Columns

Like cult members awaking to find their leader swigging gin and squirreling money into a Swiss bank account, liberals are rubbing their eyes in disbelief at President Obama's behavior. The figure they worshiped so fervently and for so long is now revealed to be a "sexist" -- at least according to National Organization for Women President Terry O'Neill.

Controversies about "free-range parenting" illuminate today's scarred cultural landscape. Neighbors summon police in response to parenting choices the neighbors disapprove. Government extends its incompetence with an ever-broader mission of "child protection." And these phenomena are related to campus hysteria about protecting infantilized undergraduates from various menaces, including uncongenial ideas.

WASHINGTON -- It is nearly axiomatic that presidential contests tend to shine a harsh light on conservative Christians -- inasmuch as they are viewed as the Republican Party's base and are, therefore, deemed fair game.

David Cameron is the most successful Tory Party leader since Margaret Thatcher.Yet history may also record that his success led to the crackup of his country, and Great Britain's secession from the European Union.

In virtually every state where reformers are trying to give children especially poor, minority children a better chance in life, the Education Blob is vigorously opposing that goal.

At exactly the time I should have been paying the closest attention, Florida was suffering probably the biggest environmental disaster in its history.

WASHINGTON -- We often wonder how people of the past, including the most revered and refined, could have universally engaged in conduct now considered unconscionable. Such as slavery. How could the founders, so sublimely devoted to human liberty, have lived with -- some participating in -- human slavery? Or fourscore years later, how could the saintly Lincoln, an implacable opponent of slavery, have nevertheless spoken of and believed in African inferiority?

Skeptics about democracy in the 18th and 19th centuries argued that the enfranchised masses would use their votes to seize the property of the relatively few rich. What could be more natural?

In the first quarter of 2015, in the sixth year of the historic Obama recovery, the U.S. economy grew by two-tenths of 1 percent.And that probably sugarcoats it.For trade deficits subtract from the growth of GDP, and the U.S. trade deficit that just came in was a monster.

America's smallest state -- one Nevada county is nearly eight times larger -- has the longest name: In a 2010 referendum, voters kept the official title, State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.The state also has a dark-horse presidential candidate who is the only Democratic candidate so far who can shoe a horse. "Put a blacksmith in the White House" could be Lincoln Chafee's slogan.

Its interesting to see the volume of newspaper stories recently proclaiming that the world has turned on its head as a result of the Florida House going home early.

Comments about recent events in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray provide a glimpse at perhaps one of our greatest challenges -- perception.

Who killed Freddie Gray? According to Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby, Freddie was murdered in a conspiracy of six cops who imprisoned him in a police van and there assaulted and killed him.

WASHINGTON -- The life of the wife of a presidential candidate can sometimes be like the government. Taxing.

SPEAKER'S UPDATE: "The Supreme Court issued a ruling just now that denied the motion by the Florida Senate Democrats to force the Florida House of Representatives to return to Tallahassee after our sine die adjournment. Accordingly, you will not need to return to Tallahassee until the Special Session for the budget is called."