John Hayward

In response to Back in the Day, They Used to Call This a Credibility Gap: To use a phrase that used to be popular with media analysts, a Republican president who almost comically overstated the level of public support for

In response to Christiane Amanapour Tweets “Happy Birthday, Mr. President”… to Robert Mugabe : It’s starkly amazing to watch Amanpour dash off mash notes to Mugabe, but I don’t know how well-hidden the general leftist fascination with dictatorship ever was.

In response to ‘Shotgun’ Joe Biden: It gets even better, Javier: following Biden’s dim-witted advice would actually get you arrested in his home state, for aggravated menacing and reckless endangering in the first degree.  You’re not supposed to discharge firearms

ObamaCare’s driving up insurance premiums and wiping out coverage from coast to coast, but don’t forget that it’s also stuffed with tax increases.  On deck: $100 billion in sales taxes on health insurance plans.  Poor, middle class hardest hit. We’ll

In response to Toure’s Abortion ‘Blessing’ Still Has Me Rattled: John, besides the icy inhumanity and mind-boggling selfishness of Toure’s abortion hosanna… well, no, wait a second, let’s pause on the selfishness for a moment.  Aren’t liberals always telling us

In response to Hearing From Romney Will Be Good, But Big Boi Would Be Better: Big Boi sounds like an excellent idea for a guest speaker.  Along the lines of pop-culture outreach, I’ve often wondered why we don’t hear from

There’s an amazing new Pew Research poll that says 70 percent of the American people, across the political spectrum, think deficit reduction is the top national priority… and 73 percent of them want it done mostly or entirely through spending

Bad news for the grassroots resistance to ObamaCare: Florida’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, just abandoned his resistance to ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion.  His price was a waiver to continue a privatization program that… hasn’t actually been working all that well. Scott

The American Conservative Union just announced that Mitt Romney will address this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).  Rep. Paul Ryan was already on the list of announced speakers, as are up-and-coming Republicans such as Senators Marco Rubio, Rand Paul,

Newt Gingrich tees off on the “consultant-centric” model of campaigning, which he describes as campaigns in which the high-priced consultants call all the shots, moving the candidate around like a king on a chess board.  He wants candidates who think

In response to When losing meant something: Gosh, you’re so old-fashioned!  Working hard to win trophies?  Now kids get trophies just for showing up.  You can even “win” a Nobel Peace Prize just for existing, and they don’t take it

Watching the Chuck Hagel drama is a sobering reminder that Republicans still aren’t very good at playing hardball politics.  Their strategy is to use the Hagel nomination as soapbox to focus attention on a worthy, but unrelated, issue – namely

In response to Are we breeding a generation of deluded narcissists?: David, it’s interesting you should mention narcissism as a prominent factor in the mindset of the current generation.  It would seem to conflict with the entitlement and victim mentalities

In response to Rich Masochists Against the 8th Amendment: One of the basic principles behind “unalienable rights” is that you don’t have to justify their exercise.  You’re never supposed to be on the defensive, explaining to those who choose not

In response to Do You Have That Shirt In a Size Medium?: Mission creep has always been a factor in government growth.  Now we have the Postal Service selling its own clothing.  What’s next – fashionable ladies’ dresses made out

In response to Nice Scoop Politico: I love the refrain scattered throughout Politico’s apologetic that Team Obama has somehow dazzled them with fabulous new technologies.  Too bad there was no way for George Bush’s White House to create photo and

In response to Obama hides behind the boys in blue and red; media swoon: The same farce plays out every time Obama tries to hide from spending cuts.  The first penny slashed from this titanic government comes right out of

The media really is freaking out over Golf-gate… at least, to the extent they’re willing to get truly upset with Barack Obama about anything.  Yesterday brought a really remarkable Politico article about “Obama the Puppet Master.”  I picked it apart

It seems like it was only yesterday that liberals suddenly turned into staunch defenders of religious dignity.  The President had a story about “spontaneous video protests” to sell, there were demonstrations by angry Muslims around the world, and presto!  Suddenly

In response to False Consciousness & the Ship of the Poopie: The sad tale of the Carnival Triumph gives people of every ideological persuasion something to see: The average TV viewer feels sympathy for people going through an ordeal, when

The big push to blame videogames for the Newtown massacre has been bubbling along beneath the far higher-profile effort to push gun control laws.  Now comes an oddly-written story in the New York Daily News which repeatedly asserts that shooter

Rep. Stephen Scalise (R-LA), who now chairs the Republican Study Commission, is once again talking about the rather glaring gap between President Obama’s 2009 promises and 2013 reality.  “Bigger government is the problem, not the solution.  In the wake of the

In response to Is Social Media Breeding Monsters?: Another thought: there’s a passage in Mark Steyn’s most recent book where he muses that H.G. Wells’ Time Traveler, jumping forward from the latter days of the 19th century, would have been astounded

In response to Is Social Media Breeding Monsters?: Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites really unleash the id.  The combination of distance, anonymity, and attention is intoxicating, and some people are mean drunks.  The Internet finally lets the rest

One part of Dr. Ben Carson’s famed National Prayer Breakfast address that captured a great deal of attention was his argument for fair taxation (by which he meant something like the Flat Tax) in the context of religious tithe, which