Category Archives: Radio Commentaries

On June 7, 1981, the Israeli air force attacked and destroyed a nuclear plant facility in Iraq. Israel called it a preemptive attack. Its justification, they said, was that Iraq was on the verge of making nuclear weapons. Operation Babylon, as it was called, was roundly condemned by the international community, including the United States. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin responded with what became known as the Begin Doctrine: “On no account shall we permit an enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction against the people of Israel. We shall defend the citizens of Israel in good time and with all the means at our disposal.” read more

In the aftermath of the failed early Senate votes to repeal Obamacare, Donald Trump tweeted, “The very outdated filibuster rule must go. Budget reconciliation is killing R’s in Senate. Mitch M, go to 51 Votes NOW and WIN. IT’S TIME!” And followed with this Tweet, “Republicans in the Senate will NEVER win if they don’t go to a 51 vote majority NOW. They look like fools and are just wasting time.”

As it turned out, even 51 votes could not be found to support any of the measures to repeal Obamacare. In late-night dramatic fashion, on the final Senate vote called “skinny repeal,” John McCain was the last to vote and his would be the deciding vote. Amidst the crowd of curious and frustrated senators at 1:30 am, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell staring him down, McCain approached the tally clerk, extended his hand equidistant between yea and nay, held it for what seemed like an eternity, and then lowered his thumb in opposition. read more

The push to defund Planned Parenthood is not new. As the nation’s largest provider of abortions today, Planned Parenthood has been under attack since eugenicist Margaret Sanger breathed life into it in 1916. It began as her effort at population control. She figured that if “inferior” people could be convinced (or forced) to stop having children, humanity’s future would be bright. This was the beginning of what we, conservatives, refer to as a “culture of death” – a culture in which preventing and ending life is of higher priority than creating and nurturing life. read more

To solve the health care fiasco in the United States, we have to understand actual health care markets and spending; we need to establish foundational principles from which to build health care policies; and, we need to strip health care debates of politics.

Short of paying cash or trading chickens for service, the private health care insurance market has served its customers relatively well. Insurance providers offer medical plans and consumers choose from those plans or not at all. As with all insurance, medical coverage is based on risk. If you live a healthy lifestyle and do not seem to suffer from a history of illness, you would pay lower premiums for your coverage. The opposite is true if you have chosen unhealthy behaviors and activities or if you have a history of some illness. This is the way insurance works and it will not work any other way. read more

In a recent Salt Lake Tribune commentary, I wrote about the problems of extremism in Utah politics. As a conservative, I focused on how many members of the Utah Republican Party had become radicalized. By radicalized, I mean many Utah Republicans have separated their personal values from their political principles. Historically, we have witnessed the horrors perpetrated by a society in which personal values were abandoned when so-called principles were idolized. For instance, it is hard to imagine, still to this day, how a German husband and father in the 1940s could gas Jews during the day and joyfully bounce a new child on his knee at night. read more

Donald Trump wants the voter registration records for Utah and every other state. Surely nothing could go wrong with that request, could it? If Barack Obama had requested the same information from the states, surely nobody would be suspect, would they?

Trump wants all voter registration information to confirm his prediction that upwards of five million people voted illegally in the 2016 election. Surely, Trump must have won the popular vote. Surely, only voter fraud prevented him from winning the popular vote. And, surely, those conniving illegal immigrants and their Democratic Party enablers teamed up to undermine U.S. elections – not Russia, just illegals and Democrats. read more

Commenting on the Senate health care bill currently being debated, conservative pundit Marc Thiessen writes, “Here is the summary of the bill that Democrats will take to the American people in 2018: Republicans voted to cut $701 billion in taxes for corporations and the wealthy, and pay for it with $772 billion taken from Medicaid for the poor — all while pushing 22 million Americans off health care. And Senate Republicans are writing the script for them. Have they lost their minds?” He concludes, “Paying for a massive tax cut for the wealthy with cuts to health care for the most vulnerable Americans is morally reprehensible.” read more

Okay, let me sound like the conservative heretic I am often accused of being: Conservatives should let the Our Schools Now initiative run its course. Don’t oppose it. To publicly and vociferously oppose the Our Schools Now initiative, Utah conservatives will look stupid, sound stupid and most certainly act stupid. The reason is simple: Utah conservatives, by and large, don’t understand the playing field in Utah education. They emphasize what doesn’t matter at the expense of what really does. read more

In response to the series of Senate Intelligence Committee hearings over the past couple of weeks, Utah Senator Mike Lee recommends that his colleagues and all of America just “move on.” He believes there is nothing to see so far coming from any of the four testimonies by Comey, Coats, Rogers and Sessions. Senator Lee has concluded that there is not a scintilla of evidence remotely indicating that Donald Trump is obstructing justice in the Russia investigation.

All I can say is really? Senator Lee is a smart man, probably the smartest legal mind in the Senate and certainly one of the most well read conservatives anywhere. I respect him deeply and, for the record, my wife works for him. I appreciate his usual candor as well as his characteristic caution. He’s not the kind of leader to jump to conclusions or accept the merit of a case on its face. He wants to know everything and, typically, in great detail. read more

Do you live in a bubble? Probably not, but it did get me thinking more seriously about the whole “bubble” concept. I remember a Saturday Night Live skit about progressives living in the Bubble now that Trump is president. It begins with a hippie looking guy saying, “What if there was a place where the unthinkable didn’t happen and life could continue for progressive Americans as before?” The skit goes on to describe this new Bubble as a “planned community of like-minded free thinkers…and no one else. If you’re an open-minded person, come here and close yourself in.” In the Bubble, “it’s like the election never happened.” Bernie Sanders’ face is on the Bubble’s one-dollar bill. They stream their high-speed Internet “with only the good sites” like Huffington Post, Daily Kos and “Netflix documentaries about sushi rice.” And “unlike the rest of America, anybody is welcome to join us…one-bedroom apartments start at only $1.9 million.” The only things the progressive Bubble community lack are police and fire departments because “they can’t find any who would agree to live there.” It’s great satire and deadly. But you get the idea of the bubble. read more