Years from now, Americans will look back at the Iranian hostage crisis that wasn't. One day after 10 American sailors were captured by Iranian patrols after their boats inadvertently drifted into Tehran's territorial waters, our servicemen and their equipment are back in U.S. hands. But the diplomatic thaw and rapid action by Secretary of State […]

Back in my days as a denizen of Silicon Valley, we start-up types used to joke that Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California was the single most important street in the world. After all, for almost five decades that one-mile mecca of the venture capital world has helped fund every high-tech transformation of the […]

President Barack Obama has yet to deliver his final State of the Union address, but the reviews from Republicans are already in. Texas Senator and 2016 White House hopeful Ted Cruz announced that he won't be attending, but nevertheless will be "disappointed" by the President's speech. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), probably best known for comparing […]

For months, conservatives have been warning Americans about the supposed "Ferguson Effect." Murder rates in cities like St. Louis, Chicago and Baltimore are rising, they claim, because police fear being criticized for doing their jobs, thus emboldening criminals to take advantage of their absence. But while there are plenty of reasons to doubt the Ferguson […]

Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Friday called for an unprecedented constitutional convention to pass nine "amendments" designed to curb the power of the federal government. (If Abbott and his ilk really want to enshrine the power of "each State acting in its sovereign and independent character," they need look no further than the Confederate Constitution […]

The last days of 2015 brought some very interesting news about America's record-high income inequality. On December 29, Noam Schieber and Patricia Cohen of the New York Times revealed a "private tax system" that saves the wealthiest billions every year. In conjunction with the Bush cuts to income and investment income tax rates, between 1995 […]

Republican leaders and their amen corner in the conservative commentariat are ecstatic that both houses of Congress are finally about to send an Obamacare "repeal" bill to the President's desk. This morning, Speaker Paul Ryan tweeted, "The House will vote tomorrow to repeal Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood." But as Hot Air's Ed Morrissey ("CBO: […]

As 2015 drew to a close, political observers of all stripes were rightly getting raked over the coals for their respective failures to predict the most dramatic development of the 2016 GOP presidential campaign. But when it comes to the unlikely rise and surprising staying power of Donald Trump, President Barack Obama didn't seem taken […]