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After losing Virginia's governorship for the first time in eight years, some Democrats are trying to console themselves that Virginia is at its core a "red" state. This ignores not only that they won back-to-back governorships but also that Democrats defeated a sitting senator in 2006, took control of the state Senate in 2007 and won an open Republican Senate seat and three House seats in 2008 while carrying Virginia's electoral college votes for the first time since 1964. Some in the White House are trying to deflect blame for the defeat by saying that Sen. Creigh Deeds lost because...

My Wednesday Examiner column, written as the 2009 election returns were coming in, stands up pretty well. But let me add some observations written as the course of the elections became clearer. First, in the governor elections in Virginia and New Jersey, the Democratic candidate ran far behind Barack Obama’s percentages in 2008 and the Republican candidates ran ahead of George W. Bush’s percentages in 2004. The numbers are pretty daunting. In Virginia Creigh Deeds won 41% of the votes, way behind Barack Obama’s 53% in 2008. And in New Jersey Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine won 45% of the votes,...

Lessons from Virginia for the GOP By Ed Gillespie Thursday, November 5, 2009 After losing Virginia's governorship for the first time in eight years, some Democrats are trying to console themselves that Virginia is at its core a "red" state. This ignores not only that they won back-to-back governorships but also that Democrats defeated a sitting senator in 2006, took control of the state Senate in 2007 and won an open Republican Senate seat and three House seats in 2008 while carrying Virginia's electoral college votes for the first time since 1964. Some in the White House are trying to...

With Obama set to go weak on the "Good War" in Afghanistan, we need to recall some lessons of history. There is no such thing as a humane war. Indulging in such fantasies, with CNN enforcing the rules, has made the world a more dangerous place. GANJGAL, Afghanistan — We walked into a trap, a killing zone of relentless gunfire and rocket barrages from Afghan insurgents hidden in the mountainsides and in a fortress-like village where women and children were replenishing their ammunition. (Source: Jonathan Landay, a real battlefield reporter for McClatchy) David Warren, trenchant thinker and writer from Canada,...

Former Secretary of the Navy under Reagan, and member of the 9/11 Commission, John Lehman spoke tonight on the campus of St. Joseph's University. His topic was "The Lessons of 9/11: What we have learned, what have we accomplished, and what remains to be done."

Spare Change Day of Reckoning: My Two Cents on Learning from 9/11 David J. Aland 11 Sep 09 I survived 9/11 without a scratch. I didn’t even get my uniform dirty. Through nothing less than the grace of God, I was not where I was supposed to be when the terrorists slammed an airliner into the Pentagon. Friends, colleagues, and shipmates of mine died that day, but I lived. In the hours, days, and weeks that followed, my hands joined the thousands that picked up, reconstituted, and continued the work of those that had been killed. To this day, I...

VINCENNES, Ind. The students filed into their social studies class just after lunch and slumped into desks where they had learned about the Civil War, Lewis and Clark, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. On this day, teacher Michael Hutchison said, the class would feature "another of those huge moments in our history." He reminded the high school juniors and seniors that he would be grading their notes. Then he dimmed the lights and played a video on the classroom TV.

On Tuesday, as children in many places went back to school, the world's most prominent black leader undertook to expand a worshipful cult of personality as part of a systematic effort to achieve absolute power. You may have heard about it: Oprah Winfrey kicked off her 24th season on the air by taking over Chicago's Michigan Avenue for a live show in front of thousands of adoring fans. Oh, there was also that business involving the president of the United States going on TV to urge students to work hard and stay in school. In the end, Barack Obama's televised...

Van Jones loved the spotlight. Heck, who wouldn't, after being named a special adviser and green jobs czar for President Barack Obama. In Kansas City last week, Jones was one of the federal officials flown in to take a look at the Green Impact Zone, an idea to upgrade 150 blocks of low-income neighborhoods. Jones was introduced twice by fellow, higher-ranking fed officials -- and on both occasions, Jones made sure to interject that he was a "special adviser" to Obama. But now he's not part of the administration at all, thanks to imprudent remarks and a petition he signed...

Mr. Van Jones, President Obama's "Green Jobs Czar," is the perfectly useful political foil for the Obama Administration. "Foil" means to obscure or confuse (to leave a false trail or scent) so as to evade or spoil pursuers. It also means a person or thing that makes another seem better by contrast ("The serious man was an able foil to the comic"). Mr. Jones recently resigned from his five month job as the so-called Green Jobs Czar (a highly symbolic do-nothing non-cabinet position) purportedly because he was found out to be a "communist" by conservatives on the Internet. According to...

I am deeply grateful for the contribution that Ted Kennedy, who died last night, made to my education. Until Kennedy delivered his intemperate tirade against Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court in the summer of 1987, I hadn’t known that a United States Senator could brazenly lie to his colleagues and the American people and get away with it. I’m not talking about little fibs, or broken promises, or private dissimulations: all that I took as standard operating procedure in a fallen world. No, Ted Kennedy raised — that is to say, he dramatically lowered — the standard by...

<p>Let's go back to that "teachable moment." It was proclaimed by Barack Obama after he said that police in Cambridge, Mass., had acted "stupidly" in arresting Henry Louis Gates Jr. for essentially being black in his own house.</p> <p>It has been a month now, and the one sure thing we have learned in this extended teachable moment is about Obama himself. He can't teach.</p>

Police are removing valuables from unlocked cars to shock motorists into being more careful. Officers in London are taking everything from handbags to satnavs, and leaving a note telling drivers their property is at a local police station.

TOO STUBBORN TO DIE! WHAT SHOULD WE LEARN FROM AFGHANISTAN & IRAQ? By Andrei Nana We have all heard from our friends, family, and society at large, that when it comes to life, we will repeatedly make the same mistakes we made in the past unless we learn from those mistakes we make now. It sounds gloomy and depressing to consider the possibility of that continuous repetition, especially when we like to think of ourselves as always progressing. However, that repetition appears to exist. We also heard from these same people that there is a sliver lighting in everything, and...

“9/11 taught the U.S. that it ignores rising Muslim resentment at its own peril.” ~ Christiane Amanpour, CNN resident dhimmi: “America can’t have another generation of Muslims who hate it.” Well, unless Muslims get over their hatred of infidels and stop teaching their children to hate the Great Satan, don’t expect any change. This is just another in a long list of major media outlets (TIME, Newsweek here and here) declaring the end of American leadership and suggesting that the United States submit to dhimmi status under Islam, and in doing so, Islamic sharia law. We ignore doing so “at...

NOTE: This article was written in January, 2005. But it is actually more applicable and prophetic today than it was then. It is a little long but well worth your time. By Gemma Meyer (Gemma Meyer is the pseudonym of a South African journalist. She and her husband, a former conservative member of parliament, still reside in South Africa.) People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay rights movement). Today, however, South Africa may be the...

Now that all the hoopla and nonstop CNN 24/7 type celebrations and TV interviews and book deals will ramp up over the release of two liberal Democrat California-based freelance/Al Gore journalists from communist North Korea, based on a Bill Clinton secret deal and eventual flying to North Korea to apologize and legitimize the dictatorial regime--developing nuclear strike capabilities and exporting said terror--I say "hold your horses", as we have important unfinished business. I would expect the MSM to gloss over these so I raise them here.

At no time, does there seem to be vitriol and intimidation coming from Sgt. Crowley’s side. There have been no reports that anyone has threatened Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., or any of his public defenders. Yet all those who have challenged Gates’ account, or who have argued that while Sgt. Crowley may have overreacted, he was not engaging in an incorrect action taken in the line of duty as a police offer, have found themselves branded as racist or worse, and even had their physical safety threatened. It appears, in other words, that in today’s America, with an African-American...

You can't solve a problem if you don't discuss it. That's why some say that despite all the accusations and emotions hindering the resolution of the Henry Louis Gates Jr. imbroglio, there is opportunity for racial progress in President Barack Obama's "teachable moment" sitdown with Gates and Sgt. James Crowley. "If nothing else, it's an important national symbol of a discussion that needs to be held," said Clarence B. Jones, once a confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. and author of "What Would Martin Say?" "If it's just regarded as the president bringing two guys together to clear the air,...

It was 56-years ago today that the U.S. and North Korea signed the armistice that ended active combat in America’s forgotten war. More than 36,000 Americans gave their lives defending South Korea from invasion first by the communist North and then by the Red Chinese Army. [...] And therein lies the lesson: Official U.S. policy toward aggression by the Soviet Union and Communist China wasn’t clear after the end of World War II in 1945 until an anonymous article appeared in the journal Foreign Affairs in 1947. The article advanced a doctrine of containment by the U.S. of communist expansion,...