There are times when even bad luck events can be the luckiest moment of your life. On Friday, my family, like hundreds of thousands of people in Northern Virginia, was without power after high winds knocked out power lines and blew transformers. I went outside with my son Jack and we came upon a house in McLean that had a massive tree fall inches from the house. The tree literally ran the length of the house right along its exterior wall with only inches to spare. Given the five dead from the “Bomb Cyclone” on the East Coast, this type of near miss borders on the miraculous.
Continue reading “Near Miss: Virginia House Escapes By Inches Destruction From Falling Tree”
As we approach the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, the state of socialism is not especially encouraging. The socialist reign of Hugo Chávez and successor Nicolas Maduro have reduced oil-rich Venezuela to pre-historic conditions with 4000 percent inflation and near starvation levels of food supply. In Cuba, the socialist government continues to limp by with an economy frozen in the 1950s. Indeed, there is only one real success of socialism in the world: the National Football League. When Marx said that “Democracy is the road to socialism,” he could easily point to the 32 owners of America’s football teams. It turns out that socialism works really well for billionaires in a small group with an effective monopoly on an industry.
Below is my column in the Washington Post on the question of whether a president can be indicted while in office. Many academics believe that there is an implied immunity from such indictments in Article II of the Constitution. I do not agree as explained in the column below. Once again, I have stated that I do not see compelling evidence of any prosecutable crimes against President Trump. However, if such evidence did arise and satisfied a grand jury, the Special Counsel could indict even before any impeachment.
Two Indonesians have reason to be a tad confused this week after they were publicly whipped according to strict Sharia law. The problem is that they are Christian. However, pursuant to Islamic law in Aceh province, 
Below is my column in the Hill newspaper on my view of the current evidence of collusion in the Russian investigation. I wrote the column to explain my skepticism over these oft-stated theories. President Donald Trump included my view in a quote in 
President Donald Trump is embroiled in another controversy this week after dismissing both gun rights and due process rights in a single sentence when he told a bipartisan group of members that the government should “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” Trump also said that he was 
Now this is a case only Stuart Smiley can truly understand. An Egyptian “court” has sentenced well-known singer Sherine Abdel-Wahab to six months in prison and a fine for telling a joke. Sherine, as she is known, simply made an oft-hand remark that people should not drink out of the Nile. For that, she was
I just 
During the campaign, President Donald Trump was roundly criticized for his comments about the ethnicity of a judge who was presiding in a case involving his now defunct Trump University. He argued that, because of the Mexican heritage of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel (who was actually born in Indiana), the judge was biased against him and referred to him as a “hater.” That “hater” however just handed down a major 101-page ruling in favor of Trump’s signature policy: the wall with Mexico. 
We have previously discussed the unparalleled bravery of the women fighting discriminatory Islamic law requiring them to wear veils and limiting their freedoms due to their gender. This is particularly true of the women engaged in protests over compulsory headscarves in Iran. Now however the Islamic regime is cracking down and not just arresting women but charging them with “inciting prostitution.” It is the perfect sexist charge to go with deeply sexist legal system. A woman who asserts her most basic right to expression and religious choices is treated by the Islamic government as fostering prostitutes.