There was a time when President Trump’s personalised diplomacy seemed a hydra-headed phenomenon with tentacles reaching far and wide. He engaged such diverse politicians — from Shinzo Abe and Kim Jong-Un to Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi, from Mohammed bin Salman and Recep Erdogan to Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel. But as time passed, the circle began shrinking and the scope for personalised diplomacy altogether diminished as coronavirus epidemic spread and countries turned inward, including...

Growing up in Chicago, the giant Christopher Columbus statue was a well-known feature in Grant Park. It is now gone. Mayor Lori Lightfoot moved to end the violent protests through an act of surrender. She unilaterally ordered the removal of statue. Problem solved? No, the problem was mob action to remove the statue and Mayor Lightfoot just yielded to violence which left many police officers injured in its wake as well as a number of protesters. Indeed, before the removal, Lightfoot’s own home...

Thirty years ago, President George H.W. Bush signed [7/26/1990] the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was supposed to create a new era of equality and justice. Instead, the ADA often turns disabilities into assets, encouraging far more people to claim to be disabled to receive special treatment or privileges. The ADA’s breadth and vagueness have spurred a deluge of absurd federal decrees and more than half a million lawsuits that risk stigmatizing people the law sought to assist.  The ADA...

On Thursday, a Florida health official told a local news station that a young man who was listed as a COVID-19 victim had no underlying conditions. The answer surprised reporters, who probed for additional information. “He died in a motorcycle accident,” Dr. Raul Pino clarified. “You could actually argue that it could have been the COVID-19 that caused him to crash. I don’t know the conclusion of that one.” The anecdote is a ridiculous example of a real controversy that has inspired some...

My social media notifications have been lighting up the last few days with virulent Chinagaters sharing a video which purports to show Uighur Muslims being loaded onto a train to be taken to concentration camps. It’s actually an old video that had already surfaced last year, but it is magically making the rounds again as a new and shocking revelation in 2020 now that western China hysteria has been officially kicked into high gear, at exactly the same time the US enacts one of the most...

It should be evident by now that the Donald’s one and only north star is his own glorification and self-aggrandizement. That’s why he’s totally flat-footed at this crucial moment in the pandemic saga. What he needs to be doing is taking off the gloves for a bare-knuckled counter-attack against the Virus Patrol, which is ruining America’s economic and fiscal future. Instead, yesterday he put on the Mask and the tweeted a juvenile boast that he’s the most patriotic muzzle-wearer in the land....

We recently discussed a Vermont principal who was told that she would have to retire after expressing her opinion of Black Lives Matter on her personal Facebook page. Now, a popular social studies teacher and baseball coach at Walled Lake Western High School in Michigan has been fired after tweeting his support for President Donald Trump and reopening the schools. For free speech advocates, the firing of Justin Kucera, 28, raises concerns that he might be another teacher terminated for...

Dear Portlandia progressives: a federal government big enough to take care of you is a federal government big enough to "take care of you." Scary unidentifiable police, federal black sites, and procedureless snatching of individuals from the streets are the wholly predictable and natural consequences of the very policies you advocated for decades. Why do you imagine a big government with lots of power will restrict itself to the cozy "social issues" and economic takings you support? Government...

National ID cards have been atop the command-and-control political wish list for decades. In the 1990s, Republican Congresses shot down efforts to move toward national identification cards. However, after 9/11, “everything changed” and politicians seized the chance to unleash far more snooping and create potentially hundreds of millions of dossiers on American citizens. Congress passed the REAL ID Act in 2005 as part of an enormous piece of legislation dealing with military appropriations and...

Panicked by fears manufactured by the ruling class, the American people assented to being put essentially under house arrest until further notice, effectively suspending the habits, preferences, and liberties that had defined our way of life. Most Americans have suffered economic damage. Many who do not enjoy protected status have had careers ended and been reduced to penury. Social strains and suicides multiplied. Forcibly deferring all manner of medical care is sure to impose needless...

Motorcycle accidents ruled Covid deaths? In the rush to paint Florida as the epicenter of the “second wave” of the coronavirus outbreak, government officials and their allies in the mainstream media have stooped to ridiculous depths to maximize the death count. A television station this weekend looked into two highly unusual Covid deaths among victims in their 20s, and when they asked about co-morbidities they were told one victim had none, because his Covid death came in the form of a fatal...

A woman in Kentucky, Elizabeth Linscott, who tested positive for COVID-19 has been ordered by local health department authorities to stay at home — ordered, and then when she balked, slapped with court papers and shackled around the ankle with a monitor that basically sounds an alarm if she leaves her residence. Linscott’s husband, Isaiah, received the same treatment. It’s happening, America. Wake up and smell the contact tracing — the “new normal” that allows government to knock on doors and...

When two countries who are supposed to be military allies fall out and almost get themselves into a shooting match, you know there’s going to be trouble ahead. The problem for NATO is, this time, it may prove terminal. For a story that involves high seas skullduggery, clandestine gun-running, a punch up between people who are supposed to be friends, and an incident that could be fatal for the world’s biggest military alliance, this one started mundanely enough. Back on June 7, 2020, a...