Cal Thomas stories, Page 6
Cal Thomas: McCullough’s history never boring
I hated college history. The textbooks were mostly about dead white men, Abigail Adams excepted. The lectures were boring. I didn’t see how any of it related to my young life and future plans. Historian David McCullough, who died this week at age 89, helped change my attitude toward history...
Cal Thomas: To ID or not to ID?
During recent election seasons there has been a debate over whether a voter must present an identification card to cast a ballot and if so, what type? Congressional Democrats are considering legislation that would provide secure identification cards, not to U.S. citizens for the purpose of voting, but to those...
Cal Thomas: Whipping inflation — then and now
In 1974, when the inflation rate was 11.04%, President Gerald Ford came up with a slogan: “Whip Inflation Now.” WIN buttons were manufactured by the millions and people were asked to wear them to demonstrate grassroots solidarity to combat the economic scourge. The campaign was later described by Martin Crutsinger...
Cal Thomas: The end of Roe, and what it could mean
Chief Justice John Roberts has confirmed the accuracy of a leaked document that revealed an initial majority vote to overturn Roe vs, Wade. In that memo, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the 1973 case overturning restrictive state abortion laws was “egregiously wrong from the start.” So where do the 64...
Cal Thomas: Ignorance and apathy
There’s an old joke about a fictitious poll taker who asked people what they thought about ignorance and apathy when it comes to politics and elections. One respondent said, “I don’t know, and I don’t care.” I thought of that joke after seeing a recent YouGov poll. It shows a...
Cal Thomas: JFK, Reagan and Biden
President Biden’s speech from Warsaw Saturday night reminded me of two previous presidents who delivered speeches confronting the autocracy that was then the Soviet Union and is now Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, a man Biden has rightly called a war criminal. On June 26, 1963, President John F. Kennedy...
Cal Thomas: What is America’s foreign policy?
Oh, for the good old days of the Soviet Union. America’s foreign policy and goals were clear then: containment and opposition to communist expansion. Nuclear weapons were a deterrent, but neither side believed the other would use them. Russian President Vladimir Putin has changed the game by threatening to use...
Cal Thomas: The real cause behind the rise in crime
While President Biden and local officials keep talking about causes for the rise in crime in our major cities, proposing “solutions” that have failed in the past, like former President Bill Clinton’s Midnight Basketball idea, the real reason for its escalation is deeper than what we see on the surface....
Cal Thomas: Trump-Pence deal with the devil
Former President Donald Trump has further — if that’s possible — undistinguished himself by again attacking his vice president, Mike Pence. In another of his ongoing email messages to supporters (which are usually accompanied by a donate button), Trump says he wanted Pence to overturn the results of the last...
Cal Thomas: Crime and a widow’s eloquence
Trust in government has been declining since the administration of President Lyndon Johnson. According to Pew Research, only 36% of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents and 9% of Republicans and those leaning Republican now trust government. Who can blame them given the failure of government to perform on many levels? One...
Cal Thomas: McConnell deconstructs Biden
The art of deconstructing an argument by refutation and holding a person accountable for previous statements that the person now contradicts was once an honored tradition. It has now mostly gone the way of other traditions in favor of sound bite statements formulated in political party meetings and used to...
Cal Thomas: Competition and choice needed in education
For the third straight day last week, the Chicago Teachers Union canceled classes, choosing to return to virtual learning and citing dangers from the omicron variant as their excuse. To many, this is seen as nothing more than a teachers’ strike and power grab executed by a union that historically...
Cal Thomas: Let’s out the men in Maxwell-Epstein case
The conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell on five of six charges of recruiting and grooming teenage girls for sexual encounters with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein is not and should not be the end of the story. While Maxwell has been held accountable for her actions, the men who engaged in these...
Cal Thomas: A little peace and goodwill in Congress
Peace on Earth and goodwill to men this time of year seems increasingly absent in diverse places. In America, the noble objective seems to have long ago left the U.S. Capitol, where too many members of Congress are as divided and angry at each other as ever. A new study...
Cal Thomas: Testing, testing
President Biden has attempted to tamp down the frustration many feel over his inability to crush the pandemic, as he promised he would do when campaigning for the office he now holds. In a Tuesday afternoon address from the White House, the president promised to ramp up testing sites and...
Cal Thomas: With Oxford shooter, the signs weren’t missed — they were ignored
As has been the case with so many other school shootings over several years, last week’s murder spree at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit might have been avoided if actions had been taken in the face of several obvious warning signs. Ethan Crumbley, 15, is charged with murdering four...
Cal Thomas: Isn’t it rich? Thank you, Stephen Sondheim.
The death of composer Stephen Sondheim at 91 is more than the end of an era. It is the end of a chain of great Broadway musicals dating back to the 1920s when Jerome Kern’s “Showboat” first dazzled theater audiences. I met him only once. It was at Barbara Cook’s...
Cal Thomas: Thanks for giving
For some, this Thanksgiving — like last year — is a more difficult occasion than previous ones. Perhaps a loved one has died from covid-19, or you feel isolated from relatives and friends due to lockdowns, quarantines, travel restrictions, vaccinations (or not), masks and “distancing” and might think you have...
Cal Thomas: The Rittenhouse verdict
Before the right to keep and bear arms is stated in the Second Amendment, the Founders wrote why they believed it necessary for people to arm themselves as part of a “militia.” They said it is a “necessity to the security of a free state.” The Founders knew that liberty...
Cal Thomas: Swindled again
Remember those “shovel-ready jobs” promised by the Obama-Biden administration in 2011? When many failed to appear after passage of this spending boondoggle, President Obama joked, “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.” That law, noted Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), cost $787 billion, of which $48 billion was supposed...
Cal Thomas: Threats of more lawlessness in New York
“Lawlessness is lawlessness. Anarchy is anarchy is anarchy. Neither race nor color nor frustration is an excuse for either lawlessness or anarchy.” — Thurgood Marshall Eric Adams, the incoming mayor of New York City, met last week with Hawk Newsome, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York,...
Cal Thomas: An American (vice president) in Paris
When past presidents have seen their approval numbers take a dive, they went on foreign trips. Sometimes this works, but more often it doesn’t, because failure at home often follows them abroad. World leaders can sense failure and its twin, weakness. Vice President Kamala Harris, whose poll numbers and favorability...
Cal Thomas: Winsome Sears, a nightmare for the left
The significance of Virginia Lt. Governor-elect Winsome Sears’ victory cannot be overstated. But her victory is significant not only because she is a Black woman and the “first” of her race and gender to hold the office of lieutenant governor in Virginia, but also because she has been described as...
Cal Thomas: Youngkin’s victory goes beyond Virginia
My how quickly things can change with the right message and the right messenger. Glen Youngkin’s impressive victory over Democrat retread Terry McAuliffe in the race for Virginia governor ought to be a reminder that kindness wins over name-calling and that issues are more important than personality. Parents in Virginia...
Cal Thomas: Where should evangelicals go now?
Evangelical Christians have unquestionably been a loyal and largely unmovable base of support for President Trump since he has been in office and in some cases before. Should the election results not be overturned by recounts or court decisions, where do they go and what should they do? Perhaps no...
