When the Union was fighting to preserve itself in the Civil War, the France of Napoleon III moved troops into Mexico, overthrew the regime of Benito Juarez, set up a monarchy and put Austrian Archduke Maximilian von Habsburg on the throne as Emperor of Mexico -- one month before Gettysburg.
Are we returning to normalcy?
Speaking in Conroe, Texas, last weekend, former President Donald Trump accused his successor of allowing millions of migrants to enter the country illegally across our Southern border.
— In the aftermath of the high-turnout 2020 election, many Republican-controlled state governments have passed legislation that Democrats believe will harm their party’s voter turnout.
— However, voting rules did not appear to have much impact on turnout and had no measurable impact on vote margins at the state level in the 2020 presidential election.
— Both voter turnout and voting decisions in 2020 were driven by the strong preferences held by the large majority of voters between the major party candidates.
The tally for how much the federal government spent to combat COVID-19 is now estimated to be $5 trillion. It is more than the combined costs of World Wars I and II. The left is celebrating that politicians in Washington saved us. Really? From what exactly?
Is the territorial integrity of Ukraine a cause worth America's fighting a war with Russia?
Do Americans really want transformative change? The evidence accumulates that they don't.
"What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people."
— In almost half the states, governors and lieutenant governors are either nominated separately, or else the official who is next in the line of succession is elected separately.
— This makes it reasonably common for the governor and lieutenant governor to come from separate parties. Currently, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Vermont fall into this category. Sometimes these pairings work smoothly; other times, they don’t.
— Even governors and lieutenant governors from the same party can have relationships that range from distant to acrimonious. There are recent examples of this phenomenon in Idaho and Rhode Island.
— In states where gubernatorial candidates cannot choose their running mates, it may be harder for them to win the governorship in the first place.
San Francisco's liberal mayor declared a "state of emergency" to try to deal with the city's "nasty streets."
When I came to Washington, D.C., in 1985, Ronald Reagan was president. I was working for the Reagan budget office. We did something we weren't very proud of at the time. We introduced the first $1 trillion budget in American history, which was unthinkable. One trillion dollars. There are 12 zeroes in a trillion. A trillion is a million dollars times a million. The budget deficit hit $200 billion and 6% of our entire GDP. Again, unthinkable.
Before he appeared at his first solo news conference of 2022, President Joe Biden knew he had a communications problem he had to deal with.
"California should abolish parenthood, in the name of equity." That's the headline of a Ventura County Star column by Zocalo Public Square's Joe Mathews. "Want true equity?" the San Francisco Chronicle headlined the same column three days later. "California should force parents to give away their children."
If the left believed that draping the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, around the neck of former President Donald Trump and the party that refused to repudiate him would sink the GOP, it appears to have miscalculated.
— As Joe Biden marks a year in office, he has found himself in a perilous position, and there are no obvious signs of improvement.
— Among Biden’s challenges is an apparently weakened position among nonwhite voters as well as younger voters, two immensely important pillars of the Democratic coalition.
— Inflation has re-emerged as an important problem for what appears to be the first time in decades, and Biden has work to do to persuade the public that he’s taking it seriously.
Omicron spreads. The media say, "Governments must act!"
Once, during a meeting with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump inside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York, we discussed energy policy. I told Trump that if we went all out to produce America's abundant supply of oil, gas and coal, the United States could be energy independent in four years.
In 2014, when Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup that ousted a pro-Russian regime in Kyiv by occupying Crimea, President Barack Obama did nothing.
How do you explain why an ultra-experienced politician makes a major speech on the behalf of a legislative goal that is both doomed to fail and unpopular with voters? Especially when his speech is boycotted by the bill's chief backers and consists of one big lie after another?
