The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Woman Who Killed #NeverTrump

In June 2018, an article appeared in The American Spectator with the headline, “The Collapse of the Never-Trump Conservatives.” Written by Emerald Robinson, then chief White House correspondent for One America News (OAN) Network, and since with Newsmax, the article began thus: With the installation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and a yet-to-be-named […]

Whose ‘Democracy’ Is This?

Since January 6, every liberal on cable TV news has been declaring that “our democracy” is endangered by Trump voters who don’t believe Joe Biden won the election fairly. The latest outburst, by New York Times columnist Mara Gay, depicted the American flag as a racist symbol of this alleged threat to “our democracy.” Having […]

Journalism and Mental Health

Dear Ms. Aviles: What you need here, ma’am, is an expert analysis, and you’ve found the right guy for the job because — ask around — I’ve always been crazy. One spring afternoon in 1986, I put on my three-piece suit and walked into the offices of the Cobb News-Chronicle. I walked out with a […]

You Can’t Say ‘Rigged’

One of the things you learn, if you spend as many years in the news business as I have, is that the news is not random. That is to say, the question of what stories will appear on the front page of the New York Times is not merely a matter of what happened the […]

‘Something for Everyone to Hate’

It would be interesting to know how many high-school students in Loudon County, Virginia, would be able to identify Col. Edward D. Baker. If you are a student of the Civil War, you know that Baker’s death in the Battle of Ball’s Bluff was the chief inspiration for the creation of the Joint Committee on […]

Poised on the Brink of the Abyss

If you have not yet subscribed to The American Spectator, I’ll urge you to do so now, so that you’ll get our upcoming print edition in which I spend more than 3,000 words contemplating the prospects of another civil war in America. Permit me to say what should not need to be said, namely that […]

Good News: Democrats Are Worried

People keep telling me their predictions about the election, and I don’t want to hear them. I have done the Electoral College arithmetic and know that it is easily possible for President Trump to win, even if it’s going to be close and we might have to wait for late returns. More than that, however, […]

Ralph Z. Hallow, R.I.P.

Having worked with many colorful figures over the years, I can confidently say none was more colorful than Ralph Z. Hallow, the veteran political correspondent who died Saturday at age 82. In his youth, Ralph was a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and could tell all kinds of stories about Sixties radicals, […]

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