Breaking News

Local Columns

Corruption is about policy, not just money

Back in 1998, iconic feminist Gloria Steinem wrote a now-infamous editorial defending then-President Bill Clinton, who multiple women had accused of sexual harassment, assault and even rape. Steinem argued that Clinton's conduct wasn't really sexual harassment, much less criminal conduct, and that in any case the accusations against Clinton were in a different category than those made against Republican politicians (who had been forced to resign). But Steinem's bottom line was this: women — even (especially!) feminists — should overlook Clinton's behavior because, unlike ...

Best things first … use $30B to solve the world’s problems

For my new video, I asked people on the street, “If you could spend $30 billion trying to solve the world’s problems, how would you spend it?” “Build houses ... address homelessness,” said a few. “Spend on health care,” “redistribution.” The most common answer was “fight climate change.” Really? Climate change is the world’s most important problem? “It’s not surprising if you live in the rich world,” says Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. Lomborg has spent the last 20 years consulting with experts from the United Nations, ...

Wanted: president embraces spending challenge

Election season is getting into gear, and that means politicians of all stripes making promises about what they’ll do for the American people if elected or reelected. I’d like to hear promises to get government out of the way and allow entrepreneurship and market competition to spur genuine and sustainable economic growth, including in the energy and housing sectors. This may be what America needs most, but I will settle for a promise to ensure that the national debt stays smaller than the size of the economy. A committed president just might be able to deliver. I never thought ...

GOP voters weary of Trump’s ‘Airing of the Grievances’

CUMBERLAND COUNTY, Pennsylvania — Alex Anastasio voted for Donald Trump for president twice, attended Trump rallies, organized events for him and placed signs in front of her home. And she was deeply hopeful in the early days following the 2020 election that once all of the votes were counted, he would serve a second term -- so hopeful, indeed, that she was initially involved in a voter recount effort in support of that. Weeks later, when it was clear he lost, Anastasio, a grassroots Republican dynamo who was a delegate for Trump, said she was disappointed but went about the business ...

Wanted: A president who will embrace the spending challenge

Election season is getting into gear, and that means politicians of all stripes making promises about what they’ll do for the American people if elected or reelected. I’d like to hear promises to get government out of the way and allow entrepreneurship and market competition to spur genuine and sustainable economic growth, including in the energy and housing sectors. This may be what America needs most, but I will settle for a promise to ensure that the national debt stays smaller than the size of the economy. A committed president just might be able to deliver. I never thought ...

Coup attempt shows real crack in Putin’s power

By Jonah Goldberg Tribune Content Agency Like many people, I was glued to the news for much of Saturday, watching what seemed, at least for a moment, to be the first stages of a coup d’etat — and it still might be. The only thing we know for certain is that if this is the beginning of the end of Vladimir Putin’s rule, that story won’t begin with the mutinous mercenary warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin leading an armored column of troops, guns a-blazing, into Moscow. The funniest thing about much of the reporting and commentary of Prigozhin’s “March for Justice,” both in ...