Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pledged this week to fast-track a bill defunding Planned Parenthood. But the move to strip the organization of some $528 million in annual funding from the federal and state governments is more than a little ironic. It was about Planned Parenthood, after all, that the then number two ranking […]

In the wake of the Charleston massacre, Americans are debating when, where and whether states, businesses and individuals should display the Confederate flag. But as a recent CNN/ORC poll suggests, the debate we are having is the wrong one. Even after neo-confederate terrorist Dylann Roof slaughtered 9 in the cradle of secession, 57 percent of […]

As the Confederate flag is coming down, calls for states to nullify federal laws are going up. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton advised county clerks, magistrates and justices of the peace they may opt-out of performing same-sex marriages the United States Supreme Court legalized nationwide on Friday. As it turns out, Paxton isn't just […]

From its inception, America's history has often been the product of the changing balance between compelling but conflicting national ideals. The federal versus the state, "rugged individualism" versus collective action for the public good, the separation of church and state, and isolationism versus crusading globalism are just some of the pendulum swings that have defined--and […]

If integrity is doing the right thing when no one is watching, opportunism is doing so only under the spotlight. And when it comes to South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, much of the American media is confusing the two. Reading Politico or the Washington Post's resident conventional wisdom regurgitator Chris Cillizza, you'd never know candidate […]

As he accepted Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox in April 1865, Union General Ulysses S. Grant was neither jubilant nor boastful. "I felt sad and depressed at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause," Grant later recalled, "though their cause was, […]

Massachusetts Republican Governor Charlie Baker found himself under fire for his comments Thursday defending the Confederate flag still flying over the South Carolina capitol grounds in Charleston. But his apology to Bay State residents and the entire pathetic episode could have been avoided had Baker just looked out from the Massachusetts state house in Boston. […]

"It is my view that no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition." So said President Richard Nixon after signing Title X of the Public Service Health Act of 1970. That vitally important and very successful federal program which now helps fund cancer screening, STD tests, contraception […]

In April, the Tennessee legislature offered a unique moment of clarity regarding women's access to abortion services. As the Senate debated GOP proposals to institute 48 hour waiting periods and regulate abortion providers like hospitals or ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs), Democrat Sara Kyle asked: "Here you're putting all this burden on a woman. Why don't […]