Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation. He holds a PhD in the Humanities from the University of Texas. Readers may write him at IPI, Suite 820, 1320 Greenway Drive, Irving, TX, 75038.
Jailed voters should be rehabilitated and freed before their voting rights are restored!
DALLAS — On April 24, Texas executed white supremacist John William “Bill” King. He was a murderer, but he also would have been a voter—if Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders had his way.
King was found guilty of the brutal 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr., a black man, by chaining him to the back of a truck and dragging him to death. With his conviction and incarceration, King forfeited several of his rights and freedoms—including the right to vote.
- Sunday, May 12, 2019
DALLAS —The Electoral College is one of the most critical institutions created by the Framers of the Constitution to ensure a stable representative government, yet it’s under attack.
DALLAS — chance at capturing the White House in 2020; your children’s Democratic Party, which is what we have today, faces a tougher fight.
To win the election, Democrats will have to overcome two major obstacles: history and their lurch to the political left. They cannot change the first obstacle, and they seemingly don’t want to change the second.
DALLAS — What if you entered a presidential race and no one really cared?
That was the ho-hum reaction to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren’s New Year’s Eve announcement that she was forming a presidential exploratory committee.
DALLAS — The recent French demonstrations against President Emmanuel Macron’s gasoline tax increase may have been the first such uprising, but it probably won’t be the last—in France or elsewhere.
DALLAS—If you thought having 17 Republican presidential candidates in 2016 was excessive, wait until you see the even longer list of 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls. You won’t have to wait long!
DALLAS — President Donald Trump is sending federal troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and taking other steps to stop the Honduran migrant caravan headed for the United States.
It’s unfortunate that it’s come to this, but it’s the right thing to do!
DALLAS — At the very end of Tora! Tora! Tora!, a 1970 film about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto expresses his concern about attacking America, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
DALLAS — Outgoing California governor Jerry Brown wants to be remembered as an environmental warrior—regardless of how much it costs Golden State residents and businesses.
The governor just signed legislation requiring utilities to generate 60 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030, with a goal of phasing out all fossil fuels by 2045.
Then he headed to the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco for a victory lap, where he boasted that the state would launch its “own damn satellite” to track “climate pollutants”—apparently trying to outdo NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, which has been doing just that since 2014.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The latest liberal fad for reducing poverty and income inequality is called a “universal basic income” or UBI for short.
California Democrats have included a UBI provision in their state Democratic platform. And two California cities are implementing limited UBI pilot projects. Unfortunately, the idea is both unaffordable and won’t fix the low-income problem.
DALLAS — Not so long ago Democrats would run for cover whenever a colleague proposed a government-run, single-payer healthcare system. Today, they scramble to out-single-payer other Democrats, even at the state level.
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, at the request of the Justice Department, has instructed the U.S. Census Bureau to include a question on the 2020 decennial census asking whether the respondent is a U.S. citizen.
DALLAS, Texas—President Trump frequently boasts of his success in rolling back costly and harmful regulations. Let’s hope that effort includes the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).
The RFS is the latest phase in Congress’s decades-long support for the ethanol industry. The problem is that support has outlived its usefulness.
DALLAS, Texas — By virtually any traditional measure—as well as a few nontraditional measures—President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union (SOTU) address was a great success. Let us count the ways.
DALLAS, Texas — Last March President Donald Trump issued an executive order “promoting energy independence and economic growth.”
While he specifically included “renewable sources,” he clearly intended to unleash the nation’s massive fossil fuel resources, which is the only conceivable way to achieve energy independence—at least for the foreseeable future.
Don’t let Washington do to our cars and trucks what they did to our health insurance!