Posts By Author » Cal Thomas

Detroit’s decline
14 Mar 2013 12:03 am

Since the Motown sound went silent — except on oldies stations — and General Motors and Chrysler (but not Ford) required life support from Washington, there has been little to recommend Detroit, Mich., to visitors, much less its residents.
The recent conviction of Kwame Kilpatrick, the former mayor of Detroit, on multiple charges, including racketeering, fraud and extortion, adds another insult to the city’s injury, increasing its misery.
During the mid-20th century, Detroit was a vibrant city with a population of almost 2 million. Today, it stands near ruin. The number of …

The sound of inevitability
12 Mar 2013 12:02 am

Given his track record on marital fidelity, former President Bill Clinton is not the person I would consult about “committed, loving relationships.” Clinton used those words in a Washington Post op-ed last week, urging the Supreme Court to overturn the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman, which he signed into law.
In his column, Clinton said that 1996 “was a very different time.” No state recognized same-sex marriage and supporters of DOMA “believed that its passage ‘would diffuse …

Sequesterville
7 Mar 2013 12:03 am

The Broadway musical “Annie” is enjoying another revival on Broadway. The show opened during the Carter administration when America was in need of some optimism. “The sun’ll come out tomorrow,” sang Annie, and with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, for a while, it did.
Now we’re back in “Hooverville,” the name given to shanty towns that popped up during the Great Depression. It isn’t that bad yet, though the Obama administration is forecasting gloom and doom if Republicans don’t cave on another tax increase.
“We’d like to thank you Herbert …

Ryan’s hope
28 Feb 2013 12:03 am

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is looking beyond Friday and the beginning of the sequestration.
In an interview I conducted with him on Capitol Hill Tuesday, Ryan told me he believes a majority of Americans will come to understand how bad the debt is after the rhetoric gives way to reality.
“Mitt (Romney) and I shadowboxed against the theory of big government,” he says, “while (President) Obama made all the great promises of what it delivered and used soaring rhetoric to sell it, but that will be different in a …

Gov. Scott to voters: Never mind
26 Feb 2013 12:02 am

ORLANDO, Fla. — Gov. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) was one of those tea party stars whom voters believed had the courage of his convictions when he promised, as recently as last summer, to block The Affordable Care Act in his state. But last week, writes the Orlando Sentinel, “Scott made an abrupt about-face, embracing a three-year expansion of Medicaid coverage for about 1 million low-income Floridians that will be paid for by the health care law.”
Scott said, “I think this is a common-sense solution to dealing with this for the next …

Extortionist in chief
21 Feb 2013 12:03 am

At the end of 1995 and stretching into January 1996, the federal government “shut down” because of an impasse between President Bill Clinton and House Republicans led by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The issue was increased taxes vs. less spending. Sound familiar? The government re-opened when a bipartisan agreement was reached to balance the budget by 2003. It wasn’t for reasons that included, but were not limited to, two wars. Now the national debt is racing toward an unsustainable $17 trillion.
This time around it isn’t about closing government. It’s about …

The double threats
19 Feb 2013 12:02 am

Just as Lenin’s body remains on public display in Russia, because one never knows when he might be useful to rally the masses, so, too, does the ghost (but thankfully not the body) of the late Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) remain a useful symbol for Democrats in Washington.
Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) are the latest to summon McCarthy’s ghost. After Sen. Ted Cruz, (R-Texas), asked defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel whether he had been compensated by foreign interests hostile to the United States for speeches he made in …

Recycling old and failed ideas
14 Feb 2013 12:03 am

President Obama’s approach to so-called “climate change” appears to include recycling old ideas.
In his State of the Union address, the president recycled the idea of spending more on education, though we are still getting unsatisfactory results. A fact he inadvertently acknowledged by saying we’re not keeping up with other countries in science and math. He maintained there are tens of thousands of jobs available but companies can’t fill them because public schools aren’t teaching students what they need to know. We spend huge sums on education already, so money and …

Let us prey
12 Feb 2013 12:02 am

Our politics have become so polarized and corrupted that a president of the United States cannot even attend an event devoted to drawing people closer to God and bridge partisan and cultural divides without being lectured about his policies.
Last Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., Dr. Ben Carson, director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and a 2008 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, broke with a 61-year-old tradition and publicly disagreed with some of the president’s policies, such as “Obamacare,” taxation and …

Drone double standard
7 Feb 2013 12:03 am

An unsigned and undated Justice Department white paper, obtained by NBC News, reports The New York Times, “…is the most detailed analysis yet to come into public view regarding the Obama legal team’s views about the lawfulness of killing, without a trial, an American citizen who executive branch officials decide is an operational leader of Al Qaeda or one of its allies.”
The proviso is they must pose “an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States.” If “an informed, high-level official” of the government decides they are a threat, …

Government shouldn’t define ‘church’
5 Feb 2013 12:02 am

Under pressure from religious and conservative groups, the Obama administration has offered another compromise on the issue of birth control coverage within the Affordable Care Act. While exempting churches and some religiously affiliated institutions, such as hospitals and universities, from supplying the coverage, the new proposal calls for their employees to receive stand-alone private insurance policies providing birth control coverage at no cost. Insurance companies will foot the bill, but only the naive can possibly think the cost won’t find its way back to the institution in the form of …

’60 Minutes” missed opportunity
31 Jan 2013 12:03 am

In the days of the late Mike Wallace, “60 Minutes” was known for hard-hitting, aggressive journalism that asked the questions viewers wanted answered and held the powerful accountable.
The Jan. 27 program on which Steve Kroft interviewed President Obama (at his request, no less) and outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fell far short of that high standard. It was the kind of softball toss you might have expected if Oprah Winfrey or Barbara Walters had conducted the interview.
The president said of Clinton, “…a lot of the successes we’ve had internationally …

Big government 2.0
24 Jan 2013 12:03 am

Bill Clinton isn’t often wrong when it comes to politics, but his assertion in his 1996 State of the Union Address that “the era of big government is over” was a bit premature. In light of President Obama’s Second Inaugural Address, the era of big government has just begun.
The reliably liberal columnist Dana Milbank of The Washington Post exhibited refreshing honesty when he wrote of Obama’s speech, “…it failed to rise to the moment.”
The president’s address was more campaign rhetoric than visionary. He even lowered himself to reference Mitt Romney’s …

Roe v. Wade at 40
23 Jan 2013 12:02 am

At last week’s signing of “executive actions” designed to combat gun violence in America, President Obama, flanked by schoolchildren, said, “…when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable among us, we must act now.”
There’s no doubt that children, especially schoolchildren, are vulnerable to all kinds of threats, but are they “the most vulnerable,” as the president claimed, or is there another category of human life that qualifies for that designation?
Forty years after a Supreme Court majority opened the door to legalized abortion, the number of aborted babies has reached roughly …

The man
22 Jan 2013 12:02 am

Baseball great Stan Musial died over the weekend. He was 92.
In September 2007, I was invited to make a speech to a civic group in St. Louis. I told the person who invited me I would come on one condition: that I could meet Stan Musial.
“That’s no problem,” he said. “We are members of the same sports club.”
I forget what I said in the speech — and the audience probably has long forgotten, too, — but I will always remember having lunch with Stan Musial.
Stan regaled me with baseball stories.
I …

An imperial president
17 Jan 2013 12:02 am

One definition of “imperial” on dictionary.com is, “of the nature or rank of an emperor or supreme ruler.”
At his news conference Monday, a petulant, threatening and confrontational President Obama spoke like an emperor or supreme ruler. All that was missing was a scepter, a crown and a robe trimmed in ermine.
This president exceeds even Bill Clinton in his ability to evade, prevaricate and dissemble. I didn’t think that possible.
Not only did he supply long answers to relatively easy questions, but much of what he said bore no relation to reality.
He spoke of …

Control politicians, not guns
15 Jan 2013 12:03 am

If laws were enough to deter criminal behavior prisons would be empty.
The latest effort to “control” guns in America is as likely to deter someone intent on breaking the law as outlawing lust would affect one’s libido. What’s in a heart can’t be controlled by restricting what’s in a hand.
Following the Newtown tragedy, President Obama vowed to seek the passage of an assault weapons ban and hastily assembled an administration-wide gun control task force, an effort that amounts to little more than a political act designed to impress what Rush …

Hagel and defense
10 Jan 2013 12:08 am

Biography isn’t policy. President Obama’s choice for secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel, former Nebraska Republican senator, has a resume most politicians can envy: a clean senatorial record, no ethical lapses and two purple hearts from a war many opposed and many more tried to avoid.
Some think Hagel’s 2006 comment about “the Jewish lobby” should disqualify him, believing it a code word for anti-Semitic sentiments. There is nothing wrong with criticizing the policies of any Israeli government. Israelis likely do this more than foreigners. It’s just that Jews are rightly sensitive …

Female vs. male senators
8 Jan 2013 12:02 am

As the son of a woman, the husband of a woman and the father of daughters and granddaughters, I celebrate the record number of females who are now United States senators. However, I do see some differences in the way these and other women are treated, depending on their party, policies and beliefs.
Diane Sawyer broadcast a celebratory report last week on ABC’s “World News Tonight” on which she gushed about the “record number” of 20 female senators. Senator Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., also praised the Senate female population. Senator Barbara Boxer, …

More of the same
3 Jan 2013 12:03 am

Everything that everyone loathes about Washington was present in the “fiscal cliff” bill just passed by Congress. It is 153 pages long; most members probably hadn’t read all of it before voting on it; it was delivered in the middle of the night; it was loaded with pork — the mother’s milk (to mix a metaphor) of politicians — and while the country is already swamped with massive debt, it contains massive giveaways to satisfy interest groups and campaign contributors. Did I mention the bill raises taxes on top of …

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