scripture compels liberal policies. Obama's latest proof that he cares more than we do is his proposal to "give every responsible homeowner in America a chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage by refinancing at historically low rates. No more red tape. No more runaround from the banks." This has all the elements. He frames the program as applying only to (SET ITAL) responsible (END ITAL) mortgagors; he personally gets credit for handing out this money from his legendary "stash"; government, not the market, dictates what the interest rate will be; government will wave its magic wand forbidding "red tape" and bureaucratic obstacles; and banks, one of his favorite targets, are demonized and lined up to be punished. But haven't we had enough of this man's top-down manipulation of the market in the guise of helping people? Is he ever to be held accountable for similar failed programs he's already tried? How about that $75 billion mortgage relief plan he implemented in 2009? You know, the one he said would "give millions of families resigned to financial ruin a chance to rebuild"? The one he said would save 7 million to 9 million mortgages.

Description: In 1992, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton built his campaign for the White House on doing more for the "forgotten middle class." Calling it the "new covenant" (Democrats since Roosevelt have tried to work the words "new" or "deal" into their campaign slogans), Clinton promised to focus on the people he called "the backbone of the country, the ones who do the work and pay the taxes and send their children off to war." Sound familiar? Here is Mitt Romney, the morning after the Florida primary: "I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich; they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of ... America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling." The usual firestorm erupted -- with liberals and conservatives alike pouncing on evidence of Romney's "tin ear." NPR anticipated (eagerly?) that Romney's words would show up in Democratic attack ads. And an exasperated Jonah Goldberg wondered in National Review Online whether Romney actually knows how to play this game: " . . . The concern is, after nearly a decade of running for president, if he can't get this stuff down now he never will."

Description: Forgive Republican candidate Mitt Romney for his alleged failure to adequately explain why he paid "only" 14 percent of his income in taxes. The honest answer -- "Well, because my accountants couldn't figure out how to get them any lower" -- does not work in this or very many other election years. Romney seemed flat-footed because, like most business people, he seeks to minimize costs and expenses. This includes taxes. A normal wealthy-and-proud-of-it guy would have said: "Let me get this straight, pal. I'm not supposed to take every legal advantage provided me by the tax laws to reduce my taxes?" For what it's worth, about 15 percent of Romney's last two years of income went to charity -- substantially higher than the percentage given by the Obamas or Joe Biden's $380 (not a typo) of his quarter-million dollar income in 2006.

Description: Mitt Romney's sudden surge in Florida reflects a basic fear voters have of nominating former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Despite his obvious brilliance, creative ideas and stimulating turns of phrase, they worry that he will come across as too strident to voters and will cost the Republican Party the presidency. Women, in particular, worry that his personal baggage may impair his ability to defeat Barack Obama in November. Instead, both genders are coming to feel that it is better not to take a chance and to vote for Mitt Romney, the more electable of the two.

Description: In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama used billionaire investor Warren Buffett's secretary, Debbie Bosanek, as a prop to illustrate the unfairness of our tax system. "Right now," he said as Bosanek sat near first lady Michelle Obama, "Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary." Commentators spent the next week speculating about what Obama meant. Was he referring to marginal rates or effective rates? On taxable income or adjusted gross income? Was he talking about federal income taxes or payroll taxes, as well? If the latter, was he counting the so-called employer's share or just the employee's share? What about state income taxes?

Description: President Obama and his radical feminist enforcers have had it in for Catholic medical providers from the get-go. It's about time all people of faith fought back against this unprecedented encroachment on religious liberty. First, they came for the Catholics. Who's next? This weekend, Catholic bishops informed parishioners of the recent White House edict forcing religious hospitals, schools, charities and other health and social service providers to provide "free" abortifacient pills, sterilizations and contraception on demand in their insurance plans -- even if it violates their moral consciences and the teachings of their churches.

Description: Once the presidential nomination process is settled -- and Lord knows that day can't come fast enough -- Republicans will get back to doing what they do best, getting on Barack Obama's case. Incredibly, though, they'll have to do it without one of their most potent arguments. The Republican candidate, after all, can't effectively attack what he supports. Today both leading contenders for the nomination have defended the idea of government's forcing all consumers to buy something in the interest of the common good. An individual mandate is about health insurance today, but really no one has offered any good reason Washington couldn't force us to buy a government-sanctioned iPad or rubber ducky tomorrow.

Description: The Muslim world is threatened by religious fanaticism. The Western world is threatened by secular fanaticism. Both seek to dominate society and to use state power to do so. Both seek to eliminate the Other -- for Islamic fanatics, that means non-Muslim religions and secularism; for secular fanatics, it means Christianity and virtually any public invoking of God. The Islamists impose Sharia law; the American Civil Liberties Union and the left generally impose secular law. The Taliban wiped out public vestiges of Buddhism in Afghanistan; the ACLU and its allies seek to wipe out public vestiges of Christianity in America -- as it did, for example, in Los Angeles County, when it successfully pressured the County Board of Supervisors to remove the tiny cross from the county seal. A city and county founded by Catholics -- hence the name "The Angels" -- was forced to stop commemorating its founders because they were religious.

Description: The advice columns of newspapers are good windows into the conscience of a culture. There you will find a field guide to what is considered socially acceptable and unacceptable. One of the advice columnists for the Washington Post, Carolyn Hax, is consistently sensible and solid in her suggestions. Straightening out busybodies, drug abusers, interfering in-laws and ungrateful children with equal aplomb, she's usually a pleasant read with the morning coffee. But not always. A recent response to a letter from "Grandmother-to-be" provides an example of the collapse of social wisdom on the subject of marriage and childbearing. "My 26-year-old son's girlfriend -- of four months -- is pregnant," wrote grandma. "I have very mixed emotions about this, mainly because he just met her, and I do not know her. They work and live across the country. I am disappointed in their behavior. How do I tell my friends the news? I am embarrassed."

Description: California has a huge state debt and Washington has a huge national debt. But that does not discourage either Governor Jerry Brown or President Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail system. Most of us might be a little skittish about spending money if we were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. But the beauty of politics is that it is all other people's money, including among those other people generations yet unborn.

Description: In the intense heat of the present, it is easy to forget even the relatively recent past, but it seems to me that this GOP primary season is more acrimonious than the past few, probably because the stakes are so high. When I've noted that this is the most important presidential election of our lifetimes, a few excitability-resistant conservative friends have said, "They have been saying that about every election for more than a generation." My response to that is:

Description: I think the mainstream media and Washington elite think the majority of voters just fell off the turnip truck. But the South Carolina primary and other current voting trends show otherwise. The MSM are working double time to get us to forget about the unprecedented results of the South Carolina primary, but they are a sign of what could be in Florida, Nevada and beyond. They are also proof that American citizens will not be outwitted by the political shenanigans of the powers that be. Let me give you a few examples.

Description: There's been a heap of criticism placed upon President Barack Obama's domestic policies that have promoted government intrusion and prolonged our fiscal crisis and his foreign policies that have emboldened our enemies. Any criticism of Obama pales in comparison with what might be said about the American people who voted him in to the nation's highest office. Obama's presidency represents the first time in our history that a person could have been elected to that office who had long-standing close associations with people who hate our nation. I'm speaking of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for 20 years, who preached that blacks should sing not "God Bless America," but "God damn America." Then there's William Ayers, now professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago but formerly a member of the Weather Underground, an anti-U.S. group that bombed the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and other government buildings. Although Ayers was never convicted of any crime, he told a New York Times reporter, in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attack, "I don't regret setting bombs. ... I feel we didn't do enough." Obama has served on a foundation board, appeared on panels, and even held campaign events in Ayers' home, joined by Ayers' former-fugitive wife, Bernardine Dohrn. Bill Ayers' close association with Obama is reflected by his admission that he helped write Obama's memoirs, "Dreams from My Father."

Description: We got mixed signals from a turbulent political week. Barack Obama seems to be enjoying an uptick in polls -- up toward, but not quite at, 50 percent approval. It's a reminder that he can expect to benefit from Americans' desire to think well of their presidents and from the reluctance of many voters to be seen as rejecting the first black president. But his weakness was apparent in his State of the Union address: issues. He devoted a mere 44 words to the health care law passed in March 2010. This is the strongest evidence possible that his signal legislative achievement is a millstone around the neck of his campaign. Similarly, we heard little in the hour-plus speech about infrastructure. The words "shovel-ready projects" and "high-speed rail" appeared nowhere -- significant omissions from a president who (as a mischievous Republican ad shows) sprinkles the same phrases in one State of the Union after another. And there was a third omission, not perhaps as obvious but, in the long run, possibly more glaring -- the omission of any serious public policy initiatives to quicken the pace of economic growth and address the long-term entitlement problems that Obama has occasionally noted. Yes, he did call for higher taxes on high earners. But the man who can call on experts at the Treasury Department to draft legislation gave no indication that he has any feasible draft for his "Buffett rule," which would presumably require a second alternative minimum tax for very high earners.

Description: So, it turns out that the cool cat billed as "No Drama Obama" by his sycophants is actually quite the drama queen. While the White House publicly pretends to ignore conservative detractors of his administration, Chief Touchy-Touchy seems to be personally consumed by our critiques. Yes, mine included. On Wednesday, the president had himself a mini-"Toddlers and Tiaras"-style meltdown with Arizona GOP Gov. Jan Brewer after landing in Phoenix for a post-State of the Union dog-and-pony show. As Brewer told pool reporters on the scene, Obama took umbrage at Brewer's recent memoir. She minced no words on the cover: "Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America's Border." And she minced no words describing her impressions of Obama as they sparred over her state's tough immigration enforcement law, which is now the subject of a Justice Department witch-hunt. Brewer called Obama "patronizing" and "condescending." I'd say she was excruciatingly polite. According to Brewer, "He was a little disturbed about my book. ... I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read (an) excerpt." In the shadow of Air Force One, Obama complained that Brewer hadn't "treated him cordially" and then stalked off while she was responding mid-sentence. Photogs captured the fracas on film. The civility police gasped at Brewer's "disrespectful" finger-pointing. On cue, one progressive commentator insinuated the gesture was a "racist" jab tantamount to lynching..

Description: One thing was missed in Newt Gingrich's victory in the South Carolina primary: Conservatives embraced a pro-amnesty candidate without batting an eyelash. This should come as a wake-up call to those who've been pushing a hard-line anti-illegal immigrant position in the Republican Party. Granted, Gingrich didn't spend a lot of time discussing his position, which favors amnesty for those illegal immigrants who have been here for a long time, have deep family and community ties, and have paid taxes and avoided breaking other laws. But that's the point. He didn't have to spend a lot of time defending his position because so few conservatives cared. Now Gingrich seems poised to win another Southern primary: Florida. The latest polls show him within a few percentage points of beating Mitt Romney again (and at least one poll shows him up by 5 points). Whether or not a Gingrich win is a good thing for Republican prospects in the fall, it could help lay the groundwork for future Republican victories by defusing an issue that is guaranteed to alienate the fastest-growing segment of the voting population. Like other voters, most Hispanics care a lot more about jobs than they do about immigration. Still, they are turned off by candidates who portray illegal immigrants as criminal invaders who want a handout from U.S. taxpayers. Republicans have damaged their ability to woo an important constituency by insisting on a punitive approach to illegal immigration. In this election alone, it could cost Republicans key states critical to winning the presidency: Florida, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.

Description: Only a president long shielded from criticism and accountability could make the kind of State of the Union speech President Obama did Tuesday night. It's hard to know where to begin, given his repetition of tired ideas from his previous SOTUs, his taking credit for successful policies he resisted and omitting failed ones he promoted, his numerous misrepresentations on issues big and small, and his glaring refusal to address the main issues that threaten the nation. Let me touch on just a few highlights in this brief space. Excessive spending is the primary threat to our nation's and Americans' financial future, yet Obama glossed over it and distorted his record. He said, "We've already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings. But we need to do more." But everyone knows he's had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the cutting table. His unrelenting passion is spending. Even The Washington Post said, "Obama does not mention that Republicans forced him to accept $2 trillion in budget cuts during the debt-ceiling impasse." Obama said, "I'm prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long-term costs of Medicare and Medicaid and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors." Well, that's mighty magnanimous of him, but why is he so grudging about it? As president, he should be singularly focused on entitlement reform. Yet he has obstructed and demagogued such reforms. His condition that the "programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors" is completely dishonest, because Paul Ryan's plan did just that and he rejected it while ridiculing and demonizing Ryan.

Description: It's as predictable as vultures at a carcass. When a wealthy Republican is running for office, the press will make his wealth a handicap. Recall that when George H. W. Bush was running in 1988, he was derided as a "preppy." George W. Bush was the undeserving scion of the ruling class. We were told never mind that he had succeeded in business on his own. Though John McCain had been a fixture on the national stage since 1980, no one had paid much attention to his wealth until he was the Republican nominee, at which point his many houses suddenly became a matter of profound national importance. Democrats, of course, are permitted to be rich without fear of undue scrutiny. John F. Kennedy was wealthier than Mitt Romney, or would have been had he lived to collect his inheritance. Lyndon B. Johnson was born poor and died very rich. He didn't earn his money in the private sector. He used political influence to first purchase and then maintain monopolistic radio licenses in his wife's name. There wasn't much fuss about John Kerry's great wealth in 2004. Kerry didn't earn his fortune either but secured it through two advantageous marriages. Teresa Heinz Kerry is rumored to be in the billionaires' club. Good for her. Though, she didn't earn it either, but rather married the heir of the ketchup fortune. John Kerry was an advocate of raising taxes on the rich, but he, like Warren Buffett, declined to contribute more than required to Uncle Sam. In fact, he was caught mooring his yacht in Rhode Island so as to avoid Massachusetts' taxes. Oh, and before he married Teresa Heinz, there were a number of years when Sen. Kerry donated nothing at all to charity.

Description: The Republican re-embrace of former Speaker Newt Gingrich says a lot about whom he sees as his opponent -- and it isn't just President Barack Obama. It's the media. If not for major media's embrace, Obama would still be sitting in the Senate, perhaps mulling another run for the presidency. A UCLA economist-political scientist recently tried to measure how the liberal media bias influences the way people vote. He concluded that this bias gives the Democrat candidate 8 to 10 percentage points. Republicans understand this. So does Gingrich -- on a very deep level. He knows the media dislike him above and beyond their anti-conservative Republican disdain. That he is testy, no-nonsense, whip smart and knowledgeable makes him formidable. That he engineered the 1994 GOP takeover of the House and pushed former President Bill Clinton into governing in the center makes him effective. The good news for the media is that Gingrich is a Southern white male Christian Republican. He belongs to a group for which no advocacy organization exists to play the race/sex/religion card when Gingrich gets called -- on-air by cable hosts and pundits -- "racist," "disgusting" and a "pig." Gingrich bites back. Hard. Thus, he addresses the question of his messy personal life while hitting the CNN moderator for bringing this up as the first question. Gingrich knows he lacks the Reaganesque "aw, shucks" persona. Reagan used his sunny disposition to counter the media's attempt to portray him as a dangerous nutcase whose finger should never go near the nuclear button -- not unlike how many try to portray Gingrich.

Description: The Republican candidates' circular firing squad now seems to be using machine guns. Whoever the eventual "last man standing" turns out to be, he may not be standing very tall or very steadily on his feet -- and he may be a pushover for Barack Obama in the general election, thanks to fellow Republicans. Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican or an independent, this is a very serious and historically crucial time for the United States of America. What Mitt Romney did or did not do when he was with Bain Capital, or what Newt Gingrich did or did not say to his ex-wife, are things that should be left for the tabloids. With the economy still faltering and Iran on its way to getting nuclear bombs, surely we can get serious about the issues facing this nation. Or can we? Mitt Romney's boasts about what he did at Bain Capital are as irrelevant as Newt Gingrich's demagogic attacks on Romney's role there. Romney is not running to become head of Bain Capital. While Gingrich backed away from his demagoguery about Bain Capital, Romney is continuing to press ahead with his charges that Gingrich was a lobbyist for Freddie Mac. As someone who has been a consultant, but never a lobbyist, I know the difference. As a consultant, I have offered advice to people in government and in private organizations, both businesses and non-profit organizations. But I have never gone to a government official to urge that official to make a decision favorable to those who were paying me, or to those for whom I did free consulting.

Description: You know politicians are serious when they move from campaigning to governing. Something like that may be happening on the Republican campaign trail -- but, unfortunately, not at the Obama White House. Campaigning clearly carried the day for Newt Gingrich in South Carolina, where he beat Mitt Romney by a 40 percent to 28 percent margin. It's generally agreed that Gingrich clinched the race when he reacted angrily to questions by Fox News's Juan Williams and CNN's John King. Both times Gingrich got standing ovations. But not for how he'd govern. His platform can be summed up in a bumper sticker a Washington lawyer printed to buck up George H.W. Bush's hapless 1992 campaign: "Annoy the media -- vote for Bush." It was fun but didn't win many votes. South Carolina Republicans got a charge out of imagining how Gingrich would rebuke Barack Obama in the Lincoln-Douglas debates he's been proposing. Except of course Obama would never agree to that format. In the Monday debate at Tampa, Fla., Romney came back hard at Gingrich, saying that he had been ousted as speaker by his own party and that he had to resign "in disgrace." Gingrich complained afterward about the ban on applause and said he might not show up for later debates with a similar ban (although it is imposed in the fall debates). What's important here is that Romney went after Gingrich for the way he governed. Gingrich cites, with a little exaggeration, significant things he achieved as speaker -- welfare reform, holding spending down, tax cuts.

Description: "If you win this case," Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben during oral argument in U.S. v. Jones last fall, "there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States." That prospect, Breyer said, "sounds like '1984.'" Fortunately, the government did not win the case. But the court's unanimous decision, announced on Monday, may not delay Breyer's '1984' scenario for long. Unless the court moves more boldly to restrain government use of new surveillance technologies, the Framers' notion of a private sphere protected from "unreasonable searches and seizures" will become increasingly quaint.

Description: Had enough of fat cat Barack Obama, his jet-setting wife and his multi-millionaire Chicago consigliere/real-estate mogul Valerie Jarrett attacking the "rich"? Well, brace yourselves. You'll be hearing much more from the White House about the "wealthy few" who aren't paying their "fair share" as Obama's re-election campaign doubles down on class-war demagoguery. As usual, there's always a set of immunity charms for the privileged friends and family of the ruling class. When it comes to all the Green Robber Barons who've reaped an obscenely unfair share of billions of tax dollars from the Obama administration, the envy trumpeteers will be quieter than a nest of mute church mice.

Description: Everybody was expecting a quick knockout in the GOP nominating contest this year. After a year of debating, it appeared that Mitt Romney would sweep the table after winning New Hampshire and seeming to win Iowa. Now, people are looking to see if Newt Gingrich can K.O. Romney, winning Florida after his stunning upset in South Carolina. But, as in a boxing bout where everyone is looking for a big punch and a quick end, this fight may frustrate everyone and go the distance. Not to a brokered convention. That won't happen. The winner-take-all rules the Republican National Committee imposed on primaries and caucuses held after April 1 militate against that outcome. But it will be a see-saw primary battle with one candidate the seeming winner only to watch his rival come storming back.

Description: As an American, a Republican, and a fiscal and social conservative -- and though I have endorsed no Republican candidate -- there is one thing that would disturb me greatly if Mitt Romney were not the Republican nominee: if Romney's Mormon faith were a factor in his defeat. Many evangelical leaders have said that if Romney is the Republican presidential candidate, they would not vote for him in the general election. What is implied -- and sometimes explicitly stated -- is that his Mormonism prevents them from voting for him in the primaries. Most evangelicals label Mormonism a cult, and many accuse Mormons of being dishonest for calling themselves Christians.

Description: Larry Sand's article "No Wonder Johnny (Still) Can't Read" -- written for The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, based in Raleigh, N.C. -- blames schools of education for the decline in America's education. Education professors drum into students that they should not "drill and kill" or be the "sage on the stage" but instead be the "guide on the side" who "facilitates student discovery." This kind of harebrained thinking, coupled with multicultural nonsense, explains today's education. During his teacher education, Sand says, "teachers-to-be were forced to learn about this ethnic group, that impoverished group, this sexually anomalous group, that under-represented group, etc. -- all under the rubric of 'Culturally Responsive Education.'" Education majors are woefully lacking in academic skills. Here are some sample test questions for you to answer. Question 1: Which of the following is equal to a quarter-million? a) 40,000, b) 250,000, c) 2,500,000, d) 1/4,000,000 or e) 4/1,000,000. Question 2: Martin Luther King Jr. (insert the correct choice) for the poor of all races. a) spoke out passionately, b) spoke out passionate, c) did spoke out passionately, d) has spoke out passionately or e) had spoken out passionate. Question 3: What would you do if your student sprained an ankle? a) Put a Band-Aid on it, b) Ice it or c) Rinse it with water.

Description: Just days before the South Carolina primary, polls showed Mitt Romney leading Newt Gingrich. Then came the debates and the question about Gingrich's private life, which brought a devastating response from the former Speaker of the House -- and a standing ovation from the audience. Apparently the television audience felt the same way, judging by the huge turnaround in the support for Gingrich. The stunning victory in South Carolina brought Newt's candidacy back to life.

Description: So the message South Carolina voters sent was -- "Anything goes so long as you attack the media." Whatever you think about Mitt Romney's shortcomings as a candidate -- and I agree with Mark Steyn, who said of his stump speech, "The finely calibrated inoffensiveness is kind of offensive" -- embracing Gingrich is like bashing yourself in the face to relieve the pain in your foot. Certainly it's possible that the voters have done all of us a favor. If Gingrich's success there scares Romney into becoming a better candidate, then it may work out well in the general election.

Description: Republican internecine squabbles this primary season seem to turn on the vying candidates' respective electability against incumbent Barack Obama. But if even uber-liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has finally awakened to President Obama's arrogance, what does it say about (SET ITAL) his (END ITAL) electability? It's understandable that a lib would take so long to turn on the messiah, having invested so much in his presidency. But I wonder whether these people ever realize how late they are to the party and how utterly devoid of profundity their belated epiphanies are.

Description: Well, isn't this rich? And I do mean rich. President Obama, man of the people, will deliver his presidential nomination acceptance speech at the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C. -- so that Democratic Party fundraisers can reward big donors with skyboxes and other lavish perks. As usual, the White House and its allies are trying to camouflage naked partisan money-grubbing in populist garb.

Description: Winning Our Future, a "super PAC" that supports Newt Gingrich's bid for the Republican presidential nomination, is spending more than $1.2 million on ads in South Carolina, which holds its primary on Saturday. That fact requires some explanation. First, why would anyone want Newt Gingrich to be president? Second, what is a super PAC? While the former question remains a mystery, the answer to the latter reveals how the vain crusade to curb the influence of money on elections has made talking about politics needlessly cumbersome and complicated.

Description: Have you heard about these terrifying super PACs? According to cable news anchors -- and other trustworthy sources -- they're like political super-bugs, resistant to free will. Needless to say, the principled and high-minded political debates we've grown accustomed to are now over. Our unsullied national conversation is about to be defiled by a carpet-bombing of television ads and radio spots. And clearly, there is no better way to corrode "democracy" than allowing defenseless voters more exposure to free speech.

Description: The imposter who wallowed in negative ads; attacked capitalism at Bain Capital; and hemmed and hawed when asked about his role at Freddie Mac is gone. The real Newt Gingrich has returned! The former speaker was in his glory during Monday night's GOP debate in South Carolina. Inspired and egged on by a conservative crowd and appealing to a national TV audience, he put red meat before the voters. Rick Santorum, by contrast, served only white-meat chicken. It was a GOP debate, so nobody served pork.

Description: Last week, President Barack Obama, at a Capital Hilton fundraising event, told the crowd, "We can't go back to this brand of you're-on-your-own economics." Throughout my professional career as an economist, I've never come across the theory of "you're-on-your-own economics." I'm guessing what the president means by -- and finds offensive in -- "you're-on-your-own economics" is that it's a system in which people are held responsible for their actions, that they take risks and must live with the results, that people can't force others to pay for their mistakes, and that they can't live at the expense of other people. President Obama's vision was shared by our Pilgrim Fathers of the Plymouth Colony in modern-day Massachusetts. They established a communist system. They all farmed together, and whatever they produced was put in a common storehouse. A certain amount of food was rationed to each person regardless of his contribution to the work. Many Pilgrims complained that they were too weak from hunger to do their share of the work. As deeply religious as the Pilgrims were, they took to stealing from one another. Gov. William Bradford, writing his history of the colony in "Of Plymouth Plantation," said, "So as it well appeared that famine must still ensue, the next year also if not some way prevented."

Description: In my previous two columns, I outlined the 10 questions we need to ask to find our next president. I believe them wholeheartedly, but I have one last question that is almost as important as all of them combined. And it is for all the GOP candidates. During former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's November trip to Charleston, S.C., he said the following: "I do approach this whole campaign, I think, differently from everybody else. We have a number of friends who are also running. We have no opponents except Barack Obama. I think that's very important. I think (Abraham) Lincoln was very wise, as was captured in a book called 'Team of Rivals.' ... Literally everybody who was his opponent ended up in the Cabinet because he needed all of them in order to be able to put together the political power during the crisis that we faced. I would say the same thing. I don't know of a single person currently running who wouldn't be a very effective member of an administrative team and who doesn't have real talent and, in some way ... a unique strength. So I don't have any opponents on the Republican side."

Description: With all the talk about "disparities" in innumerable contexts, there is one very important disparity that gets remarkably little attention -- disparities in the ability to create wealth. People who are preoccupied, or even obsessed, with disparities in income are seldom interested much, or at all, in the disparities in the ability to create wealth, which are often the reasons for the disparities in income. In a market economy, people pay us for benefiting them in some way -- whether we are sweeping their floors, selling them diamonds or anything in between. Disparities in our ability to create benefits for which others will pay us are huge, and the skills required can develop early -- or sometimes not at all.

Description: Mark Levin's hard work in researching, organizing and writing his new book, "Ameritopia," will be a blessing for all who read it. Countless books chronicle the forward march of the liberal agenda and attempt to deconstruct the fallacies in modern leftist thinking. Many critique the statist policies the left has imposed on us the past half-century and their disastrous effects on our culture, our economy and our national security.

Description: It's bad enough when Democrats start playing class warfare, but when Republican presidential contenders begin using phrases like "vulture capitalism," it's time to be really worried. It's easy to dismiss as sour grapes Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry's attacks on Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, which Romney co-founded. It's no coincidence that the attacks are getting nastier in South Carolina, site of the next presidential primary and perhaps the last chance one of the challengers has of stalling Romney's path to the nomination. But Romney's critics should be ashamed of themselves for promoting anti-business stereotypes. The left has always treated wealth as suspect. If one person becomes rich, the assumption is that it is at another's expense, which is why the left believes government has the obligation to redistribute wealth. But it isn't just the left that has a poor understanding of wealth creation or how free-market capitalism works. A growing number of populist conservatives are deeply suspicious of corporate America, too. You can hear it in their rhetoric about everything from the bank bailouts to immigration. Corporations seem to be the new villains for everyone to hate. And no candidate in recent memory quite invokes the corporate image as much as Mitt Romney. He is the son of a car company executive. He looks like he just stepped off the pages of Fortune magazine. And it turns out that he made his own fortune heading up a private equity firm that specialized in corporate takeovers.

Description: With public attention focused on the GOP primaries, the White House quietly promoted another self-dealing lobbyist to serve as President Obama's top domestic policy adviser. Promises? What broken promises? Cecilia Munoz, the current director of intergovernmental affairs at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., will now serve as head of the Domestic Policy Council. She'll wield heightened influence at Obama's daily morning briefings and expand her reach from immigration issues to education, health care and beyond. Gushing headlines heralded the advancement of Obama's top Hispanic civil rights "advocate" as a win for the "middle class." But Munoz is a veteran member of the Beltway lobbyist class whose former organization is reaping a taxpayer-funded windfall as she climbs the government ladder. Before joining Team Obama, Munoz spent two decades as chief registered lobbyist for the National Council of La Raza ("The Race"). Whose "middle class" does The Race represent? I've tracked the radical identity politics-driven group for years as it promoted drivers' licenses and in-state college tuition breaks for illegal aliens; opposed cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state and federal authorities; and opposed a secure fence along the southern border.

Description: Most people have heard that Obamacare is being challenged as unconstitutional because it contains an individual mandate forcing people to purchase health insurance. That challenge is due to be heard by the Supreme Court this year. But while the mandate is certainly problematic in a system that, at least notionally, is one of limited and enumerated powers, the mandate is not the worst part of this bill -- not by a long shot. Truly, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) belongs in a museum somewhere in an exhibit about what can happen when you elect Democrat majorities to the House, Senate and White House. Like so much else in the Democratic agenda (Dodd-Frank, environmental regulation, mortgage relief), it relies not on incentives, competition or patient choice but on blatant government coercion.

Description: On this we can agree with President Obama: Everything he stands for is at stake in 2012. Obama told 500 fawning sycophants in Chicago that he is unrepentant about his policy agenda and intends to treat us to more of the same, much more, in a second term. Obama said, "Everything that we fought for is now at stake in this election." Lest there be no mistake, he repeated the message in the smaller settings of private homes. We can endlessly debate whether he is such a devoted ideologue that he's blind to his policy failures, whether he's willing to sacrifice the economy and the fiscal integrity of the United States for his perceived higher good of radical redistribution, or whether he really intends to do harm, but these are moot questions anymore. Under any of these possibilities, the fact remains that he is hellbent on accelerating his present course, not reversing it, on dictating, not working within his constitutional constraints, much less building a bipartisan consensus. Hubris and defiance are his trademarks, not humility. He said, "If you're willing to work even harder in this election than you did in the last election, I promise you, change will come."

Description: To win just under 40 percent of the vote in a primary with five active candidates is pretty impressive, even for a candidate like Mitt Romney, who started off with significant advantages in New Hampshire. Yes, he is well-known there because he was governor of next-door Massachusetts, had run before and owns a house on Lake Winnipesaukee. But the exit poll indicates Romney held his own among independents, tea party supporters and late deciders. He didn't lose ground in the heat of the campaign, despite his ragged performance in Sunday's debate (he was obviously not candid about why he didn't run for re-election as governor) and his Monday statement, instantly regretted if I read the videotape right, that "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me." Romney easily exceeded the 25 percent ceiling that many critics perceived, and he's running at least a bit above that in the few post-new-year polls in the next primary states, South Carolina and Florida.

Description: Consider the following hypothetical. Fox News, during the 2008 presidential campaign, learns about a long-ago arrest of a relative of Sen. Barack Obama. Fox calls Obama. It makes an offer Fox assumes he cannot refuse: "Agree to appear on the show of your anti-ObamaCare nemesis, Sean Hannity, or we run the story on your relative's arrest." Obama refuses. Fox runs the story. Turns out the piece so lacks credibility that none of the other newspapers and television outlets, conservative or liberal, follow suit. A Fox executive later brags to a national magazine that Fox did, indeed, try to make mincemeat of Obama by getting him to debate ObamaCare on Hannity's show in exchange for sitting on a hit piece. Months after Fox's attempt, a big-city newspaper gets hold of the story. It writes a lengthy piece about Fox's sordid, and very possibly illegal, attempt at journalism by blackmail.

Description: The Republican presidential race now moves from New Hampshire to South Carolina, but it's really taking place in an upside-down Lake Wobegon -- where all the men are homely, all the women are weak and all the candidates are below average. We are often told that modern campaigns generate rivers of pointless trivia and shameful misinformation. But this one has served ably to do something that is as valuable to voters as it is unwelcome to the Republican Party: put a merciless spotlight on the mammoth flaws of every aspirant. There are people who yearn for the short political campaigns in parliamentary countries like Britain, where the process of choosing a national leader is over before Rick Perry can count to three. But in those places, candidates are generally well-known and thoroughly vetted before they offer themselves for the nation's highest office. Here, random individuals are apt to follow the example of Joan of Arc, called to service by voices only they can hear. As she discovered, though, an auspicious beginning doesn't assure a happy outcome. In a long, expensive, nonstop campaign like this one, first impressions mean nothing. What matters is enduring appeal. Or, at least, tolerability over time. The wide-open nature of presidential politics makes the campaign as unpredictable as cow pie bingo. Candidates who appear formidable while watching from the sidelines turn out to be inept on the field. Candidates who seem laughably unlikely at the outset suddenly take flight on the wings of destiny -- before eventually plunging back to earth. That's the value of the endless debates and media scrutiny. They expose every liability a candidate labors to conceal, while demolishing every asset the candidate presumes to publicize.

Description: Michael Corleone said to "keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." But what, pray tell, do we do with our frenemies? This is the awful election-year quandary of movement conservatives. And everything you need to know about our heartache can be summed up in one image: 2008 presidential election loser John McCain and Mitt Romney together on the campaign trail. When they're together, they look like they're holding each other (and the rest of us) hostage. Their toxic chemistry makes seething, ex-newlyweds Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries look like Fred and Ginger. In New Hampshire last week, after Romney's Iowa caucus squeaker, an overly giddy McCain mocked his endorsee for his "landslide victory." Awkward.

Description: My daughters, who range in age from 5 to 18, watch TV programs and movies on DVDs, on smart phones, streaming from Netflix through our Wii, on video websites, on our DVR and on demand from AT&T U-verse. They do not know or care what "broadcast television" is, and they certainly do not perceive a categorical distinction between "over-the-air" channels and the rest. But the Federal Communications Commission does, imposing a form of censorship on broadcast TV that would be clearly unconstitutional in any other context -- for the children, of course. A case the Supreme Court heard on Tuesday gives it an opportunity to renounce this obsolete doctrine once and for all.

Description: Yes, it's true that unlike (SET ITAL) some (END ITAL) Republicans, Democrats don't "enjoy firing people." They enjoy "investing" your money in exploding electric vehicles, bullet trains and other highly unprofitable but morally satisfying economic misadventures. Venture socialism is certainly empathetic. Venture capitalism, on the other hand, happens to be useful. And until the presidential aspirations of Newt Gingrich were dashed by this starch-shirted RINO, there existed a target-rich environment for conservatives -- namely Mitt Romney's elastic record on policy. Yet for reasons well-known, Newt and other Republicans have chosen to make Barack Obama's populist case by attacking Romney's record at Bain Capital.

Description: Last week's column started off asking: "What human motivation gets the most wonderful things done?" The answer is that human greed is what gets wonderful things done. I wasn't talking about fraud, theft, dishonesty, special privileges from government or other forms of despicable behavior. I was talking about people trying to get as much as they can for themselves. Think about greed and racial discrimination. In 1947, when the Brooklyn Dodgers hired Jackie Robinson, why did racial discrimination by major league teams begin to drop like a hot potato? It wasn't feelings of guilt by white owners, affirmative action or anti-discrimination laws. It turned out that there was a huge pool of black baseball talent in the Negro leagues. It became too costly for teams to allow the Dodgers to gain a monopoly on this talent. Black players won the National League's Most Valuable Player award for seven consecutive seasons. Had other teams not stepped in to hire black players, allowing the Dodgers to hire them, it might have given the Dodgers a virtual monopoly on world championships.

Description: The news that Eastman Kodak is preparing to file for bankruptcy, after being the leading photographic company in the world for more than a hundred years, truly marks the end of an era. The skills required to use the cameras and chemicals required by the photography of the mid-19th century were far beyond those of most people -- until a man named George Eastman created a company called Kodak, which made cameras that ordinary people could use. It was Kodak's humble and affordable box Brownie that put photography on the map for millions of people, who just wanted to take simple pictures of family, friends and places they visited.

Description: Whom should we nominate to represent the GOP in a fight against President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election? I believe the name of the candidate that fills the majority of the answers in 10 particular questions deserves your vote. Last week, I discussed the first five questions. (If you haven't read those, please do so before proceeding.)

Description: At the 757th Republican debate over the weekend, Newt Gingrich zinged Mitt Romney for attempting to portray his decision to forego a re-election race in Massachusetts as reluctance to become a lifetime politician. " . . . Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney?" Gingrich taunted, observing that Romney's poll numbers were dropping in 2006, and he was eyeing a presidential run, which he did indeed make in 2008. True enough. Romney's explanation was transparently self-serving and contrived. That said, Romney cannot hope to compete in the phoniness league Newt Gingrich belongs to. At that level of play, candidates dare to suggest that they take huge retainers from Freddie Mac in order to offer advice "as a historian," and commit serial adultery because "partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."

Description: We've been dealing with liberal media bias for years, but George Stephanopoulos' performance in the Republican presidential debate Saturday night in New Hampshire was particularly egregious. In many of these MSM-moderated debates, liberal moderators have tried to stir up personal fights between candidates, which diverts our focus from more important issues and, before national television audiences, shifts attention far away from Barack Obama and his disastrous agenda.

Description: Only a fool believes that all those with whom he differs are bad people. Moreover, just about all of us live the reality -- often within our own family -- of knowing good and loving people with whom we strongly differ on political, religious, social and economic issues. That said, I have come to believe that the more committed one is to leftism, the more likely one is to become meaner. Two examples in just the past week offer compelling evidence. Prominent left-wing commentators used the way in which Rick Santorum and his wife handled the death of one of their children to attack -- make that mock -- the former Pennsylvania senator.

Description: A presidential campaign exposes candidates' strengths and weaknesses. The strengths they're eager to tell you about. So let's look at the weaknesses. Start with Rick Santorum, whose poll numbers in New Hampshire and South Carolina have been surging since (by last count) he lost the Iowa caucuses by the Chinese lucky number of 8 votes. Santorum's weakness is that he can't resist concentrating on peripheral issues. The prime example is his leadership in 2005 in getting the Senate summoned into voting for a law preventing the removal of life support for Terri Schiavo. Santorum's position was intellectually defensible (and shared by Democrats like Tom Harkin). But voters considered it weird to devote so much energy to a single unhappy legal case. I think this accounted more than anything else for Santorum's 59 percent to 41 percent defeat in Pennsylvania in 2006. In New Hampshire, Santorum was unable Thursday to resist Boston radio talk show host Michael Graham's invitation to characterize himself as a "Jesus guy." Again, he had an intellectually coherent rationale.

Description: Message to my fellow conservatives: Please don't blame the mainstream media for the improvement in jobs, unemployment and economic growth. Reporters are not making this up. The economy is better. It's going to give President Obama a leg up on the election. GOP beware, and come to your senses. Take Friday's jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Non-farm payrolls gained 200,000, and the unemployment rate slipped to 8.5 percent from 8.7 percent. It may well be that a seasonal quirk added 42,000 messengers and couriers to the totals, but that will be lost in the headline reporting. It will be given back next month. It's inconsequential to the overall story. Likewise, a normal labor participation rate would yield much higher unemployment. But that's academic. Like any president, Obama will take credit for these economic gains. He's doing that right now. And he has a case to make: A year ago, the unemployment rate was 9.4 percent, and in 2011 it fell almost a percentage point. In the 12 months through December 2011, the economy produced 1.64 million new jobs, while in 2010, only 940,000 were created. On a monthly average basis, 137,000 new jobs per month were created in 2011, compared to only 78,000 a month in 2010. Things are getting better.

Description: President Obama is calling for dramatic defense cuts that could threaten our national survival while obstructing structural reforms to our entitlement programs that are essential for our national financial survival. It just doesn't get much worse than this. President George W. Bush attempted in good faith to reform Social Security, and Democrats savaged him. Rep. Paul Ryan proposed a comprehensive financial plan that would, as painlessly as possible, restore national fiscal sanity, and Obama and his Democrats have misrepresented the plan (saying it would end Medicare) and used class warfare and fear-mongering to kill it in the cradle. Indeed, Republicans have repeatedly submitted and passed comprehensive and detailed budget plans to restore our financial solvency, and Senate Democrats have blocked every one of them. Meanwhile, the Democratic Senate hasn't produced a budget in almost three years. Three years! It is undeniable, undebatable, irrefutable, inarguable and certain that the United States is spending at a level that will destroy it. It is equally indisputable that Democrats have shown no willingness to join Americans in tackling the problem. Every time you confront a liberal with these incontrovertible facts, his response is not: "You are simply wrong." It is, "Bush started this." Well, Bush did spend too much, but he was a piker compared with Obama. But it doesn't much matter who caused it anymore, does it? If your family is facing a serious problem, is your first instinct to blame the culprit -- other than to identify it for purposes of devising a solution -- or to address the problem?

Description: If you were running the Illinois Humanities Council and a famous terrorist offered to help in your fundraising drive, what would you do? If you said, "slam down the phone" or something to that effect, it just shows how remote you are from the sensibilities of the Obama age. Because, in fact, when Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers offered to auction "dinner for six" at their house, the IHC cheerfully accepted. Ayers and Dohrn were members of the Weather Underground in the 1960s and early '70s. They set off bombs at the New York police headquarters, the U.S. Capitol building and the Pentagon. In 1970, the group blew up the Park police station in San Francisco, killing Sgt. Brian V. McDonnell, a 45-year-old father of two and wounding eight others. The San Francisco Police Association has claimed, as recently as 2009, that "There are irrefutable and compelling reasons to believe that Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn ... are largely responsible for the bombing of Park Police Station." In a New York Times interview, published (ironically) on Sept. 11, 2001, Ayers was asked whether he had repented. He said, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Even now, he continued, he finds a "certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance."

Description: Here is the operating motto of the Obama White House: "So let it be written, so let it be done!" Like Yul Brynner's Pharaoh Ramses character in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments," the demander in chief stands with arms akimbo issuing daily edicts to his constitution-subverting minions with an imperious wave of his hand. His entourage of insatiable usurpers never rests. Can't delude legislators into adopting a $1.5 billion Kabuki summer-jobs makework boondoggle? Create an unfunded program through executive fiat. Can't muster up a filibuster-proof majority for radical nominees? Czar-ify 'em. Can't get Congress to approve vast wild lands designations? Grab them under cover of a holiday lame-duck session. Can't get the illegal alien bailout DREAM Act passed on Capitol Hill? Executive-order it. "So let it be written, so let it be done!" In keeping with the dark and defiant habits of this administration, the new head of the half-billion-dollar Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was sworn in behind closed doors on Wednesday night. The nomination of former Democratic Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to serve as Dodd-Frank regulatory enforcer had been soundly defeated in the Senate before Christmas. But as I reported last month, progressive zealots funded by billionaire George Soros goaded Obama to ignore the Senate's constitutionally grounded advice and consent role. At his left flank's urging, Obama vowed to follow in President Theodore Roosevelt's footsteps (TR recess-appointed 160 officials during a recess of less than one day) and install Cordray even though the Senate technically remained in pro forma session. Fresh from his Hawaii vacation, Obama returned to Washington and for once delivered on a promise.

Description: Back in 2007, when Barack Obama was running for president, a mildly surprising bit of news emerged: He and Dick Cheney were eighth cousins. Today, though, it appears that report was wrong. Judging from Obama's record in office, the two are practically brothers. As a candidate, Obama criticized the last administration for holding Americans as enemy combatants without trial. He faulted it for wiretapping citizens without a warrant. He rejected the Republican claim that the president has the "inherent power" to go to war without congressional consent. He depicted George W. Bush and his vice president as a menace to constitutional limits and personal freedom. But look at him now. Last week, Obama signed a bill letting him detain U.S. citizens in military custody without convicting them of anything -- not for a month or a year, but potentially forever. Obama pledges he will never use that power to hold an American. But Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said the bill originally applied only to non-citizens. Citizens were included, he said, at the request of the White House. Even if Obama doesn't plan to use the power, it will be sitting on the shelf for Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum. Those who voted for Obama in 2008 expected something different. "The detention of American citizens, without access to counsel, fair procedure, or pursuant to judicial authorization, as enemy combatants is unconstitutional," he told The Boston Globe. His reversal brings to mind not only Cheney but another Republican. "Obama has eclipsed Nixon in the establishment of an imperial presidency," George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told me. And Turley voted for Obama.

Description: Elections are contests held during a moment in time between candidates who have records stretching back, often far back, into the past. So there is always a tension between the man (or woman) who is running and the moment. That tension is greater than usual when the contest is for the nomination of a political party dominated by a large number of newcomers to politics motivated by strong opposition to current policies. That was the case 40 years ago, when members of the peace movement, opposed to the Vietnam War, became the largest and most highly motivated part of the Democratic Party. And it is the case this year because the political newcomers referred to as the tea party have become the most highly motivated part of the Republican Party. They are opposed to the Obama Democrats' vast expansion of the size and scope of government and to any policy that abets it. The Republican candidates, who had their first real test in this week's Iowa caucuses, have long political records, going back to the 1970s in the case of Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, and all of them (or all but one) have taken stands in tension with the principles of this cycle's Republican voters. Some have backed a mandate to buy health insurance -- a conservative proposal in the 1990s. At least one championed spending earmarks. Some are vulnerable to charges of crony capitalism. Some have disparaged or declined to support the Medicare reforms in House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's budget package.

Description: "I don't think Ron Paul represents the mainstream," says Mitt Romney. Newt Gingrich, another of the Texas congressman's opponents in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination, uses stronger terms, declaring, "Ron Paul's views are totally outside the mainstream of virtually every decent American." As the results in Iowa suggest, the "mainstream" to which Romney and Gingrich refer is not defined by voters; it is the range of opinion deemed acceptable by leaders of the two major political parties. The mainstream has brought us a national debt the size of the national economy, a bloated yet overextended military that has strayed far from its mission of defending the country, and a lawless executive branch that usurps legislative powers and violates civil liberties.

Description: Campaign season is not a time for truth. It's a time for the candidates, the press and the voters to tell themselves fables. The Democrats' fable this year is straightforward: President Obama has been a failure at reviving the economy because the hole dug by George W. Bush and the Republicans was so deep that it will require a second Obama term to fully reverse the damage. Further, the obstructionist Republicans in Congress are blocking the kind of "progressive" reforms, such as new taxes on the rich, that would solve our budget and deficit emergencies and boost economic growth.

Description: The Iowa caucuses may not have much predictive value, but they did a wonderful job of unmasking both elitist whingers on the left and incompetent whiners on the right. As they do every presidential election cycle, progressives of pallor wore their indelible disdain for Middle America on their sleeves. Pale-faced University of Iowa journalism professor Stephen Bloom launched a 6,000-word jeremiad, littered with factual errors, against his home state's residents. The abridged version: Raaaaaaaacists! Hicks! Christians! Argggh!

Description: Rick Santorum, like most Republican candidates, fashions himself the one true conservative running in 2012. If the thought of big, intrusive liberal government offends you, he might just be your man. And if you favor a big, intrusive Republican government, he's unquestionably your candidate. People are taking a look at Santorum. Important people. Even New York Times columnist David Brooks recently celebrated his working-class appeal, newfound viability and economic populism, noting that the former Pennsylvania senator's book "It Takes a Family" was a "broadside against Barry Goldwater-style conservatism" -- or, in other words, a rejection of that Neanderthal fealty for liberty and free markets that has yet to be put down. Santorum's book is crammed with an array of ideas for technocratic meddling; even the author acknowledges that some people "will reject" what he has to say "as a kind of 'Big Government' conservatism."

Description: Whom should we nominate to represent the GOP in a fight against President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election? I believe the name of the candidate that fills the majority of the answers in the following 10 questions (in no particular order of importance) deserves your vote. Based upon the GOP candidates' character and track records: 10) Who is most committed to follow and lead by the U.S. Constitution? It's one thing to take the presidential oath of office, but who has the strongest track record of citing and standing by the Constitution?

Description: What human motivation gets the most wonderful things done? It's really a silly question, because the answer is so simple. It turns out that it's human greed that gets the most wonderful things done. When I say greed, I am not talking about fraud, theft, dishonesty, lobbying for special privileges from government or other forms of despicable behavior. I'm talking about people trying to get as much as they can for themselves. Let's look at it. This winter, Texas ranchers may have to fight the cold of night, perhaps blizzards, to run down, feed and care for stray cattle. They make the personal sacrifice of caring for their animals to ensure that New Yorkers can enjoy beef. Last summer, Idaho potato farmers toiled in blazing sun, in dust and dirt, and maybe being bitten by insects to ensure that New Yorkers had potatoes to go with their beef.

Description: No one seems to be really happy with this year's field of Republican candidates for that party's presidential nomination -- except perhaps the Democrats. The sudden rise, and equally sudden fall, of a succession of Republican front-runners is just one sign of the dissatisfaction of the Republican voters with this field of candidates. In this, as in many other aspects of life, we can only make our choice among the options actually available. So Republican voters who want to be realistic need to understand that they are going to end up with qualms and nagging doubts about whomever they pick this time. Not all voters want to be realistic, of course. Some voters, whether Democrats, Republicans or independents, treat elections as occasions to vent their emotions, rather than as a process to pick someone into whose hands to place the fate of the nation.

Description: The Washington Post proclaimed in a recent headline another historic "first" for the United States -- the first female usher-in-chief at the White House. Stop the presses! The accompanying story reveals that the nominee hails from Jamaica, so it's probably a two-fer. Oh, boy. The Post and other liberal organs are obsessed with firsts. The first female letter carrier to handle the Capitol Hill route will get a mention in the press. The first African-American anything is guaranteed at least a nod. You don't even have to be first to get "first" treatment. The last two Supreme Court nominees have been women, joining a court that had already seated two women (one retired). Nevertheless, the femininity of the candidates was cheerily chatted up. When Barack Obama became the first black nominee of a major party and then the elected president, dignified notice of an historical milestone would have been appropriate. But you know what happened -- the media went on an inebriated, extravagant first binge.

Description: Conservative columnist Ann Coulter has some advice for GOP presidential hopefuls: Hang tough on illegal immigration. Coulter sees illegal immigration as one of the two signature issues of the Republican presidential campaign (the other being repeal of Obamacare). Coulter predicts that if the candidates fail to be sufficiently hard-line, they'll invite future political suicide: "... Capitulate on illegal immigration, and the entire country will have the electorate of California." Her column is not only lousy advice; it speaks volumes about how little she understands immigration policy.

Description: I think it's very difficult for any of us to be objective about any subject, especially something we care deeply about, but my objective observation is that liberals tend to be less aware of and less willing to admit their biases. We see this often, which I'll get to, but first, let me relate how this phenomenon most recently came to my attention.

Description: With 2011 drawing to a close, it is time to account. As an early-and-often chronicler of Chicago-on-the-Potomac, I am amazed at the stubborn and clingy persistence of President Barack Obama's snowblowers in the media. See no scandal, hear no scandal, speak no scandal. Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan asserted in May -- while Operation Fast and Furious subpoenas were flying on Capitol Hill -- that "one of the least remarked upon aspects of the Obama presidency has been the lack of scandals." Conveniently, he defines scandal as a "widespread elite perception of wrongdoing."

Description: Reporters routinely describe Ron Paul's foreign policy views as "isolationist" because he opposes the promiscuous use of military force. This is like calling him a recluse because he tries to avoid fistfights. The implicit assumption that violence is the only way to interact with the world reflects the oddly circumscribed nature of foreign policy debates in mainstream American politics. It shows why Paul's perspective is desperately needed in the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

Description: The road to gastric hell is paved with first lady Michelle Obama's Nanny State intentions. Don't take my word for it. School kids in Los Angeles have blown the whistle on the east wing chef-in-chief's healthy lunch diktats. Get your Pepto Bismol ready. The taste of government waste is indigestion-inducing. According to a weekend report by the Los Angeles Times, the city's "trailblazing introduction of healthful school lunches has been a flop." In response to the public hectoring and financial inducement of Mrs. Obama's federally subsidized anti-obesity campaign, the district dropped chicken nuggets, corn dogs and flavored milk from the menu for "beef jambalaya, vegetable curry, pad Thai, lentil and brown rice cutlets, and quinoa and black-eyed pea salads."

Description: President Obama led us to believe that he would be a post-racial president who would bring the races together, but it's gotten to where you can't criticize this most leftist administration in American history without someone accusing you of racism. The most recent example involves criticism of Attorney General Eric Holder over Fast and Furious, an operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which was overseen by the Justice Department. It involved the indirect sale of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, which resulted in some 300 killings in Mexico, including the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Throughout, despite having received detailed memos from DOJ officials about it, Holder has denied he was aware of it.

Description: After a lifetime of studying the left, I have concluded that leftism is a form of moral poison. It causes otherwise decent and kind people who take it into their systems to say and/or do cruel and sometimes evil things. While not specifically about the left, a major new scholarly book, "Pathological Altruism" (Oxford University Press), explores this phenomenon of people wanting to do good things yet ending up doing bad. It applies to The New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who has a deep altruistic urge to bring peace to the Middle East. But because he sees the world through the liberal/left prism, he says morally reprehensible things -- statements that individuals associated with hate-filled, non-altruistic groups and ideologies would make.

Description: President Obama spoke at the annual meeting of the Union for Reform Judaism last week, and he gave the attendees that ol' time religion -- liberalism. Not surprisingly, since Reform Judaism is, in Richard Brookhiser's timeless phrase, "the Democratic Party with holidays" -- it was well-received. While the audience in the hall purred appreciatively at the president's invocation of the usual liberal bromides, Obama's claims on the subject of his administration's support of Israel -- at least to those not blinkered by partisanship -- are nothing short of jaw dropping. "I am proud to say," he told the group, "that no U.S. administration has done more in support of Israel's security than ours. None. Don't let anybody else tell you otherwise. It is a fact." No, it's an assertion, and it scarcely passes the laugh test.

Description: Republicans and Democrats, liberals as well as conservatives, have bought into anti-Chinese trade demagoguery. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that tariffs against China are a "key part of our 'Make It in America' agenda." During his 2010 campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called his tea party-backed Republican challenger, Sharron Angle, "a foreign worker's best friend." In a recent news conference, President Barack Obama gave his support to the anti-China campaign, declaring that China "has been very aggressive in gaming the trading system to its advantage," adding that "we can and should take action against countries that are keeping their currencies undervalued ... (and) that, above all, means China." Republican 2012 presidential candidates have jumped on the anti-China bandwagon. Mitt Romney wrote: "If I am fortunate enough to be elected president, I will work to fundamentally alter our economic relationship with China. ... I will begin on Day One by designating China as the currency manipulator it is." Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., was even more challenging, saying, "I want to go to war with China."

Description: If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office. What the media call Gingrich's "baggage" concerns largely his personal life and the fact that he made a lot of money running a consulting firm after he left Congress. This kind of stuff makes lots of talking points that we will no doubt hear, again and again, over the next weeks and months.

Description: Anyone who knows me knows that for my whole life, I've been a huge supporter of our U.S. military personnel, whom I congratulate about their victory in Iraq. But when our president and officials in the U.S. Department of Defense exchange a war abroad for a religious war at home, can't we see that something else is seriously awry in this administration? It's one thing to watch "merry Christmas" be omitted from signs in your favorite department store but quite another to see Bibles withheld from wounded warriors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. It's true! On Dec. 2, the Family Research Council reported that it had discovered a memo released in September at the esteemed military hospital, in which Navy officials announced that "no religious items (including Bibles, reading material, and/or artifacts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit."

Description: It's highly unusual in a presidential debate for two Republican candidates -- the two leading in current national polls -- to heap praise on a liberal Democratic senator. But in the Fox News debate in Sioux City, Iowa, Thursday night, both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney had very good words to say for Oregon's Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden. The subject was the Medicare reform plan put forward in a Wall Street Journal opinion article that morning by Wyden and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. "Today is a big day for the country," Romney said. It was "an enormous achievement" for Ryan and Wyden, people on opposite sides of the aisle, to come together. Gingrich, harshly criticized last May for calling Ryan's earlier Medicare plan "right-wing social engineering," went out of his way to say that Romney had produced "a very good plan" for Medicare and that it was "brave" for Wyden to join Ryan in their bipartisan plan.

Description: They are coming home. For the first time since March 19, 2003, there are no U.S. combat or combat support troops in Iraq. There is still a contingent of U.S. Marines guarding the biggest American embassy in the world and the largest military attache's office at any diplomatic mission. But there is no doubt in anyone's mind -- ally or enemy -- that the war in Iraq is over. The only uncertainty now: Who won? Short answer: America's soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines -- and the American people whose sons and daughters served in Iraq. Though our commander in chief cannot utter the word "victory," it is. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta -- in Baghdad for a ceremonial "casing of the colors" for U.S. Forces-Iraq -- came close when he said of all who served during eight years and eight months of war: "You came to this 'Land Between the Rivers' again and again and again. You did not know whether you'd return to your loved ones. ... Your sacrifice has helped the Iraqi people to cast tyranny aside and to offer hope for prosperity and peace to this country's future generations."

Description: The payroll-tax-cut debate is not really about the payroll tax, which is a very weak-kneed economic stimulant and a lackluster job creator because of its temporary nature. Without permanent incentives at lower tax rates, these rebates don't do anything for growth and jobs. Instead, the key to understanding the payroll-tax debate is to grasp President Barack Obama's leftist vision of taxing successful earners (the millionaire surtax) and his obsession with clean energy at the expense of fossil fuels. These are ideological positions. They support the Obama vision of class warfare and his attachment to radical environmentalism.

Description: As a rueful Queen Elizabeth once said of a particularly rough year for the royal family, 2011 is "not a year on which" Queen Nancy Pelosi "shall look back with undiluted pleasure." The former House Speaker relinquished her crown -- er, gavel -- in January. It's been an epic downhill ski crash ever since. Most recently, Pelosi faced questions from liberal "60 Minutes" and conservative investigative author Peter Schweitzer about a 5,000-share Visa stock purchase she made with her husband as the House was considering credit card regulations. She made a "killing" off the highly sought-after initial public offering. The stock holdings more than doubled in a few weeks; the credit card regulations were put on ice somewhere in the back of Pelosi's fridge. While she makes grand gestures toward banning congressional insider trading, San Fran Nan's financial conflicts of interest are once again on display. This week, Reuters columnist Dan Indiviglio pointed to pending House legislation titled the "New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act of 2011," which is stuffed with natural gas vehicle subsidies: $9 billion worth, to be precise. These very subsidies are championed by Texas billionaire and failed wind farm evangelist T. Boone Pickens. He just happens to be a major stockholder in the company that would benefit from the bill: Clean Energy Fuels.

Description: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident..." What truths? What has happened to our passion for liberty? I am concerned that we conservatives, instead of making our case as fearless champions of liberty, are too often on the defensive, preoccupied with trying to prove we aren't the demons the left says we are. In the GOP primary contest, you'll hear one candidate scolding the others for lacking compassion, another demagoguing a rival for advocating essential entitlement reform, and another shaming an opponent for being too wealthy. Shouldn't our side do a better job of proudly proclaiming our case for what we believe in rather than have our tails tucked between our legs, apologizing for conservatism and all too often neglecting our first principles? Because we face an existential threat to the nation in our exploding discretionary and entitlement spending, we rightly aim our rhetoric against the deficits and the debt. That's critically important, but in the process, do we forget to explain that we favor smaller government also as a matter of principle? Do we make the case that we oppose a bigger and more intrusive government because a) it is incompatible with what we stand for -- robust political liberty -- and b) other than metastasizing and swallowing up the private sector and our individual liberties, government does only a few things well? Likewise, do we connect the dots between our confiscatory tax policies and the diminution of our liberties, demonstrating a nexus between oppressive taxes and serfdom? Do we protest that we are already overtaxed and that an onerous tax system, enforced by a menacing federal agency, devours our political liberty?

Description: A few months ago, tooling along in my brand new Honda (aka "cute car"), I came to a stop at a red light. On my right, a police cruiser with lights flashing was investigating a fender bender. A total of three cars, the two that were in the accident plus the police car, were off on the shoulder. I was waiting for the light to change when -- bam -- someone crashed into me from behind. One of the police officers instructed us to pull over to the side of the road near the other two cars. "Everybody OK?" My husband and I nodded. "I saw the whole thing," the officer said. "So this won't take long." As we were filling out paper work and exchanging insurance information (the other driver was mortified and cooperative), yet another car rear-ended a third car waiting at the red light. The road was so strewn with red and white glass that it looked like a holiday display. When my husband and I expressed amazement at the three crashes within the space of about eight minutes, the officer shrugged. "It happens all the time." The cause of the second two accidents (I don't know what caused the first.): "distracted driving." Both drivers were "rubbernecking" instead of paying attention to the road in front of them. By the logic that the National Transportation Safety Board applied this week in its recommendation to ban all cell phone use by drivers, perhaps we should also ban police cars? The accident that led to the NTSBs sweeping recommendation was similar to the one I just described, except that it was more serious. In Gray Summit, Mo., in 2010, a distracted driver crashed into a truck. Then, in an accordion pattern, two school busses crashed into him. Two people were killed and 35 injured.

Description: Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow has been a controversial sports figure ever since he agreed to do an ad for the conservative organization Focus on the Family; the spot aired during the 2010 Super Bowl. Feminists and other groups, who feared the ad would be overtly pro-life and anti-abortion, tried to keep it from running. In the end, the message turned out to be pretty innocuous, and those who tried to censor it looked downright silly. Now Tebow is once again a target for illiberals who find his evangelical Christianity somehow threatening and offensive. The latest episode involves a recent column for The Jewish Week that bashed Tebow for symbolizing intolerance. But it was the writer, Connecticut Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, who put his own astonishing bigotry on display. Hammerman titled his piece "My Tebow Problem," and indeed it is Hammerman's problem -- not Tebow's. While claiming to want to root for Tebow, who has pulled off an unprecedented string of amazing consecutive fourth-quarter comebacks for his underdog team this season, Hammerman made the following prediction: "If Tebow wins the Super Bowl, against all odds, it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants. While America has become more inclusive since Jerry Falwell's first political forays, a Tebow triumph could set those efforts back considerably." Really?

Description: Moscow is not a city of ghosts, but on Saturday, tens of thousands of figures were seen marching in the Russian capital chanting, "We exist! We exist!" That might seem like an exercise in the obvious. But the crowd thought a reminder was in order for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has generally regarded his critics as though they were invisible. He can see them now. In last week's parliamentary election, his United Russia Party suffered a humiliation, losing 77 of its 315 seats and getting less than a majority of all votes -- down from 64 percent four years ago. It's embarrassing enough to do poorly in an honest election. Putin's party managed to crater despite vigorous measures to rig the vote. In the province of Chechnya, United Russia somehow garnered 99 percent at the polls. In the city of Rostov-on-Don, state TV reported its share of the vote at 146 percent. Putin and his sidekick, President Dmitry Medvedev, defended the integrity of the election, but they were a tiny chorus. Opposition groups posted video of ballot-stuffing and other tactics that would make a Chicago precinct captain smile. One man said he was paid to cast 45 ballots for United Russia. A Russian election watchdog group, Golos, said United Russia "achieved the majority mandate by falsification." International observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found "frequent procedural violations and instances of apparent manipulation."

Description: The next best thing to calling a Republican "racist," "sexist," "homophobic," or "Uncle Tom" (where appropriate) is to call him "out of touch." Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the latest wealthy Republican to be called "out of touch." The proof? Why, he offered to bet rival Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The amount offered was -- gasp -- $10,000! This, of course, makes him another born-on-third-base-and-thought-he-hit-a-triple Republican. The Democratic National Committee pounced and immediately put out a video: "Mitt Romney: Simply Out of Touch -- Ten Thousand Times Over." But which "elite, out-of-touch politician" considers a $172,200 annual salary "relatively modest" -- Republican presidential hopeful Romney or President Barack Obama? Answer: Obama. Whose $300K-per-year hospital-executive wife traveled to working-class Zanesville, Ohio, and complained about the high cost of her daughters' summer camp, piano and dance lessons? Answer: Obama's. The then-U.S. senator was making $170K. The 2005-2009 median income in Zanesville: $28,854, almost $13,000 less than the national median. Romney fits this role perfectly. Son of a former American Motors CEO and Michigan governor, Romney made a bundle buying and selling businesses. Pretty blond wife. Pretty kids. Every hair in place. What's not to hate? Never mind that there are more multimillionaire Democrat senators than multimillionaire Republican senators. Never mind that the average contribution to the DNC is larger than the average contribution to the RNC.

Description: "We're not going to lose in New Hampshire." So says Mitt Romney's state coordinator, Jason McBride. Stuart Stevens, the Romney campaign's TV ad-maker, expresses similar confidence. Asked if Romney might finish second in New Hampshire, his answer is an unhesitating "no." Whether that confidence is well founded may determine the fate of the candidate who has been the on-and-off frontrunner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. There are four contests in January -- the Iowa caucuses, and then the primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. Romney currently trails Newt Gingrich in polls in three of the four. Only in the Granite State does he cling to the lead he has held in every poll there since April 2010. If New Hampshire follows the pattern of past primaries, Romney should be headed for a win. In 2008, he only narrowly lost the state, 37 percent to 32 percent, to John McCain. He's been running ahead of that 32 percent in almost all polls this cycle. He has been building an organization replete with field directors and voter-identification efforts since last May. An absentee ballot drive is getting underway.

Description: The first time Newt Gingrich disgusted me was in 1995, when the freshly installed speaker of the House proposed the death penalty for drug smugglers. Fifteen years later, I had a similar response when Gingrich demanded government action to stop Muslims from building a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center. From the perspective of someone who wants to minimize the role of government in every aspect of our lives, Gingrich is bad in the ways conservatives tend to be bad -- and then some. At the same time, he is generally not good in the ways conservatives tend to be good, which makes me wonder why anyone would prefer him to Mitt Romney as a presidential candidate.

Description: Scruffy progressive protesters locked themselves together across railroad tracks, blocked traffic and shouted profanities at police on Tuesday in a coordinated "West Coast Port Shutdown." Truckers lost wages. Shippers lost business. This is what the Occupy Wall Street movement calls "victory." Aging Big Labor bosses toasted one another from the sidelines as they declared the "rebirth of the labor movement." What's really going on? It's an old-school power grab by a decrepit union wrapped in self-deluded social media do-goodism.

Description: This week, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney called on newly minted front-runner and noted historian Newt Gingrich to return the estimated $1.6 million he made providing "strategic advice" to Freddie Mac, the quasi-governmental agency that has done the hard work of making "toxic home mortgages" a forever feature of our national portfolio. To this, Newt, the great American theorist, unsheathed his trademark intellect and offered a completely irrelevant yet vaguely smart-sounding retort: "If Gov. Romney would give back all the money he's earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over the years at Bain, then I would be glad to listen to him. But I bet you $10, not $10,000, that he won't take the offer."

Description: In his "60 Minutes" interview, President Obama offered a keen insight into his 2012 re-election strategy. It takes some decoding, but his underlying strategic goals emerge. He said: "The question next year is going to be -- and then this is how a democracy is supposed to work -- do they see a more compelling vision coming out from the other side? Do they think that cutting taxes further, including on the wealthy, cutting taxes on corporations, of gutting regulations, do we think that that is going to be somehow more successful? And if the American people think that that's a recipe for success and a majority are persuaded by that, then I'm going to lose."

Description: Almost all political commentators agree on one thing. The Republican presidential campaign is unlike any we have experienced. It is not a campaign of steady trends and continuities, but rather of emotional reversals and discontinuities. Perhaps this is so because the last 3 to 4 years have been a shocking time of discontinuities and reversals for America. Really, America has been bewildered, shocked and disoriented since Sept. 11, 2001. The economic collapse and the unprecedentedly statist policies of the last three years have just compounded the anxiety. The rise of China, the fall of Europe and the chaos in the Middle East have been startling in their swiftness -- and the lack of American leadership as these dramatic events unfold is sending a shudder throughout the world. We don't know what to make of events. We have not been convinced that either President George W. Bush or incumbent President Obama have had a clue about how to make things right.

Description: The most prevalent theme in President Barack Obama's Dec. 6 Osawatomie, Kan., speech was the need for greater "fairness." In fact, though the president never defined the term fair(ness), he used it 15 times. Explaining his new hero, Teddy Roosevelt, Obama said: "But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can. He understood the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest." What's fair competition is somewhat subjective, but let me suggest a few examples of what's clearly unfair. Say a person wants to become a taxi owner. He has a driver's license, a car and accident liability insurance. Is it fair that in New York City, he has to first purchase a taxi license (medallion) that as of October sold for $1 million? Taxi licenses in Chicago go for $56,000. In Boston, they are $285,000, and in Philadelphia, they run $75,000. Is that fair competition?

Description: Casey Stengel, a baseball legend who played on five teams and managed four, said: "It's easy to get good players. Getting them to play together, that's the hard part." What's true in sports is definitely true in politics -- even more so. Many say that 'tis the season for GOP rivalry, but when does inference turn to infighting? When does public debate abandon solidarity? And when does friendly bantering turn into friendly fire that is fuel for our foes?

Description: The headline reads like a piece from the Onion: "U.S. Navy Paying $15/Gallon for Green Fuel." But it's real enough. It seems that, fresh from its success with Solyndra, the Obama administration is slated to spend $12 million to buy a biofuel/gasoline blend that runs $15 a gallon to power a portion of the Navy's fleet in a demonstration project. "We are doing this for one simple reason," explained Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, "It makes us better war fighters. Our use of fossil fuels is a very real threat to our national security and to the U.S. Navy's ability to protect America and project power overseas."

Description: Washington gridlock may turn out to be the salvation of the Obama administration. Not only does gridlock allow the president to blame Republicans for not solving the financial crisis that his own runaway spending created, the inability to carry out as much government intervention in the economy as when the Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress means that the market can now recover on its own to some visible extent before the next election. Such a recovery would of course be credited as a success of the Obama administration's policies. With this theme being echoed throughout the pro-Obama media, enough voters might be sufficiently impressed to give the president a second term.

Description: The most disturbing aspect of President Obama's "60 Minutes" interview is how sincere he sounded when misrepresenting his record. I'm not sure whether I would prefer that he be lying or self-deluded, but there's plenty of each to go around. Obama is a left-wing ideologue, a true believer, who is convinced that his agenda is mandated by a superior moral imperative (from who knows where) and that it must be advanced irrespective of the consequences, because no matter how bad they might be, they would have been worse without his agenda.

Description: Because the issue is so important, I have decided to respond to critics of my last column on adultery, politics and character. As any reader of my columns or books knows, I am a religious conservative, and my primary concern is morality. By morality, I mean issues of good and evil. I am also concerned with the issue of sin, but sin and evil are not identical. All evil is sin, but not all sins are evil. For example, religious people regard saying the word 'God' for no religious purpose ("taking God's name in vain") as sinful. But to regard saying, for example, "God damn it, I stubbed my toe," as evil is to trivialize evil.

Description: Say what you will about former Speaker Newt Gingrich. His philosophy, his policy proposals, his track record, his campaign and all the rest. But the one thing you have to acknowledge about Gingrich is that he's a sizzler. He has a way with words. And he's as good a communicator as anyone in modern politics. In my CNBC interview with Gingrich this week, he slammed President Obama's tax-the-rich, class-warfare attack on banks and businesspeople. He hammered Obama, calling him a hard-left radical who is opposed to free enterprise, capitalism and "virtually everything which made America great." It was a brutal, frontal, hard-hitting attack on the president. He called Obama "the candidate of food stamps, the finest food-stamp president in American history." He said, "I want to get equality by bringing people up. (Obama) wants to get equality by bringing people down." He said, "I want to be the guy who says, 'I want to help every American have a better future.' (Obama) wants to make sure that he levels Americans down so we all have an equally mediocre future."

Description: It was a rough week for the corruptocracy. White House officials better ho-ho-hold on tight because the sleigh ride isn't going to get any smoother. On Wednesday, disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, D-Ill., received a 14-year prison sentence for scheming to sell President Barack Obama's Senate office, along with several other pay-for-play schemes. Blago played the distressed daddy for the federal judge, invoking his young daughters and wife (who held her notoriously foul tongue in check) to bemoan how his "life is in ruins." How far Blago's fallen from the glory days of 2008, when he was gloating at the prospect of naming a candidate to fill then-President-elect Obama's seat. "I've got this thing, and it's f**king golden," he crowed. All that glitters now, though, are the paparazzi flash bulbs that Blago faces on his perp walks. Earlier this week, Bill Richardson, former Democratic governor of New Mexico, disgraced former presidential candidate and failed Obama Commerce Secretary nominee, faced new reports of a federal grand jury into his possible violations of campaign finance laws. The funny-money business is tied to an alleged mistress payoff a la disgraced former presidential candidate and Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C.

Description: After a two-hour meeting in Cairo, Khaled Mashaal, unelected leader of Hamas, and Mahmoud Abbas, unelected leader of the Palestinian Authority, were all smiles. "We want to assure our people and the Arab and Islamic world that we have turned a major new and real page in partnership on everything to do with the Palestinian nation," Mashaal announced. "There are no more differences between us now," agreed Abbas. In other words, the "moderate" Abbas is now a full partner with the leader of an organization whose charter is committed not just to the destruction of Israel but also to the elimination of all Jews everywhere. This is the same Abbas who forfeited whatever slim claim he held to a moderate status by declining to accept Israel as a Jewish state, refusing to engage in direct negotiations with Israel (as recently as last week chief Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat declined a Quartet request to sit down with the Israelis), and flouting the Oslo Accords by going to the United Nations to demand recognition. Now, he is formally partnered with a genocidal, Islamist organization. But the Obama administration thinks Israel is the problem. Meanwhile, in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 40 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections, while another 25 percent went to Salafi forces. The Salafis regard the Muslim Brotherhood as squishes. Sheik Abdel Moneim el-Shahat, leader of the Salafis, is scornful of the Muslim Brotherhood for talking about citizenship and freedom outside the strictures of Islamic law. El-Shahat is not so broad-minded. "I want to say: citizenship restricted by Islamic Shariah, freedom restricted by Islamic Shariah, equality restricted by Islamic Shariah." So two-thirds of the Egyptian electorate support candidates who will find Hamas utterly congenial. But the Obama administration is dismayed by Israel.

Description: Barack Obama channeled Teddy Roosevelt this week in a speech in Osawatomie, Kan. Supporters are calling it the most significant economic speech of his administration. But critics rightly point out that the Teddy Roosevelt whom Obama invoked was not the beloved 26th president and standard-bearer of the GOP. Instead, it was the radicalized third-party candidate seeking a third term and the man whose progressivism was a precursor to the rise of big government in the later 20th century. What's more, President Obama's speech was so full of reckless accusations and misinformation that The Washington Post's Fact Checker blog gave it three Pinocchios, signifying "significant factual errors." President Obama has a history of comparing himself to American giants -- from Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan. So it's no surprise that he would choose to give his speech in the same town as Teddy Roosevelt's 1910 address. But whenever Obama invokes past heroes, he ends up looking smaller. And this week's speech was a prime example.

Description: President Obama's much-ballyhooed speech in Osawatomie, Kan., was his best effort to put a happy face on class warfare. Though some were elated, fantasizing that he might be getting his messianic mojo back, even his reliable cheerleaders recognize there's no substance beneath the hot air rising. Liberals get all dewy-eyed when Obama reverts to idealistic tones, as they are saps for perfect-world scenarios that never materialize. They love it when he co-opts history in service to their cause. So he traveled to Kansas seeking to identify with Teddy Roosevelt, the icon of rugged individualism, to lambast the evils of rugged individualism. Obama misdiagnosed the problems facing America, distorted the historical record, set up straw men to excoriate, and conflated history and principles, all to demonize his opponents, divert scrutiny from his record, and build support for his cause. He offered no concrete solutions, only low-minded platitudes, because everything he's tried has failed and he has nothing left to try. He views the national economy as a zero-sum game in which the success of some means the misery of others. He sees unequal distribution of income and wealth as a pervasive evil -- an evil caused by the most sinister of boogeymen: unregulated capitalism.

Description: Has Barack Obama's Democratic Party given up on winning the votes of the white working class? Thomas Edsall, the longtime Washington Post reporter now with The Huffington Post, thinks so. Surveying the plans of Democratic strategists, Edsall wrote in The New York Times on Nov. 28 that "all pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned." Of course, an Obama campaign spokesman issued a prompt denial. No campaign wants any groups of voters to know that it has written them off. But Edsall is plainly on to something. Obama campaign strategists have made it known that they are concentrating on states like Colorado and Virginia -- states with high percentages of college educated voters, young voters and minorities. Obama carried both these states in 2008, even though Republican presidential candidates had carried Virginia in every election and Colorado in all but one election between 1964 and 2004. Not all Democrats accept the Colorado/Virginia strategy. William Galston, a top domestic aide in the Clinton White House, has argued that the Obama campaign should concentrate on states like Ohio, with an older and more blue-collar population. Only one Democrat in the last century has won the presidency without carrying Ohio, Galston points out. If John Kerry had run just 2 points stronger there in 2004, he would have been elected president. And Ohio's demographics look a lot like those in Pennsylvania, which Obama carried by 10 points in 2004 but where he is now running behind in the polls.

Description: Herman Cain is out. He "suspended" his campaign for the Republican nomination for president this week after a fifth woman made allegations against him. This time, an Atlanta woman claims she had a 13-year-long affair with the former CEO. As with the four other women who made allegations of sexual harassment -- two still unidentified -- Cain denies ever having done "anything inappropriate." Then why quit the race? Quitting means five unmitigated liars -- not just unmitigated liars but, as Cain suggests, coordinated liars -- ran him out of Dodge. If the man who would be commander in chief abandons ship because a handful of liars said awful, unprovable things about him, the nation is better off without him trying to lead it. Cain, after all, marketed himself as a genial but tough, no-nonsense, bottom-line guy who overcame hardship unimaginable by most Americans. He was born and raised "po,'" -- too "po'" to be poor -- and promoted himself as a leader who defied the odds and fixed two failing businesses.

Description: Someday, when today's adults are old and gray, their grandchildren will sit down and ask, "What did you do in the class war?" You may not have noticed, but it seems we are in the midst of one. On this point, Republican candidates and officeholders are in agreement. Newt Gingrich accuses President Barack Obama of advocating "class warfare and bureaucratic socialism." Mitt Romney says he is trying "to divide America." Rick Santorum? "Class warfare." Michele Bachmann? Ditto. Now a hedge-fund manager has become a Fox News hero for writing the president a letter depicting him as the evil twin of Fidel Castro. Obama, charges Leon Cooperman of Omega Advisors, is engaging in "desperate demagoguery," treating the rich as a "selfish and unfeeling lot who must be subjugated by the force of the state," employing a strategy "that never ends well for anyone but totalitarians and anarchists." Maybe cold showers are in order. Obama, it's true, has proposed a small increase in tax rates on the wealthy, but nothing draconian by historical standards. His purportedly populous speech Tuesday in Osawatomie, Kan., had his usual quota of dubious data, blame for his predecessor and economic folly. Incendiary, however, it was not. His stress was not on punishing the rich or getting revenge on those who caused the financial crisis. It was about enlarging the middle class. His rhetoric consisted of lines like, "We're greater together than we are on our own" and "I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot."

Description: Wrapping himself in the mantle of Theodore Roosevelt's "National Greatness" agenda, President Obama urged the nation to stand strong and unite behind ... his umpteenth regulatory czar. Nothing symbolizes American strength and vigor more than another unaccountable Washington bureaucrat. If Richard Cordray, the stalled White House nominee to enforce the Dodd-Frank financial bureaucracy, is not approved, the wheedler-in-chief warned in Osawatomie, Kan.: "Every day we go without a consumer watchdog in place is another day when a student or a senior citizen or member of our Armed Forces could be tricked into a loan they can't afford -- something that happens all the time."

Description: In Teddy Roosevelt's era, President Barack Obama explained to the nation this week, "some people thought massive inequality and exploitation was just the price of progress. ... But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you want from whoever you can." And he's right. Even today there are people who believe they should have free license to take whatever they want from whomever they can. They're called Democrats.

Description: Do you see a problem with a law that authorizes indefinite military detention of anyone the president identifies as an enemy of the state? For President Obama, the problem is clear: The law does not give him enough discretion. Obama has threatened to veto the National Defense Authorization Act if the final version includes a provision approved by the Senate last week that requires military detention of some terrorism suspects. Obama, like his predecessor, wants the leeway to keep them in civilian custody and maybe even give them a trial, if he so chooses. Those of us who are not the president are apt to be more concerned about the unchecked power the bill gives him to lock us up and throw away the key. Defenders of the bill's detention provisions say they merely codify powers granted by the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that Congress approved after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But unlike the AUMF, Section 1031 of the National Defense Authorization Act explicitly "affirms" the legality of military detention "without trial." Furthermore, it says such treatment is permitted not only for "a person who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks" or who "harbored those responsible" (language that echoes the AUMF), but also for anyone who joins or supports al-Qaida, the Taliban or "associated forces" -- a much wider net.

Description: Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column titled "Free to Die" (9/15/2011), pointed out that back in 1980, his late fellow Nobel laureate Milton Friedman lent his voice to the nation's shift to the political right in his famous 10-part TV series, "Free To Choose." Nowadays, Krugman says, "'free to choose' has become 'free to die.'" He was referring to a GOP presidential debate in which Rep. Ron Paul was asked what should be done if a 30-year-old man who chose not to purchase health insurance found himself in need of six months of intensive care. Paul correctly, but politically incorrectly, replied, "That's what freedom is all about -- taking your own risks." CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer pressed his question further, asking whether "society should just let him die." The crowd erupted with cheers and shouts of "Yeah!", which led Krugman to conclude that "American politics is fundamentally about different moral visions." Professor Krugman is absolutely right; our nation is faced with a conflict of moral visions. Let's look at it.

Description: This past year, I started writing a health and fitness column through Creators.com, titled "C-Force." It is no surprise that in researching for that column, I've discovered repeat offenses of food and beverage tampering by the federal government. But arsenic in apple juice? Dr. Oz received significant flak when he reported in September that "some of the best-known brands of apple juice contain arsenic." Since then, however, Oz has been redeemed and his claims substantiated!

Description: Writing for the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, William Galston surveys the demographic and political landscape. He expresses alarm about President Obama's re-election chances. "If the election pitting Obama against the strongest potential Republican nominee, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, were held tomorrow, the president would probably lose." Romney is the strongest possible nominee, but, as Galston demonstrates, even with Obama's weaknesses, pitfalls await. In the first place, a year is a long time in politics. The unemployment rate could decline dramatically. Obama could do the smart thing and focus his re-election effort on the Midwestern states that have decided presidential contests for more than 50 years, or the Republicans could "commit creedal suicide by nominating a presidential candidate outside the mainstream or unqualified for the office."

Description: The joys of Christmas do not include coping with crowds at shopping malls or wracking your brains trying to figure out what to get as a gift for someone who already seems to have everything. Books are a way out of both situations. You don't even have to go to a bookstore, with books so readily available on-line. As for the person who seems to have everything, newly published books are among the things they probably don't always have.

Description: With Herman Cain's announcement that he was suspending his presidential campaign because of the charges of sexual harassment and of a 13-year affair, issues are raised that the country would do well to think through. The two most obvious are whether we should care about a politician's sexual life and how much the press should report about these matters. But there is a larger issue that needs to be addressed first: What does adultery tell us about a person? For many Americans, the answer is: "Pretty much all we need to know." This certainly seems to be the case with regard to presidential candidates. The view is expressed this way: "If he can't keep his vows to his wife, how can we trust him to keep his vows to his country?"

Description: Here are a couple of things to keep in mind about Newt Gingrich, as he leads in polls for the Republican presidential nomination nationally and in Iowa and South Carolina, and may be threatening Mitt Romney's lead in New Hampshire. One is that he is an autodidact. A second is that he has incredible perseverance. Autodidact is a fancy word for someone who is self-taught. Gingrich calls himself a historian and says his worldview was shaped at age 15 by viewing the bones at the ossuary at Verdun, site of the World War I battle. And he did earn a Ph.D. in history in 1971, with a dissertation on "Belgian Education Policy in the Congo: 1945-1960." But he hasn't pursued that or any other subject with scholarly rigor. Instead, in his voluminous writings and unusually lengthy speeches, you will find references to the futurist Alvin Tofler, to Olympic beach volleyball, to zoos and space exploration. You'll find management book lingo, salesmanship tips, offbeat and sometimes revealing facts and anecdotes. Gingrich started running for Congress as a teacher at West Georgia College, in a traditionally Democratic area where he had no local connections, in 1973. That was when Richard Nixon was president. Nelson Rockefeller was governor of New York, and Ronald Reagan governor of California. Both had supported tax increases and signed bills legalizing abortion. Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal were not yet in kindergarten.

Description: Five years ago last month, Milton Friedman died at age 94. To the very end, the Nobel Prize winning economist was astute, tireless and wonderfully avuncular. Thanks to the Internet, his commentaries on subjects ranging from greed, to slavery, to the Great Depression myth and many other topics, can be enjoyed forever. Of course, great thinkers have been recording their thoughts in books for millennia. And Friedman was no exception. But there's no denying the immediacy and intimacy of video. Wouldn't we have loved to click on Edmund Burke, Alexander Hamilton or Cicero and watch them talk about their ideas? If you do dip into the Friedman oeuvre, start with his exchange with Phil Donahue! Nothing would be easier than to invoke the great Friedman as the sage of limited government. He was certainly that. If he were commenting on America's current predicament, he would doubtless prescribe a radically smaller public sector. But Friedman poses challenges to conservatives as well as liberals. He opposed, for example, the war on drugs. That's right. Friedman was for legalization of all drugs, not just marijuana.

Description: Americans notoriously care little about foreign affairs, but this week's elections in Egypt deserve our attention. The Egyptian version of the so-called Arab Spring began as a popular uprising against long-term strongman Hosni Mubarak and promised greater liberty and freedom for the most populous Arab nation. But early returns from parliamentary elections in about a third of Egypt's provinces, including Cairo, suggest that Islamists will carry the day. The implications for peace in the Middle East are worrisome. The Muslim Brotherhood -- an outlawed group prior to the fall of Mubarak and long considered a terrorist organization -- has won a plurality of votes in the first round of voting. (Elections in the remaining provinces will take place in December and January.) What's more, candidates supported by the ultra-religious Salafi sect have won nearly 25 percent of the parliamentary seats so far, and it's likely that they'll join the Muslim Brotherhood to form a government. The Salafi winners in Egypt's elections are already talking about changing the banking system to conform to Islamic law (which forbids paying or charging interest), censoring art and entertainment, outlawing the sale of alcohol and restricting education for women. And since the Salafis will hold the balance of power, it's difficult to imagine that the Muslim Brotherhood will resist. Of course, the most immediate impact will fall on Egyptian women, whose rights will be curtailed by Islamic law, as well as on the 10 percent of the Egyptian population that is Christian. Inevitably, however, an Islamist government in Cairo will spell trouble for the United States and pose a grave danger to our ally, Israel.

Description: She's perfect. Miley Cyrus, Hollywood's perpetually half-dressed wild child with an insatiable appetite for attention, jumped in front of the Occupy Wall Street bandwagon this week. The young Disney mogul unveiled a YouTube anthem hailing the aimless, anti-capitalist protesters. Smells like opportunistic teen queen spirit. Like so much of the warmed-over, Big Labor-underwritten Occupy movement, Miley's musical tribute to its foot soldiers is a worn-out derivative remix. She took "Liberty Walk," a year-old single; spliced in video footage of union marchers carrying carbon-copy "TAKE BACK OUR DEMOCRACY" signs; tossed in random scenes of global discontent from London to China to San Diego to Salem, Oregon; slapped on a treacly dedication to "the thousands of people who are standing up for what they believe in" (like, whatever that is); stirred; auto-tuned; and released: "Sayin' goodbye to the people who tied you up/ It's a liberty walk, walk/ Feelin' your heart again/ Breathin' new oxygen/ It's a liberty walk, walk/ Free yourself, slam the door, not a prisoner anymore!"

Description: Instead of trying to govern, a matter about which I suppose we should be grateful, President Obama is once again galloping from fundraiser to fundraiser, straining to make the implausible case that the country needs his second term. In New York for three events -- in which he raked in $2 million from the very type of fat cats he daily condemns -- he pleaded with voters (Reuters' terminology, not mine) to be patient with him and to give him more time to fulfill his 2008 "hope and change" campaign promise. He told supporters: "After all that is happening in Washington, it may be tempting to believe that change may not be as possible as we thought. It has been three wrenching years for this country." I'll say. Well, I, for one, fault him not for failing to honor that promise, but for keeping it. We've had change, all right, and precisely the kind he had in mind. One can only imagine how much more change he would have effected if he'd had his way -- if democracy, as he has complained, weren't so "slow" and so "messy." Worse still, let's imagine how much more change he'd attempt if, God forbid, he were to purloin a second term. His words to the friendly audiences confirm what attentive observers already understand about his remaining ambitions. He said: "Every single thing that we care about is at stake in this next election. It's going to take more than a few years to meet the challenges that have been decades in the making." It would be one thing if Obama had been referring to the entitlement structure that the liberal establishment has imposed on Americans over the past half-century or more. But if entitlements were his concern, he wouldn't be single-handedly obstructing their structural reform. No, he's talking about the sluggish state of the economy, which absolutely wouldn't take even two years -- much less a decade -- to turn around if he would remove his socialist boot from its gasping throat.

Description: One question I sometimes have been asked in this presidential campaign goes something like this: Why does Mitt Romney sound so corny? Actually, phrasing it that way suggests the answer. "Corny" is a word you don't hear people say much any more. As you reach a certain age, you hear yourself uttering words or phrases that you realize no one else says anymore. The vernacular of your youth has passed into quiet obscurity. As it happens, I know something about Romney's youth, since he was three years behind me at the private boys school I attended in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. I still have trouble shaking my image of him as a 14-year-old boy, which he was when I graduated. Romney was popular at school in part because his father was the Republican candidate for governor that year and would be the first Republican to hold that office in 14 years. This was a school where the straw vote in the 1960 presidential election was Richard Nixon 92 percent, John Kennedy 8 percent. Academically, the school was a fast track, with some very good teachers and a lot of very smart boys. Romney was not at the top of his class, but apparently he did just fine.

Description: When Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., announced his intention not to seek re-election after a 32-year career, not one of the nightly news broadcast network anchors found time or space to mention either Frank's central role in the housing meltdown or his congressional reprimand. Not one. Similarly, an Associated Press article headlined, "Democratic Rep. Barney Frank Announces Retirement," mentioned the reprimand, but nada on Frank and the housing collapse. ABC called him "one of the most familiar, powerful and colorful characters on Capitol Hill." NBC said, "Among his legacies -- besides his legendary sharp tongue -- he was the first member of Congress to publicly acknowledge he was gay, back in 1987." In a nearly 30-paragraph press release -- uh, news article -- headlined, "Barney Frank, a Top Liberal, Won't Seek Re-election," The New York Times sanitized, purged and whitewashed. The "all the news that's fit to print" newspaper, America's most influential, left out a few things. Frank relentlessly defended Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the "government sponsored entities" at the center of the housing meltdown. National Review editorialized: "It is as a champion of a different kind of pay-for-play operation, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that the congressman did the most damage to the country." Economist Thomas Sowell wrote last year, "No one contributed more to the policies behind the housing boom and bust, which led to the economic disaster we are now in, than Congressman Barney Frank."

Description: "Put down the salt shaker and back away from the table. And don't even think about going for the chips." Those are lines you may hear on a TV police drama of the future, when the federal drive to curb salt consumption reaches cruising speed. Last year, the government's Institute of Medicine urged the Food and Drug Administration to "gradually step down the maximum amount of salt that can be added to foods, beverages, and meals." The FDA is listening. In September, it published a notice concerning issues "associated with the development of targets for sodium reduction in foods to promote reduction of excess sodium intake." It is currently focusing on voluntary steps to "promote gradual, achievable and sustainable reduction of sodium intake over time." But if it doesn't get its way, it may go beyond gentle encouragement. "Nothing is off the table," a spokesperson declared last year. Salt has always been prized as a culinary marvel -- perking up flavors, masking bitter elements and preventing spoilage. Soup without salt is excellent for nourishing your garden, but unfit to eat. Any number of dishes taste better with a dash or two.

Description: Benefiting from a hint from an article titled "Is Harry Potter Making You Poorer?", written by my colleague Dr. John Goodman, president of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, I've come up with an explanation and a way to end income inequality in America, possibly around the world. Joanne Rowling was a welfare mother in Edinburgh, Scotland. All that has changed. As the writer of the "Harry Potter" novels, having a net worth of $1 billion, she is the world's wealthiest author. More importantly, she's one of those dastardly 1-percenters condemned by the Occupy Wall Streeters and other leftists. How did Rowling become so wealthy and unequal to the rest of us? The entire blame for this social injustice lies at the feet of the world's children and their enabling parents. Rowling's wealth is a direct result of more than 500 million "Harry Potter" book sales and movie receipts grossing more than $5 billion. In other words, the millions of "99-percenters" who individually plunk down $8 or $9 to attend a "Harry Potter" movie, $15 to buy a "Harry Potter" novel or $30 to buy a "Harry Potter" Blu-ray Disc are directly responsible for contributing to income inequality and wealth concentration that economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman says "is incompatible with real democracy." In other words, Rowling is not responsible for income inequality; it's the people who purchase her works.

Description: Now that Newt Gingrich has become the latest in a series of Republican front-runners, he is getting the kinds of scrutiny and attacks that have done in other front-runners. One of the issues that have aroused concern among conservative Republicans is that of amnesty for illegal immigrants, especially after Gingrich said that it would not be "humane" to deport someone who has been living and working here for years. Let's go back to square one. The purpose of American immigration laws and policies is not to be either humane or inhumane to illegal immigrants. The purpose of immigration laws and policies is to serve the national interest of this country.

Description: While the nation was digesting its turkey dinner, Rep. Michelle Bachmann was seizing an opportunity to score points at Newt Gingrich's expense. Suggesting that his position on illegal immigration amounts to "amnesty," Bachmann predicted that the GOP electorate would "come home" to the person who has been the most "consistent conservative." That would be, she offers, herself. The voters may not agree with her solution, but many in the GOP do seem to be looking for a -- forgive the expression -- "thrill down the leg" candidate to take on Obama in the general election. Thus, the seismic spikes for Bachmann, Perry, Cain and even, briefly, Trump. It is now, apparently, Newt Gingrich's turn in what Brit Hume called "the single most dangerous place to be in American politics, which is the non-Romney leader in the Republican field."

Description: The governor of Oregon, John Kitzhaber, announced last week that he would not allow any more executions in his state during his time in office. Kitzhaber, a Democrat, gave five reasons for his decision. My response follows each one. 1. "I refuse to be part of this compromised and inequitable system any longer." This has become one of the most frequently offered reasons for objecting to capital punishment -- that because the system is not equitable, no murderer should be put to death.

Description: The GOP presidential nomination process is a roller-coaster ride -- sometimes uplifting, other times discouraging, but we press forward. President Obama and his agenda are unspeakably disastrous for the nation, so this election matters more than any in my lifetime. The national debt clock is ticking faster than Obama's heart beats for big government, and his re-election would guarantee virtual national bankruptcy. That's why the grass-roots tea party phenomenon sprouted, and it's why there is so much scrutiny of the GOP candidates.

Description: As we approach the festive season -- the elongated, enchanting month from Thanksgiving through Christmas to New Years -- my mind has been drifting through various memorable past holidays. Some have been personal -- the last one with my father before he died. But one that stands out for historic reasons was Christmas 1991. It was precisely on Dec. 25, 1991 -- 20 years ago next month -- that the Soviet Union expired. Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his office, and the godless Soviet Union formally ended its existence. On that Christmas Day -- of all days --mankind was given the gift of deliverance from the half-century-long threat of nuclear annihilation. Mankind had never been more than one human misjudgment away from the unthinkable. It seemed a miracle that for all the human blundering, the crass politics of the world, the trillions of dollars spent on nuclear weapons -- we had come out the other side untouched by the long-dreaded nuclear flame. But after expressing my heartfelt gratitude for the deliverance from such an evil, I remember thinking that it was a pity that from then on history and politics would be so boring -- not that I was complaining.

Description: Our government has the time to worry about school lunch menus in Boise, Idaho, but the Senate hasn't found the time to pass a budget in Washington, D.C., in nearly three years. H.L. Mencken famously wrote that every decent man is ashamed of his government. This one gives you little choice. Gridlock is ordinarily the most constructive and moral form of government, but with entitlement programs on autopilot self-destruct, we're in trouble. So Americans turned their weary eyes toward a dream team, a supercommittee, a 12-member panel of our brightest lights, charged with identifying a measly $1.2 trillion in deficit savings over 10 years. Save us.

Description: Clearly what we need is a super-duper committee. Instead of six Republicans and six Democrats, it will have three members from each party, and its deficit reduction plan will go directly to the president for his signature, bypassing Congress entirely. This time for sure! The recurrent fantasy that Congress can delegate difficult fiscal decisions to an autonomous body -- whether a commission or, as in the case of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, a subset of itself -- speaks volumes about the abysmal failure of our elected representatives to do the work they were hired to do. Now that the latest attempt to reassign the power of the purse has collapsed in ignominy, it hardly seems likely that Congress will rise to the task, especially since it has not managed to pass an actual budget (as opposed to continuing resolutions) in more than two and a half years.

Description: On March 5, my 18-year-old cousin disappeared from her University of Washington campus in Seattle. Marizela Perez -- 5-foot-5, 110 pounds, short black hair with brown/red highlights and bangs cut into an asymmetrical bob, wearing a dark hooded jacket, jeans and light brown suede boots -- was last seen at a Safeway grocery that fateful Saturday afternoon. Marizela walked out the door and up Brooklyn Ave., and hasn't been seen or heard from since.

Description: Thomas Edison invented the incandescent bulb, the phonograph, the DC motor and other items in everyday use and became wealthy by doing so. Thomas Watson founded IBM and became rich through his company's contribution to the computation revolution. Lloyd Conover, while in the employ of Pfizer, created the antibiotic tetracycline. Though Edison, Watson, Conover and Pfizer became wealthy, whatever wealth they received pales in comparison with the extraordinary benefits received by ordinary people. Billions of people benefited from safe and efficient lighting. Billions more were the ultimate beneficiaries of the computer, and untold billions benefited from healthier lives gained from access to tetracycline. President Barack Obama, in stoking up class warfare, said, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money." This is lunacy. Andrew Carnegie's steel empire produced the raw materials that built the physical infrastructure of the United States. Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft and produced software products that aided the computer revolution. But Carnegie had amassed quite a fortune long before he built Carnegie Steel Co., and Gates had quite a fortune by 1990. Had they the mind of our president, we would have lost much of their contributions, because they had already "made enough money."

Description: "Alice in Wonderland" was written by a professor who also wrote a book on symbolic logic. So it is not surprising that Alice encountered not only strange behavior in Wonderland, but also strange and illogical reasoning -- of a sort too often found in the real world, and which a logician would be very much aware of. If Alice could visit the world of liberal rhetoric and assumptions today, she might find similarly illogical and bizarre thinking. But people suffering in the current economy might not find it nearly as entertaining as "Alice in Wonderland."

Description: The initial shock of the child abuse scandal at Penn State was disturbing enough, but what came later may have been even more so. That Joe Paterno, other coaches and members of the administration failed in a straightforward, utterly uncomplicated moral task -- to protect defenseless children from rape -- is almost mind numbing. No weighing of competing interests or complex variables was required. On one hand, you had children being abused and, on the other, the reputation of a hugely profitable football program. They chose the football program!

Description: President Obama's cheerleaders are starting to peel away along with his approval ratings, and it's a fascinating sight to behold. They offer different reasons, but they all boil down to one obvious thing -- Obama is first and foremost about Obama -- and one less obvious: He has been a failed president. Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen, admittedly more centrist than most of their Democratic counterparts, penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal urging Obama "to abandon his candidacy for re-election." The authors conclude that the only way Obama could possibly win in 2012 would be "to wage the most negative campaign in history," because he has no successful record to run on. If he would happen to win in that way, he wouldn't be able to govern, they say, so he should step aside and allow Hillary Clinton to run.

Description: Last week, I discussed how Occupy protesters are being directly aided by the mainstream media and indirectly aided by White House stimulus money, as well as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's and even Vice President Joe Biden's households. I also detailed how the mainstream media are accelerating their progressive blitz not only to hasten the second coming, or election, of President Barack Obama but also to help him and other progressives in reaching their final goal of "fundamentally transforming the United States of America." I believe the MSM are also bent to coronate a particular GOP candidate whom they feel could be beaten most easily by Obama. I believe that candidate is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, for the sole fact that the powers behind the MSM believe his presidential run would fracture the Republican Party and cause a third-party candidate to run, dividing the conservative vote, just as Ross Perot did in 1992 and 1996.

Description: The election of Barack Obama, we were told, would bring new respect and friendship for America in the world. No longer would we be led by a Texas cowboy ignorant of and indifferent to world opinion. Instead, we would have a visionary leader sympathetic to the governments and peoples of the world. But Obama's best moments in foreign policy have been when he follows the leads of predecessors. In his twice-postponed trip to Australia this week, he will reportedly announce that a U.S. Navy base will be opened there. That cements ties already strengthened by George W. Bush and previous presidents to the one nation in the world that has fought alongside the United States in every war in the last century. But domestic politics can trump foreign policy for Obama. He cancelled previous Australian trips to lobby the House to pass Obamacare and to respond to the Gulf oil spill. Closer to home, crassly political ploys have angered the governments and peoples of our two geographical neighbors, Mexico and Canada. Only domestic politics can explain two of the Obama administration's most controversial moves: exporting illegal guns to Mexico and balking at building an oil pipeline from Canada. The export of guns to Mexico was the whole point of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms' Operation Fast and Furious. Why ever would our government do such a thing? Conservative commentators have argued that the administration wanted to use evidence of deaths caused by guns illegally exported from the U.S. to spur demands for gun control laws here. Democratic leaders have done that before. In 2009, Obama claimed that "more than 90 percent of guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States." That claim was echoed by Hillary Clinton and Sens. Dick Durbin and Dianne Feinstein.

Description: I just interviewed MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews about his new book, "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero." You know things didn't go well when, a few minutes after the interview concludes, Matthews' booker emails my producer: "I wish you would've let me know that Larry was planning on attacking Chris. Chris is always up for a good, healthy debate, but that was really not professional or cool." To which my talented, hardworking producer, Jason Rose, responded: "Larry addressed historical accounts directly related to the subject matter of Mr. Matthews' book. Larry doesn't agree with the one-sidedness of the book's portrayal of JFK. "Mr. Matthews refused to address Larry's issue with the book. He refused to debate. Larry made no personal attacks on Mr. Matthews, but tried to address the book's shortcomings. Given Mr. Matthew's typical on-air demeanor and style, Larry felt that a spirited debate would be more than manageable by Mr. Matthews." Matthews' book ends in 1989 -- as the Berlin Wall came crashing down: "The Iron Curtain was being ripped aside. Communism was in its death throes. The Cold War was ending without the nuclear war we so feared. We had gotten through it alive, those of us who once hid under those little desks of ours. "Thanks to him, I'd say. He'd come a long way from the kid who caused trouble at boarding school, from being Joe Kennedy's son. In the time of our greatest peril, at the moment of ultimate judgment, an American president kept us from the brink, saved us really, kept the smile from being stricken from the planet. "He did that. He, Jack Kennedy."

Description: Republican voters' esteem for Newt Gingrich has been rising fast. At this rate it might someday equal, though not surpass, his regard for himself. Gingrich is not a person with an ego. He's an ego with a person. Just listen to his explanation of why it took him a while to catch on with voters: "Because I am much like Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, I'm such an unconventional political figure that you really need to design a unique campaign that fits the way I operate and what I'm trying to do." Other GOP candidates sound like they are merely campaigning for office. Gingrich, however, hurls verbal thunderbolts like Zeus, as the lights flicker and the earth shakes. Hopelessly in love with the sound of his own voice, he exhibits a stern, overbearing self-assurance that gives his pronouncements weight even when he is uttering nonsense. In a debate last week, the former House speaker was asked a simple question: What measures would he adopt after repealing President Barack Obama's health care plan? After ridiculing the question and trying repeatedly to evade it, he gave his answer: "One, you go back to a doctor-patient relationship and you involve the family in those periods where the patient by themselves can't make key decisions. But you re-localize it. Two, as several people said, including Gov. Perry, you put Medicaid back at the state level...

Description: Is not doing something the same as doing it, and should government be allowed to force you not to do the thing you're already not doing by making you do it so you don't not do it anymore? That is just one of the perplexing legal questions the Supreme Court will likely find a way to say "yes" to in July after it wrestles with the constitutionality of Obamacare. Once the court upholds the individual mandate -- a provision that allows politicians to coerce citizens to purchase products in private markets (or, in this case, state-backed monopolies) -- we will have precedent that puts few limits on the reach of Washington and crony capitalism. And beyond policy, Obamacare demonstrated why we should be cynical about government.

Description: What do you get when you mix Democratic fat-cat donations, Big Labor favors, pharmaceutical lobbying and Beltway business as usual? Answer: another toxic half-billion-dollar Barack Obama-approved crony deal. Move over, Solyndra. Here comes Siga-Gate. This latest Chicago-style payoff on your dime involves a dubious smallpox drug backed by a liberal billionaire investor, along with a former union boss who was one of the White House's most frequent visitors. They're the "1 percent" with 100 percent immunity from the selectively outraged Occupier mobs that purport to oppose partisan government bailouts and handouts to privileged corporations.

Description: A just released book, "Bowing to Beijing" by Brett M. Decker and William C. Triplett II, will change forever the way you think about China -- even if, like me, you already have the deepest worries about the Chinese threat. As I opened the book, I was expecting to find many useful examples of Chinese military and industrial efforts to get the better of the United States and the West. Indeed, there are 100 pages of examples of the most remorseless Chinese successes at stealing the military and industrial secrets of the West and converting them into a growing menace -- soon to be a leviathan -- bent on domination and defeat of America. The authors itemize the sheer, unprecedented magnitude of this effort. But the opening chapters dealt with human rights abuses, and my first thought as I started reading was that I wanted to get right to the military and industrial examples.

Description: A couple of months ago, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Beth Brinkmann was standing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, defending the federal law requiring Americans to buy government-approved health insurance, when Judge Laurence Silberman asked her about broccoli. Specifically, he wanted to know whether a law requiring Americans to buy broccoli would exceed the federal government's authority to regulate interstate commerce. "No," Brinkmann said. "It depends," she added. Silberman evidently was troubled by that shifty answer. Last week, he expressed "discomfort with the government's failure to advance any clear doctrinal principles limiting congressional mandates that any American purchase any product or service in interstate commerce." Oddly, he voiced that concern in the context of a majority opinion upholding the health insurance mandate. Dissenting Judge Brett Kavanaugh congratulated the majority for its candor in "admitting that there is no real limiting principle to its Commerce Clause holding."

Description: As the debates accumulate, it becomes more and more evident that Newt Gingrich's intellect, experience, articulateness and depth of knowledge elevate him to the top of the field. Anyone should be happy to pay admission to watch him duel with Obama in debate. Newt's not as charismatic as Cain or as smooth as Romney, but boy, does he have a brain! Ever since the election campaign started, Newt has always gotten in his own way. Now he has graciously stepped aside and let his creativity and intellect shine through.

Description: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that a good catch phrase could stop thinking for 50 years. One of the often-repeated catch phrases of our time -- "It's the economy, stupid!" -- has already stopped thinking in some quarters for a couple of decades. There is no question that the state of the economy can affect elections. But there is also no iron law that all elections will be decided by the state of the economy.

Description: President Obama's various remarks at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO business summit in Honolulu over the weekend show he is simply incapable of growing in office. In just a few short statements, we saw many of the familiar practices through which he has alienated such a large percentage of the American people and damaged the economy. Away from his teleprompter, he treated us to further insults of Americans, his unfriendly attitude toward business and the private sector, his narcissism, and his refusal to accept responsibility for his own actions.

Description: "The Little Cellist" is a brightly colored, chipper website aimed at children. There, you can find clips of Julian Lloyd Webber playing "The Swan" from "Carnival of the Animals" by Camille Saint-Sa?ns, as well as quizzes, links to orchestra websites and assorted games for budding musicians. Being past the mid-century mark, I am decades past being a "little" -- in the sense of young -- anything. Yet, here I am, a middle-aged but eager and diligent beginner, sawing away on the cello. The optimists say it's never too late. I mean to find out if that's true. When I say, "sawing," that may be too kind to the sounds I've coaxed from this noble instrument in the first few weeks. My husband said he ducked, expecting a huge dragonfly to dive bomb him. My indulgent family endured more repetitions of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" than non-convicts should be expected to hear. But they bore it like men -- as well they should (at least the offspring among them) considering the hours -- no, years! -- I've devoted to their lessons, rehearsals, auditions and practice, practice, practice.