Robert Laurie

During his Thursday press conference, President Obama once again assured the American people that, when it came to the oil spill, he’d been involved “since day one.” Unfortunately, simply being involved isn’t enough. The Gulf situation has been screaming for leadership and Obama has failed to deliver. Receiving daily briefings, which Obama cited as his sole example of day one involvement, is not leadership. Placing your “boot on the neck” of the people who are in a position to solve the problem is, likewise, not leadership. Screaming “Plug the damn hole” at those trying to implement the solution? You get the point. In crisis, leadership is required - not just “involvement.” Sadly, it’s something sorely lacking in the current administration and Thursday’s Q&A put a spotlight on the shortcoming. (more)

Wednesday, President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon stood side by side on the White House lawn, smiled, and attacked an American state.  It was a display grotesque and bizarre, laden with the stink of lies and ripe with hypocrisy.  For a half hour or so, the two men hammed it up for the assembled international press, reveling in themselves as they mischaracterized a law that, most likely, neither of them managed to read.  Calderon later addressed Congress.  Again, he targeted the U.S., focusing on Arizona’s immigration law and its nonexistent human rights abuses.  As he did so, he received a standing ovation from those who populate the left side of the aisle. (more)

In the 1980s, the radical left presented the nation with a new conspiracy theory: Ronald Reagan, the CIA, and congressional conservatives were conspiring with South American drug dealers to flood our cities with crack cocaine. Their alleged goal was the eradication of an increasingly influential demographic made up of inner city youth. Legends about midnight dope shipments, unmarked planes, and mysterious government airstrips were, by the end of the decade, commonplace. There was never any evidence to support the speculation, but that never stopped race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan from repeating it. In reality, it was simply another lie, propped up by Democrats who sought to exploit the destructive effects of addiction for political gain. These days, drugs are flooding in from Mexico at a catastrophic rate and if liberals want to hold someone responsible, they need look no further than their own Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. (more)

Sadly, by now we’re all used to it. A white Christian male in his mid 40s, fueled by talk radio and a summer spent wandering aimlessly through a morass of tea parties, fills his SUV with explosives and tragedy ensues. What has led him to this point? Is it his inherent, unavoidable, racism? Could it be that this simpleton’s inability to understand the Republican Party’s wise move to the center has left him so blinded with rage that violence seems to be his only recourse? It’s impossible to say—largely because conservative terrorist attacks have – (more)

During the Bush administration, if you were watching MSNBC or CNN, you were bombarded with stories about an irresponsible president who spent most of his time golfing. In reality, our previous commander in chief suspended his golf outings in 2003, claiming that golf during wartime was unseemly. Recently, CBS radio made waves by reporting that the sitting president has hit the links 32 times during his first year in office, while George Bush managed just 24 rounds in his entire eight-year tenure. “I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” Bush once told Politico.com, “I feel I owe it to the families to be as—to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.” (more)

At the close of this week’s two-day Nuclear Security Summit, President Obama was trying to answer a question regarding the United State’s leadership position in the quest for nuclear disarmament.   He asserted that the U.S. finds itself in the driver’s seat because, “Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower.”  Initially, the remark garnered little attention.  Slowly however, the quote is gaining traction and people are wondering exactly what he meant. (more)

When lawmakers tried to pass a federal ban on same-sex marriage, the activist left was there to shout: “You can’t legislate morality.” When they tried to alter or overturn Roe v. Wade, the National Organization for Women started screaming: “You can’t legislate morality.” When they tried to pass a law saying 13-year-olds shouldn’t have government funded access to contraception, organizations like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU were there to remind us: “You can’t legislate morality.” (more)

I was expecting a nice leisurely April—a month of long walks as the trees begin to bloom, front porch cocktails as the temperature warms, and maybe, when the weather was just right, that first up-North road trip of summer. Unfortunately, I underestimated the amount of pressure I’m going to be under. April is the kind of month set aside for awareness raising events, and it will take time, money, and plenty of ribbon if I’m going to participate properly. (more)

For the past hundred years, citizens of the United States shared one common holiday, regardless of faith, race, or sex. Though it has never appeared on any calendar, we marked a day upon which we managed to slip free of our shackles and buy our way out of indentured servitude. In 1900, it fell on Jan. 22. By 2009, the last year President George W. Bush scheduled the event, it had been pushed back to the first week of May. This year, most expected it to be held during the first week of August. It was, of course, Tax Freedom Day—the day when American workers stopped toiling to pay their government, and began working for themselves. Sadly, barring Constitutional challenges, we’ll never see another one. (more)

“Do they understand what this is doing to their own party?” (more)

Whether he’s speaking about Afghanistan, health care, or the economy, President Obama begins each engagement by reminding America that the previous administration was an utter, abject failure. Time and time again, he tells us how he inherited a set of problems worse than any president since FDR. Everything that happened from 2000 to 2008 falls under attack, from the handling of 9/11, to the missing WMD’s and our failure to capture Bin Laden. Whatever the issue, wherever he appears, more than a year into his administration, the wisest, most intelligent president of them all, Barack Obama, is still attacking George W. Bush in nearly every speech he gives. (more)

The Obama administration loves the word “summit.” We’ve had beer summits, jobs summits, business summits, summits with auto-industry big wigs, and summits with Big Labor. In fact we’ve seen so many summits that it may well be time to change the definition of the word. It’s longer an important, possibly once-in-a-lifetime meeting between two heads of state. No, sir. These days, a summit is a gathering of people, from a specific corner of American life, that have angered or frustrated our wise commander in chief. (more)

The past five days were big ones for news that mattered. Our TVs were clogged with rumors about Howard Stern joining American Idol, Tiger’s apology, Olympic Hockey, and roughly 47 hours of Barack Obama speeches—all of which were essentially the same. In the midst of this was a story of jaw-dropping importance that I suspect most major news outlets were simply afraid to run. After all, it has the potential to shake the faith of millions of devout Christians and may just expose a cover-up that could bring the Catholic Church to its knees. I speak, of course, about the shocking revelation that Jesus Christ was gay. (more)

I was looking over my past few articles and I’ve come to the conclusion that people who don’t know me might think I’m a frightening malcontent. Due to the current political climate, it feels like I’m constantly complaining. Thanks to the train wreck being created by the president and Congress, it’s true that I haven’t been so upbeat lately. However, I’m not just some miserably bitter grouch, so I figured I should take some time run down a few things that fill me with genuine optimism. (more)

“We choose not to go to the moon. We choose not to go to the moon in the foreseeable future and not to do the other things, not because they are hard, but because they are expensive, because that goal will serve only to waste our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are unwilling to pay for, one we are unwilling to continue, and one which we intend to abandon…” (more)

Obama wants you to know that he is not, and never has been, a part of "Washington." He feels it’s vitally important that you understand this. (more)

I’ll admit it. On the night of the Massachusetts election, I watched MSNBC. I did so mostly because I wanted to see the anguished look of panic and desperation spread across Keith Olbermann’s face. I wasn’t disappointed. Olbermann spent the evening flailing desperately at explanations, like a drowning paraplegic trying to reach a life preserver, before settling on the notion that it all had to be Coakley’s fault. Once that was settled, he and Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) spent a good 20 minutes educating their audience about how Brown’s victory was actually going to be bad for Republicans. “The party of no,” they said, would finally be exposed as the obstructionist imbeciles that they are. I learned two things from this. First, listening to Stabenow is about as exciting as watching an apple turn brown. Second, die-hard, far-left Democrats are willfully refusing to learn from their loss, so Republicans had better. (more)

A great deal has been made of the Massachusetts Senate race that will, sometime tonight, fill the seat once occupied by Ted Kennedy. Prevailing wisdom suggests that a Scott Brown win could spell the end of the Democrat’s health care reform, just as a Martha Coakley victory might guarantee their passage. As a result, the race has been launched into the national spotlight and has become one of the highest-stakes Senate races in history. While the nation waits to learn the verdict in the Coakley-Brown battle, it’s worth mentioning the one inevitable outcome of the race. Regardless of who emerges as the winner, the Massachusetts election will kick Democrat hubris into overdrive. (more)

Political scholars tend to disagree about what, exactly, defines fascism.  Many go the “I know it when I see it” route, alluding to the nebulous definition of pornography, while others maintain that it doesn’t exist at all, believing instead that what we perceive as fascism is usually just a perversion of some other form of government. Largely due to Hitler’s would-be empire, the modern world views fascism as a mish-mash of bigotry, ultra-nationalism, totalitarianism, and censorship.  However, if you dig beneath the “isms,” you’re left with is a single, simple truth.  Most of the evils perpetrated by Hitler’s regime were trappings created to support an economy where private ownership of industry was coupled with a massive level of government control.  Fascism is, and always was, about money. (more)