Columns

Throughout the last third of George W. Bush's presidency, opinion leaders were obsessed with the question of mistakes. Among most members of the press and among Democratic officeholders (even, or perhaps especially, those who voted to approve the Iraq War), the appetite was strong to hold President Bush in a half nelson until he admitted that the war had been a terrible mistake. When Jeb Bush entered the presidential race, he was quickly charged with fraternal guilt in the matter.

Lawmakers, if you want to add something to a student's learning experience, have at it. Not many people I know are going to hassle you for that. 

Businessman Donald Trump, wind at his back, is headed to the Sunshine State later this week. He continues to take the fight to former Gov. Jeb Bush and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio in their own backyard. 

WASHINGTON -- Tell me: What's a suicide bomber doing with a passport? He's not going anywhere. And, though I'm not a religious scholar, I doubt that a passport is required in paradise for a martyr to access his 72 black-eyed virgins.

Conservatives talk a lot about American exceptionalism. So do I. It's what we're all about. But if ever there was a time to show we mean what we say -- that our values, our principles, our way of life -- soar above the ways of freedom's enemies, then it's right now, right here, embedded in our acceptance of 10,000 Syrian refugees to America's shores.

Random thoughts on the passing scene: Some financial institutions may be considered "too big to fail," but contemporary Western society may be too frivolous to survive. The Romans had bread and circuses to keep the masses passive and unthinking. We have electronic gadgets, drugs and pornography. Like the Roman Empire, we too may decline and fall. What happened in Paris may be just the beginning.

After seven years of media adoration, President Obama was stunned and prickly. At a press conference in Antalya, Turkey, American reporters kept asking him why he was declaring his anti-ISIS strategy was working, when clearly it isn't. NBC's Chuck Todd found Obama "extremely defensive and almost not yet realizing that many of the reporters in that room, they're channeling the public in this case."

The blood of the‭ ‬129‭ ‬victims in the Paris attack is on‭ ‬President Barack Obama’s hands and is a direct result of his failed policies in Iraq.

There was a painful irony when France's immediate response to the terrorist attacks in Paris was to close the borders. If they had closed the borders decades ago, they might have avoided this attack.

When Martin County Commissioner Sarah Heard voted two years ago not to fund a DNA study of the pollutants in the St. Lucie River by Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute's Brian Lapointe, we were somewhat surprised at her dissent … but our most environmentally concerned citizens trusted her.

WASHINGTON -- Yale's president, Peter Salovey, dealt with the Crisis of the Distressing Email about Hypothetical Halloween Costumes about as you would expect from someone who has risen to eminence in today's academia. He seems to be the kind of adult who has helped produce the kind of students who are such delicate snowflakes that they melt at the mere mention of even a potential abrasion of their sensibilities.

Friday's deadly terrorist attacks in Paris dramatically changed the tenor of the Sunshine Summit finale in Orlando Saturday and shifted a large part of the focus of CBS' Democratic presidential debate later that night. 

DES MOINES, Iowa -- You can't drive far in these parts without seeing Ben Carson on a billboard, looking more like a man of the cloth than of the operating room.

Maybe, finally, this will be the year conservative standard-bearers grow a backbone and campaign for repeal of the renewable fuel standard -- that is, prefer their principles to corn-based votes.

Tuesday night's Fox Business/Wall Street Journal debate in Milwaukee provided clues as to why Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have been climbing, not by wide margins but perceptibly, into the top-polling positions of the candidates behind the two poll leaders, Donald Trump and Ben Carson.