Miller Hudson

Just as it seems presidential politics can’t get any weirder, with one candidate who has a better grasp of reality on his worst days than his challenger has on his

Since I was a teenager, I’ve been an early riser. In college I would sign-up for the 7:00 AM labs and, as much as possible, schedule all my classes before

Two weeks before shots rang out in Butler, Pennsylvania, I received a solicitation from the Trump campaign headlined “I NEED YOU ON MY WAR COUNCIL!” If you are wondering why

There is considerable academic debate regarding the purpose served by American political parties in the 21st century. A sequence of reforms over the past 50 years were intended to transfer

For at least a century, America's aging generations have been suspicious their children are headed for perdition: jazz-age flappers, depression-era bobby-soxers, 1950s rock-and-rollers swiveling their hips to Elvis and Little Richard, followed by the British invasion, the pill, hip-hop profanity coupled with misogyny which prompted even Dionne Warwick to berate a gaggle of rappers over breakfast in her kitchen. Tipper Gore managed to convince U.S. Congress to place Parental Advisory stickers on CDs and albums in the 1990s just as retail music sales were moved to Amazon and online services. This repeated cultural handwringing is, more often than not, about sex. As one wag noted, each new generation believes it has invented sex while the senior generations are losing interest and willing partners.

My wife spends more time trekking through the internet swamp than I. When she informed me a few weeks ago the alphabet generations have adopted the term “rizz” as a shorthand for charisma, she also warned me the terminology may already be fading as a "thing." For the sake of discussion, let's ride with it. The notion of charisma comes in several flavors. For musicians, comedians, athletes and Hollywood idols, the personal qualities which attract fans are intrinsic to the individuals we admire. They may be sexy, clever, funny, attractive or compelling, but their rizz is transmitted outward and sprayed across their fandom. It's a top-down transmission.

The night before John Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961, the nation’s capital was blanketed by more than two feet of snow. My twin brother and I were 15 and Eagle Scouts.

A pair of stories this week point to the looming disaster that is Colorado fiscal policy. The larger tale is the five-year failure to deploy a fix for property tax distortions. Since the 2020 repeal of the Gallagher Amendment, both Gov. Jared Polis and several crops of legislative leadership have been participants in a profound dereliction of duty. This is the more complicated misfeasance of the pair and takes longer to explain. So, let's examine the recent report from the Common Sense Institute (CSI) examining the metastasis of fee-funded government. When the TABOR amendment was approved by voters in 1992, state fee collections amounted to a few hundred million dollars annually. This involved hunting permits, license plates, drivers licenses and a grab bag of other fee-for-service structures.

When an organization devotes more energy persecuting internal heretics than effort to expand its membership, there's reason to suspect institutional atrophy. Only a half-century passed following the launch of the Spanish Inquisition before a German priest tacked 95 theses to his cathedral door in 1517. Eight years later, Martin Luther abandoned celibacy in order to marry and raise a family, founding what would become the Lutheran faith. The threat of being burned at the stake by the Inquisition significantly reduced public dissent but, inadvertently, promoted migration to the new world of the Americas.

Writing a weekly political opinion column doesn’t require a commitment to balance. I am free to be just as biased as I’d like, but unrelenting partisan zealotry seems certain to