Doug Patton

Another Clinton Lies Under Oath

Did anyone believe a word Hillary Clinton told Congress about the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, in Benghazi, Libya, on the night of September 11, 2012? Did anyone believe her about what she knew and when she knew it? Does anyone believe that Republicans laid a glove on her during her testimony? The answers: no, no and no.

One Third of a Generation Gone in 40 Years

A little more than a month ago, 20 innocent children were savagely and senselessly slaughtered in their classroom at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, a fact now being used by an opportunistic president to further his agenda.

Unlike Romnesia, Obamasterics a Serious Malady

During the 2012 presidential election, Barack Obama coined a catchy phrase to describe all the flip-flops in which his opponent had allegedly engaged during the course of his career. On virtually every issue, from health care to abortion, from taxes to so-called pay equity, from welfare to gun control, Obama said the GOP nominee suffered from “Romnesia.”

The View from the Bottom of a Fiscal Abyss

Forty-one dollars in tax increases for every one dollar in spending cuts. That’s the shrewd deal Speaker of the House John Boehner negotiated with President Barack Obama. Obama, Boehner and other congressional leaders have known for a year and a half that these automatic tax increases and so-called spending cuts — also known as the fiscal cliff, or sequestration — were coming, and yet they did nothing. In fact, Obama seemed to gleefully taunt Republicans after his re-election in November, as though he wanted to go over “the cliff.” He taunts them still, and it will get worse.

Newtown a Microcosm of Government Failure

It has become axiomatic that when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. In the case of the first responders to the horrific school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, it was 20 minutes, to be exact.

If Ever We Needed Christ in Christmas, It Is Now

This year, the politically correct gestures of seasonal salutation (Happy Holidays, Season’s Greetings, etc.), which for too long have served as substitutes for the real thing, have become vacuous, stale and boring. This year, somehow, they seem especially inadequate to express the sentiment we so desperately need to hear at this moment in time.

Right-to-Work in Michigan: 24 down, 26 to go

Back in the late 1970s, when the now-legendary Lee Iacocca took the reins at Chrysler, he was reputed to have told the union bosses, “Look, boys, I’ve got a shotgun to your head. I’ve got thousands of jobs at seventeen bucks an hour. I’ve got no jobs at twenty.”

One More Component in Electing a Conservative President

Last week, I outlined a series of proposals for electing our next conservative president, including a needed societal shift in culture, education, news and entertainment media and essential control of our southern border. However, there is another very important component: a fundamental change in the way we elect our chief executive.

Will We Ever See Another Conservative President?

After the shellacking taken in this year’s presidential election, will we ever see another conservative president? In the past, I have opined with great optimism in this space about the strength of the “farm team” of courageous conservative leaders — men like Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Bob McDonnell, Scott Walker and Ted Cruz, and women like Nicky Haley, Susanna Martinez, Sarah Palin and Deb Fischer — whose ascendency gives dispirited conservatives hope for the salvation of the Republic in the years to come.

Why I’m Thankful in 2012

The older I get, the more I realize the importance of the little things that are right in front of me to appreciate all year long. So, once again, as we celebrate Thanksgiving, this uniquely American holiday, here is the list of blessings for which I am thankful in 2012.

Petraeus’ Testimony Will Make Little Difference

The fall of retired Army General David Petraeus is a story as old as the Garden of Eden. Sin has consequences. It does not undo a lifetime of service, nor does it negate every good deed ever performed, but it leaves a mark, a scar, like nails driven into a fine table top. The nails can be removed, just as transgressions can be forgiven, but the scars will remain.

John Galt Calling: Had Enough?

“They believe in free stuff. We believe in free people.” - U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, 2012 vice presidential nominee

Meanwhile, Back in Benghazi…

The national media must be breathing a collective sigh of relief at having Hurricane Sandy come along to help them avoid covering Benghazigate, the biggest scandal of the most corrupt presidential administration in the last one hundred years — perhaps in American history.

Campaign Commercials Romney Should Run

Because he is now the only person standing between the American people and four more disastrous years of you-know-who, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is unquestionably my pick for President of the United States. However, like millions of other American conservatives, my first, second or third choices during the Republican presidential primary season were, in fact, someone else — and the last couple of weeks have reminded me why that was the case.

Roberts Rules, now it’s the People’s Turn

Even as more qualified legal scholars than I could ever hope to be analyze the ramifications of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ convoluted ruling on the so-called Affordable Care Act (more appropriately dubbed “Obamacare”), a new sport has arisen among pundits, talking heads, court watchers and other members of the chattering classes — a game of attempting to determine Roberts’ motive for upholding the president’s signature legislative achievement.

Obama Team’s Leaks Are, Indeed, ‘Offensive’

The spectacle of the elite media — CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, The New York Times, etc. — hiding their collective eyes to the increasingly outrageous scandals coming out of the Obama administration, must remind Vladimir Putin of the good old days when he was a KGB thug and his fellow Russians got their information from a small handful sources such as the official Soviet newspaper, Pravda (Russian for "Truth").

Government Does Very Few Things Well

It is almost axiomatic that if something can be done efficiently by the private sector, local government will try to restrict it, tax it, regulate it or take it over. If local government somehow manages to do something well, state officials will do their best to make sure responsibility for that thing is transferred to them. And if, by some miracle, state government is in charge of a thing that is functioning properly and economically, you can rest assured the feds will conclude that, against all logic and historical evidence, they are the entity that can best serve the public in that area.

Liberals Are Waging the Real War on Women

I’m trying to figure out how to explain to my grandchildren that they are growing up in a society, mostly of my own generation’s making, which has put its stamp of approval on some of the vilest practices ever known to civilized man.

Memorial Day 2012 Was a Solemn Occasion

On Sunday morning of Memorial Day weekend, my family and I gather at a small rural cemetery on a windswept hillside, surrounded by rich Iowa farmland, as the local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars honors the men buried there who served in all of America's wars, from the War of 1812 to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

For the Left, Their Ends Always Justify Their Means

In the 1984 U. S. Senate race in Iowa, incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Jepsen was facing his first re-election bid. His General Election opponent was a congressman named Tom Harkin, one of the most underhanded Democrats ever to lie through his teeth in the pursuit of higher office.