Ken Blackwell

As the debt ceiling issue reaches a stage of urgency, it is clear that the positions staked out by Republicans and Democrats are on different planets. (more)

President Obama got a good laugh from his liberal audience at the nationally televised meeting of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. At least all those who joined in the laughter there had jobs. (more)

CNN contributor LZ Granderson got it right. He’s posted an online video taking issue with the San Francisco gay activists who want government to ban circumcision for little boys. (more)

Americans know the Bible story of King Solomon. Two women came to him with a baby. They were disputing whose child it was. “Cut the child in half,” the wise king ordered. The mother of the child cried out: Give the baby to her. She would give up her child rather than let it be killed. (more)

Hamas, the Palestinian terror group that runs Gaza, is mourning the death of Osama bin Laden. He is a “martyr” to these jihadists. And Hamas has just concluded a pact with the so-called Palestinian Authority (PA), or Fatah, the group that the U.S. recognizes and to whom we give lavish foreign aid. We are currently giving $600 million a year to the so-called Palestinian Authority. (more)

Hillary Clinton’s campaign ad was memorable. It featured a telephone ringing at 3 a.m. It strongly suggested that Barack Obama was not prepared to take that phone call at that critical hour. Somewhere a crisis would mount, and she wanted primary voters to understand that the inexperienced Illinois senator was not ready to tackle it. (more)

During a recent speech at Cleveland State University focused on small business in Ohio, President Obama described a goal of “knocking down barriers that stand in the way of your growth.” Unfortunately, his EPA couldn’t be more in the dark about how to translate that message into practice -- with the agency poised to adopt more than 30 new, major regulations and over 170 major policy rules in the next several months. (more)

President Obama came into office pledging a new approach to the Middle East. We were told that his middle name — Hussein — would give him unprecedented entrée to the corridors of power in that troubled region -- and to the Arab street. (more)

Eleven years after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, on the eve of America’s great centennial celebration, counterfeiters formed a plot to steal his body from its honored grave in Springfield, Illinois. They had plans to hold the body for ransom. The U.S. Secret Service was able, happily, to disrupt this ghoulish plot. (more)

If it weren’t so sad, this story from the Washington Times would be too funny. It seems that money from President Obama’s $862,000,000,000 “stimulus” bill of two years ago has been spent to upgrade the Wilmington, Del., Amtrak station. Vice President Biden lobbied personally, we read, to get the funding for the station he has famously used ever since he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972. Now, Amtrak, grateful for his support, has all on its own initiative decided to name the spruced-up station the Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. Amtrak station. (more)

President Obama and Vice President Biden this week paid an unannounced visit to Arlington National Cemetery. They went there to offer the thanks of a grateful nation for the service of Frank Buckles, the last known survivor of the American “doughboys” of World War I. Buckles was barely 16 when he fibbed about his age to get into uniform. (more)

"I don't think anybody disputes that Gaddafi has more firepower than the opposition," President Obama said at a recent White House news conference. (more)

Last May 31st in Afghanistan, a world away from American backyard barbeques and military parades, Sayeed Mussa vanished into thin air. Mr. Mussa was spirited away to an unknown location to be executed for his faith in Jesus Christ. No, his captors were not the Taliban insurgents but Afghan government officials, bankrolled by U.S. taxpayers and defended by American troops. (more)

We’re about to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. As much as I would like to praise that great and good man, I have to wonder what he would do about Egypt. (more)

It was twenty-two years ago, in the spring of 1989, that thousands of Chinese students gathered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to demand democracy. The students even fashioned their own 30-foot high replica of America’s Statue of Liberty. It represented the aspirations for democracy of young Chinese. They yearned to join young people in Poland, East Germany, and the then-united nation of Czechoslovakia. It was a time when it seemed the winds of hope and change might sweep away tyranny from the whole world. (more)

Why is Paris known as the City of Lights? Is it because the U.S. Congress banned Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulbs, so he had to take his invention offshore? (more)

We all breathed a sigh of relief when the ball fell in New York’s Times Square and the holiday season this year ended without another terror attack -- or attempted attack -- on our homeland. You’ll recall that on Christmas Day 2009, the notorious “underwear bomber” tried to blow up his jet over Detroit. Young Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian citizen, wanted to take down his Northwest Airlines flight right over Detroit’s airport. Had he succeeded in detonating his BVDs, his victims would not only have been the 288 passengers and crew he was flying with, but doubtless hundreds or thousands on the ground. (more)

Next Spring, Republicans will be faced with a serious decision over whether to vote to raise the debt ceiling. (more)

In August of this year, Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised Congress that “The National debt is the biggest threat to our national security.” In November, voter sentiment against the debt and deficit led to an historic rebuke of Congressional incumbents. In December, the president’s debt commission laid out in stark terms the imminent economic impact of continued deficit spending. Apparently rejecting these clarion calls, the president and Congress acted in the lame-duck session to cut not one dime of federal spending, while increasing the national debt by nearly $1 trillion. They are ignoring a glaring problem that, if not addressed soon, will cause a panoply of other problems. (more)

Liam Neeson is the voice of Aslan the Lion in the new 3-D Narnia film, “Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” He’s got a great voice for the role. Neeson is even from the North of Ireland, the same area from which C.S. Lewis, the beloved Christian author of The Chronicles of Narnia, hailed. (more)