Mona Charen stories, Page 3

When Sen. Joe Manchin announced he would oppose the For the People Act, Steve Benen of MSNBC spoke for many Democrats when he declared that “Joe Manchin is prepared to be remembered by history as the senator who did little more than hope as his country’s democracy unraveled.” One can...

The Chinese communist government is going to permit three children per family. How nice. Here’s how The New York Times put it: “The announcement by the ruling Communist Party represents an acknowledgment that its limits on reproduction, the world’s toughest, have jeopardized the country’s future.” To describe China’s “one child...

The economy is reviving. On the East Coast, the cicadas are singing their love songs. There’s a supermoon on the West Coast. We are at peace (at least with other nations). And yet President Biden’s approval rating remains almost precisely where it was in the first week of his presidency...

As soon as the Supreme Court granted cert in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I rushed online to see the anticipated outcry. More on that in a moment. The case challenges the constitutionality of Mississippi’s gestational age law that barred abortions past 15 weeks except in...

Welcome to the funhouse world the Republican Party is building. Up is down. Black is white. Lies are truth. The great cause that Republicans are uniting around is “election integrity.” That’s rich. The reality is that somebody did attempt to steal the 2020 election — Donald Trump. During the days...

Subsidized day care and universal pre-K are goals that sound so wholesome only a ghoul could oppose them. Especially in an era when Democrats and Republicans have achieved consensus that money grows on trees, who could possibly object to spending a few hundred billion or so, as President Biden has...

Among right-wingers, there has been some delight about polls showing that Joe Biden’s popularity at the 100-day mark is the lowest of any president since World War II. Oh, if you exclude Donald Trump. Undaunted by this detail, they note with satisfaction that Biden’s approval rating, according to multiple polls,...

As of this week, more than 40% of Americans have received at least one dose of the covid-19 vaccine and 26% are fully vaccinated. Though it wasn’t planned this way, more normal human life is returning just as the redbuds, azaleas, magnolias and tulips are performing their gorgeous annual affirmation...

Reliving the awful details of George Floyd’s slow suffocation is brutal and emotionally draining. As always in matters touching on race, the thrum of ethnic hostilities is the background noise. Some have been eager, since the trial began, to cite George Floyd’s drug use or heart trouble as the true...

Seventeen legislatures are considering laws that would dictate how medical personnel can treat transgender youth — the latest flash point in the culture war. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson surprised observers this week when he vetoed one of those bills. It would have outlawed puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatment and “gender...

This much can be said without fear of contradiction: There has been a spike in disgusting crimes against Asian Americans during the past year. One analysis of 16 of the country’s largest cities found that acts of anti-Asian bias, not just crimes, increased by 145% between 2019 and 2020, even...

The Big Lie is starting to unravel. One of Donald Trump’s disinformation stars, Sidney Powell, is backing down. But while we’re considering the matter of truth and lies, let’s recall when conservatives cared about truth (or seemed to). In the 1990s, Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchu was a phenomenon. Of Mayan...

The question of what will become of the Republican Party in the post-Trump era seems to be on everyone’s lips. A New York Times survey found that Republicans themselves have five distinct views of Donald Trump, including 35% who are either “Never Trump” or “Post Trump.” But 65% fall into...

“A Covid Mystery,” proclaimed a New York Times newsletter. “Why has the death toll been relatively low across much of Africa and Asia?” Like a know-it-all kid in seventh grade, I thought: “Call on me! I know this!” and clicked on the item. But to my surprise, the account that...

I didn’t watch much of this year’s CPAC. My digestion is sound, but there’s no point in taking unnecessary risks. Still, I did note the presence of Sen. Mike Lee, a legislator who styles himself a “constitutional conservative.” Lee is the son of a distinguished former solicitor general of the...

The term “cancel culture” is rapidly losing its meaning. Just as Donald Trump adopted the term “fake news,” which originally referred to the misinformation flow that was a crucial part of his 2016 campaign, and was used to disparage his opponents and critics (or even just factual reporters) in the...

There has been some cheering about the 10 House and seven Senate Republicans who voted for impeachment. All honor to those who took the difficult path. But, good God! The president attempted to steal the election. He launched an insurrection against Congress. That only a handful of Republicans could vote...

It may be coincidence that the best policy idea to come out of the 117th Congress was offered by the one guy who has demonstrated the integrity to brave harassment and death threats to do what’s right vis-a-vis former President Trump. Mitt Romney has an excellent plan to reduce child...

So now Mitch McConnell tells us that Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s views are a “cancer” on the Republican Party and on the country. Odd that he neglected to make that point when one of his preferred candidates in the Georgia runoff, Kelly Loeffler, campaigned with Greene. The party’s dilemma,...

I’ve been getting a lot of mail from critics lately asking if I’m happy with the Biden administration. They point to some of the new president’s executive orders — the one about the Keystone XL pipeline, or the one rescinding the “Mexico City” policy withholding funds from international organizations that...

If you missed the retraction from the right-wing online magazine The American Thinker, it’s one for the ages. Noting that they had received a warning from lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems, the editors admitted that they had published pieces that “relied on discredited sources who have peddled debunked theories …...

Throngs of self-styled conservatives and Republicans have now reached the thunderous realization that Donald Trump is not just a harmless clown. Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney acknowledged to Chuck Todd that Trump’s rhetoric was incendiary, but insisted this kind of incitement was par for the course in...

When did we become so merciless? I’m not talking about the 18-year-old kid, featured in a New York Times article, who elected to torpedo a fellow student over a three-year-old video clip — though what he did was cruel. No, I’m talking about all of the supposed adults who created...

The list of President Donald Trump’s pardons and clemencies looks a lot like a supermarket tabloid: In other words, a lot like Trump’s life itself. There’s Rod Blagojevich with his saucy smile, and there’s smug Joe Arpaio. Every president’s pardon list contains some self-serving or controversial picks; think of then-President...

Two news organizations issued corrections recently. One was The New York Times. The other was Fox Business. One concerned an honest mistake. The Times admitted to having been scammed by the subject of one of its podcast series. Fox Business did not admit to anything but instead ran an interview...