As we wrap up 2021, it’s time for a little cultural talk on the NewsBusters Podcast. NPR music critic Ann Powers recently suggested the Beatles signified how the rock band was a white-male institution. NPR also recently brought on Nikole Hannah-Jones to explain that “yacht rock” like Steely Dan, Toto, and the Doobie Brothers is culturally appropriated black

The United Arab Emirates has officially canceled its purchase of world-leading F-35 Lightning II stealth strike fighters due to U.S. objections to the country acquiring sanctioned Chinese electronics. This story is much, much bigger than the loss of a few billion dollars worth of arms exports. Typically, when it comes to arms purchases, the UAE

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released data last week suggesting life expectancy dropped by nearly 2 years in 2020. What should be noted is the CDC generally takes years to produce data on life expectancy. On the CDC’s life expectancy page, the most recent official data available is from 2017. However, the CDC needs

This is a fascinating piece in the New York Times by Christopher Caldwell on a new book by French political theorist Chantal Delsol on what our civilization is becoming: So if another civilization comes to replace Christianity, it will not be a mere negation, such as atheism or nihilism. It will be a rival civilization with

On Wednesday, several MSNBC shows ran a report in which NBC weather presenter Al Roker hyperventilated about the weather over the past year. Roker blamed virtually every form of unpleasant weather on climate change, while also sneaking in some high praise for President Biden. The report began: “2021, another blistering year of climate and weather

The blatantly partisan Jan. 6 Committee has been after President Trump’s White House records as part of their “investigation,” but Trump and several of his allies have invoked executive privilege to refuse to provide documents or testimony to the committee. However, executive privilege can only be asserted by an incumbent president, and Joe Biden has

One great mystery is the persistent refusal of those on the left to abandon what is clearly not true. That is, that the means for reducing the burden of poverty is more government spending. It all really started in the 1960s under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He declared in his State of the Union address

Chinese President Xi Jinping on a giant screen at a media center as he delivers a speech via video at the opening ceremony of the China International Import Expo in Shanghai, China November 4, 2021. (Andrew Galbraith/Reuters) There can be no reasonable doubt about the scale and sophistication of the challenge that China is now

After the disastrous Covid-inspired changes to the 2020 election, you might think the left is finished with voting reforms. But an even bigger effort is coming, one that promises to permanently hand Democrats a built-in advantage and all but ensure no Republican wins the presidency again. Meet National Popular Vote, the group spearheading the campaign

With a full year under her belt hosting MSNBC’s The ReidOut, far-left pundit and generally awful human being Joy Reid made her presence felt with a night-after-night hatefest against conservatives, Republicans, and anyone who stands in her way, painting them as enemies of the people. All in all, Reid ran a show with rhetoric bordering

A lot of us were skeptical when Donald Trump rode down the golden escalator and announced his candidacy, but we compared the prospect of what looked to be clown presidency to a Hillary one, and we took the chance and voted for him. One of our main motivations in doing so was the prospect of

“As of now, we have more children that died from the COVID vaccine than COVID itself. And then for the Health Department to come out and say the new variant has all the side effects of the vaccine reactions we’re currently seeing now. It’s maddening, and I don’t understand why more people don’t see it,”

I’ve been interested on and off in the sociobiology of Edward O. Wilson, but wrote today about his prodigious work on ants: Despite his agnosticism and the reductive materialism of his Darwinism, Wilson wrote with a real warmth and soulfulness. Amid his storied academic career and the controversies kicked up by his theories, it’s worth

No man is an island, except for George Will. When I was but a young collegiate firebrand making waves on campus in the distant days of two-thousand-eighteen, my academic advisor—a kind-hearted boomer liberal in the history department—found himself worried about my situation. I was too smart, he insisted, to write the way I did. (On

Seemingly taking a page out of NBC’s playbook Tuesday night, the CBS Evening News edited out part of a 9-1-1 call warning LAPD officers responding to an attack at a Burlington clothing store that gunshots were heard. It’s was critical context missing from the event that resulted in the accidental death of a 14-year-old girl hiding

Now more than ever, I’ve been wondering how much longer our republic will survive. I hate to sound like a Democrat crying about how “our democracy is under attack” every time they lose an election or fail to advance legislation. But, I believe there are legitimate concerns that our republic is getting weaker and that

The U.S.’ largest public school district will implement a “test to stay” strategy, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday. Starting on Jan. 3 all New York City public schools will now allow students to stay in class, even if they are exposed to classmates who test positive for COVID-19, as long as they are asymptomatic

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, professor of Health Care Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, in Washington, D.C., April 1, 2014 (Jim Bourg/Reuters) Some states have passed laws allowing workers who are fired for refusing to be vaccinated to receive unemployment benefits. These include Florida, Iowa, Kansas (which has a Democratic governor), Arkansas,

Roe v. Wade’s successful litigator died at 76 this weekend. May God have mercy on her soul. If we don’t speak ill of the dead, who will? The vicious bon mot sprang to mind when I learned of the death over the weekend of Sarah Weddington, aged 76. She was the Texas lawyer who successfully

Lackey. Lickspittle. Toady. Sycophant. Take your pick: when it comes to defending Joe Biden, they all fit CNN’s John Harwood.  In the wake of President Biden shirking responsibility for COVID in a conference call with governors yesterday, there was Harwood on this morning’s New Day downplaying and ‘splaining away the president’s punt on the pandemic.

Desmond Tutu, who died Sunday, was celebrated for leading opposition to South Africa’s apartheid. It’s an honorable achievement — CNN called him “the voice of justice” — but the media’s ebullient praise of the bishop didn’t mention his longstanding disdain for the Jewish people. Related: Desmond Tutu: 1931-2021 They simply omitted his support of the

Mike Rosen The times in which we live are separating the men from the boys. No longer can we assume that conservatives we thought we knew, ever understood the fundamentals of individual Liberty. Semi-retired, long respected conservative in Denver talk radio, Mike Rosen, recently wrote a piece entitled, The case for taking the vaccine. There

(kentoh/Getty Images) If you have had quite enough seasonal cheer for now, I’d like to recommend Brian Riedl’s latest paper for the Manhattan Institute (How Higher Interest Rates Could Push Washington Toward a Federal Debt Crisis) as an antidote to all that. Gloom about a coming national debt crunch is nothing new, and yet here

For the first time in decades, the pro-life movement is allowing itself to dream of a post-Roe world. With the arguments during the Supreme Court hearing of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Whole Health going as well as can be expected for the anti-abortion movement, both pro-life activists and abortion advocates are increasingly convinced that sometime

It’s a woke wonderful time of the year! Celebrate the holidays by breaking the gender binary and hating America with Amazon Prime’s new series With Love, released December 17. Set in a Portland, Oregon, without riots, With Love follows a large Hispanic family through the different holidays of the year as they navigate romantic relationships. This being

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on everybody, but kids have been hurt most of all. The age group that is least susceptible to the virus has struggled with the policies that politicians and teachers’ unions have imposed on them. CBS correspondent Jan Crawford appeared on Face the Nation on Sunday, and she had plenty

When Gordon Gekko, the main antagonist in the 1987 film “Wall Street,” declared in no uncertain terms that “Greed is good!” people flocked to the theaters. And cheered. Please don’t base your belief system on a movie line that might have been memorable and entertaining but is dead wrong. “It took me 12 years to

A person pumps gas at a BP gas station in New York City, November 24, 2021. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters) On November 24, one day after President Biden announced the release of 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.39. Biden characterized the

Let’s call the 2nd Amendment what it is—the codification of a grave reality. One of my neighbors has a bumper sticker: “The 2nd Amendment isn’t for hunting.” He’s correct as a matter of constitutional law—the Bill of Rights affirms the right to private gun ownership and, in effect, creates a form of distributed sovereignty that

Since the start of the pandemic, the liberal media have used airline confrontations over masking policies to portray those opposed to pandemic protocols in a negative light. But a Sunday scuffle between a pro-mask woman and an 80-year-old-man, who had pulled his mask down to eat, got no airtime on Monday’s edition of CBS Evening