Those who know us are aware that we have gone somewhere with our two now-grown children since they went away to college. The trips worked out well as we spent five days or more together touring whatever venue to which we had chosen to travel. After the Beautiful Wife and I returned from Antarctica last year (without them), we started planning our joint trip for 2025 Thanksgiving. I stepped in and asserted “We are going to Israel.” We had all been there a few times, but never all four together. In addition, with what had been going on we needed to support the Israeli tourism economy. Everyone was delighted to go to a place we all loved.

We all know the cost of someone breaking the law. That is not the issue. The question is what is the cost of the legal system not enforcing the law? In the current climate, some people have the belief that the criminal justice system is not working well for the perpetrators. Thus, they should be released without bail and with no consequences. We have all read stories of someone with a long history of criminal/violent activity attacking a person innocently going about their day and either severely harming that person or killing them. You certainly remember the woman who had left war torn Ukraine to move to the United States and settled in Charlotte NC. She got on a light rail transit in late August, sat down, and was stabbed to death with zero provocation by a deranged career criminal sitting behind her. Mr. Brown, who is referred to as a “suspect” despite being filmed committing the act, had been arrested 14 times just in the county in which he committed this crime. He is finally being held in prison charged with murder. The most recent incident of great note happened in Chicago on November 17th. The details of the story are in an excellent… Read More

You might be thinking it is someone who won a huge financial windfall. Or someone who survived a catastrophic accident with barely a scratch. Or a mother who had her child reunited with her after years of separation because of being kidnapped. No, the luckiest person in America is none of those things. This person runs one of the largest public entities and gets away with untold malevolent acts because she is barely known to the public. How does this person hide from the public? She runs an operation that has a parallel operation. The head of that other organization dwarfs the lucky person’s public persona by being outrageously offensive in her actions, so much so that she obscures said lucky person’s heinous acts. The person that provides cover for the lucky one is Randi Weingarten. She has been president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) since 2008. The group has approximately 1.8 million members. If you hear or think about unionized teachers, it is Weingarten who you hear about. She has been the face of teachers’ unions almost exclusively since taking the reins. If the Press wants a quote bashing President Trump, she is where the… Read More

A candidate who ran for mayor of the largest city in America told residents he was going to freeze rents. This is in a city where landlords had already pulled more than 50,000 apartments off the market because it did not make economic sense to rent them. New York isn’t the only place that has overlords making decisions making it economically challenging to rent apartments. California is in a race to the bottom on that issue. The elected leaders – most of whom have never run a business and certainly never been landlords — have decided to tell people, many who have invested a large portion of their life’s savings into apartment buildings, how to run their businesses and secure the value of their investments. They always have another rule that is making it more challenging and more costly to operate. California enacted an ordinance (Assembly Bill 628) that states as of January 1, 2026, landlords must provide a refrigerator and a cooking stove or range for any lease created after that date. It makes clear neither microwaves nor hot plates will substitute for the stove/range requirement. Once installed these pieces of equipment must be… Read More

There is a lot of recent chatter about the Nobel Peace Prize. It strikes me as something that makes no sense for anyone to pursue. Especially anyone who is not distinctly liberal or leftist. Let me explain why. First you need to understand more about the prize itself. The Peace Prize, established in 1901, is a separate category from the other prizes. Alfred Nobel’s will states it should be awarded by a committee of five people selected by the Norwegian Parliament. The other Nobel prizes were designated to be handed out by committees in Sweden. There is a museum to honor the recipients. Like most museums, one wonders whether it is actually to honor the cause or serve as a tourist attraction. The Nobel Peace Center, a museum dedicated to honor the Nobel Peace Prize and its winners, was opened in Oslo in 2005. During the 125 years of the peace prize, it has been awarded 106 times. There were 112 individuals and 31 organizations that were awarded. The museum has a chronological display of each one of the winners. On a recent trip to Oslo, we were familiarizing ourselves with the city center when we spotted the museum of which we were… Read More

It is always better when you sit back for a while after a big event like the elections on November 4th before absorbing the aftermath. It is fun to read “sophisticated” political analysts give their instant dissection of what has occurred and then they tell us what the future holds as they bring out their crystal balls and forecast the future. As usual, so many are wrong. Briefly, here is the reality. There was voting held in areas overwhelmingly populated by Democrats and they won the elections and the ballot initiatives. What would have been earthshattering is if a Republican won. In New York City, the big race, a person who ran as a Democrat, but is really a Socialist, beat the Left-wing Democrat who calls himself a Democrat. Not an earthquake; not even a tremor. Here is the other big news. Democrats and left-leaning people really dislike President Trump. He is the root of all evil. All their candidates ran against Trump, remaining silent about what they are really aiming to do. Only the fake Democrat (you know — the Socialist) told us what he wants to do, but we have come to find out most of what he wants to do is beyond his control as… Read More

As President Trump was trashing the Left not only for assassinating Charlie Kirk, but for more political violence, the Left reared its head and fought back with its classic method – “studies.” One friend sent me a study from a person at libertarian think tank CATO touting right of center violence and another sent an email stating “nonpartisan” studies show more violence comes from the Right. I decided to dig into this and see what the reality was of these studies. First, this is the nature of Left. They have studies and awards. The awards are supposed to be validations of creditability. “He has twelve Pulitzer Prizes.” The people touting those credentials never take a look to see that it is a closed circle who give the awards. The last person on the right to get a Pulitzer was Charles Krauthammer. That was in 1987, and he was writing for the Washington Post. One study was done by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) which gave up any semblance of non-partisanship decades ago. I did not do an in-depth analysis of the ADL study. I left that to two other creditable journalists. First, John Lott Jr. wrote… Read More

In a striking moment of moral clarity, coming at a time when some conservatives have succumbed to confusion or chosen silence, Texas Senator Ted Cruz declared antisemitism has become a “an existential crisis” and a challenge for the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

In today’s environment, where self-styled populists and internet influencers flirt with, or seek to explain away, antisemitism, Ted Cruz stood apart. It is the latest instance of the clarity and principle which has defined Cruz throughout his career.

Today, Ted Cruz is defending the conservative movement by guarding its moral compass.

Would-be influencers and online populists have developed a formula using the conservative lexicon to drift into antisemitic tropes and conspiracies, updated for the 21st century.

This threatens to weaken the conservative movement and the Republican Party on multiple fronts.

It undermines the coherence of modern conservatism and its core principle that people should be judged based on their own conduct. Antisemitism and racism is in direct conflict with this principle of personal responsibility because it… Read More