Recent Viewpoints

If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, how difficult would it be for him to be elected president? To understand the challenge, it is worth looking at the electoral map. Any Republican nominee faces some significant challenges. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to be elected president. Hillary Clinton starts with a significant advantage since there are 18 states and the District of Columbia that have voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1988. They are New England states (except…

Columnist Cal Thomas says he was going to write a column about how the Republican presidential campaign has become gutter politics. But given the comments from Donald Trump and others, he felt that the gutter would be a step up. The political campaign has descended into the sewer. It is possible that the name-calling and character assassination will diminish as Donald Trump gains more delegates and is no longer facing a challenge from the few remaining candidates. But that doesn’t…

The current vacancy on the Supreme Court highlights the ongoing debate about how to properly interpret the Constitution. The late Justice Antonin Scalia wanted the high court to interpret the Constitution the original way the founders intended. An originalist would argue that words have a distinct meaning and are written to convey that meaning to any generation. Likewise, the Constitution was written to communicate a particular meaning yesterday and that still applies today and will apply in the future. An…

One of the many proposals that Donald Trump has made on the campaign trail is to change the libel laws in America. He wants to make it easier for him to sue papers like the New York Times when editors or columnists write something about him that he believes is false. I can certainly understand why he and many other Americans would want to make it easier to sue reporters and columnists for libel. I can think back to many…

For the first time in nearly three decades, the Supreme Court began its session without Justice Antoin Scalia. He will be sorely missed for many important reasons, including his consistent adherence to and strong articulation of the true role of the Court, not in enacting someone’s preference, but in carefully interpreting the law as it is written In 1973, seven Supreme Court justices substituted their own views on abortion for the laws on the books in most states. They somehow…

America is in the midst of a heroin epidemic. Last month the National Governors Association accepted a proposal to establish guidelines on prescribing the painkillers that are abused and often lead to heroin abuse. If that sounds like a backward way to deal with heroin addiction, consider these facts. According to a New York Times article, 75 percent of heroin addicts used these prescription painkillers before turning to heroin. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control reports that 45 percent…

Out on the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton has been talking about the significant wage gap between corporate CEO salaries and the average American worker. Her comparisons are not only inaccurate, but they are a bit hypocritical. When you live in a glass house, you shouldn’t throw rocks. First, let’s look at Hillary Clinton’s claim that corporate CEOs earn 300 times more than their workers. University of Michigan professor Mark Perry did some fact checking. He found that the average CEO…

Who would have predicted that the question about WMDs in Iraq would surface in both the Republican and Democratic presidential debates? It is worth addressing since it has become an issue and since there are young voters who either were not around then or were not old enough to participate in the discussion and debate that took place. John Hawkins put together a short column on the subject to remind those of us who may have forgotten some of the…

Democrats have been trying to make the case that the Republican leadership in the U.S. Senate should immediately hold hearings so that they can confirm another justice to the Supreme Court. Their arguments would be more convincing if it weren’t for the fact that their previous actions contradict what they are now saying. You can watch the video of Senator Joe Biden arguing in 1992 that the Senate Judiciary Committee should not schedule confirmation hearings on any nomination by President…

At a recent ceremony at United Nations headquarters, six new postage stamps were unveiled. They were created by UN artist Sergio Baradat and are meant to elevate homosexuality, transsexuality and gay parenting. The stamps are very colorful and done in a sort of geometric art deco style. One depicts a male couple embracing and kissing; another a female couple doing the same. One shows a same sex couple carrying a little girl on their shoulders. Another shows a person coming…

More and more states are passing voter ID laws, in part because of undercover videos that show how easy it is to compromise the voting process. That was the case four years ago when James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas team showed how easy it was to commit voter fraud in various state elections. Since then, the New Hampshire legislature passed a bill mandating that voters show some form of identification. Many types of IDs are acceptable. But even if…