New York Post piece on the "nuclear option" push in the Senate

My newest piece at the New York Post starts this way:

President Obama’s timing could have been better. Only two weeks ago in Texas, at a fundraiser, he bragged about “remaking the courts.” 

Obama told the audience: “In addition to the Supreme Court, we’ve been able to nominate and confirm judges of extraordinary quality all across the country on federal benches. We’re actually, when it comes to the district court, matching the pace of previous presidents. When it comes to the appellate court, we’re just a little bit behind, and we’re just going to keep on focused on it.” 

This was quite a change from June, when he accused Republicans of “cynically” engaging in “unprecedented” obstruction of judicial nominations. The president made those charges when he nominated three judges to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia: Patricia Millett, Cornelia Pillard and Robert Wilkins. 

With Republicans filibustering these nominations over the last three weeks, Democrats are now threatening to deploy the “nuclear option” — in effect, ending the ability of senators to filibuster court nominations. On Monday, after the vote to break the filibuster on Wilkins failed, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) warned: “The talk about changing the cloture rules for judicial nominations will no longer be just talk. There will be action.” 

But this is all political rhetoric; the complaints are exaggerated. In fact,  . . .

Newest Fox News piece: Why insurance companies who follow the ObamaCare 'fix' could face legal troubles

Here is the way that my newest Fox News piece starts:

Will Obama's newest “if you like it you can keep it” offer for health insurance really let Americans get their canceled plans back? 

No. And the president knows it.  

The proposal was rushed out on Thursday for two purposes: to give Congressional Democrats cover today before a vote in the House and shift the blame to others. As will be explained shortly, Obama ignored that there is no way for insurance companies to ignore the current law as it stands. 

Five million Americans have so far lost their insurance and they are suffering sticker shock from the new policies. More Americans on individual plans will soon get notices.  

Unfortunately, the problem won’t be limited to the five percent of Americans that Obama claimed on Thursday. Over the next year, at least a total of 129 million Americans will find that they can't keep their current policies as employer-based insurance policies face renewal. 

Obama's "solution" to people losing their policies is to promise he will not enforce part of the ObamaCare law for one year.  . . .

Newest piece at Fox News: Are you a racist if you own a gun?

This is the way my newest piece at Fox News starts:

If you believe a new study, whites who own guns do so because they harbor racist feelings towards blacks. Indeed, in the study, four Australian and British psychologists also claim that racism is associated with opposition to gun control. 

The lead paragraph on this study in Friday's New York Daily News summed up the claim this way: "Racism and guns go together." 

So how is racism measured? Well, you are apparently “racist” if you don't agree that the legacy of slavery still has a great impact on how blacks are faring today. After all, slavery was abolished 158 years ago. 

Besides, blacks were doing relatively better on many dimensions, such as family stability, during the early 1960s than today.  

Of course, people might disagree with these points, but that doesn’t mean that they are racist. 

OK, so conservatives are more likely to own guns than liberals (big surprise there), and they are more likely to believe that people are more responsible for how well they do in life than something that happened to their ancestors over a century and a half ago. . . .

The rest of the piece is available at Fox News.