We've all seen the pictures. Majestic, gargantuan birds living an idyllic existence on their island home free from predators and other external dangers. That is, until under pressure from a changing environment (principally human hunters), coupled with an absence of fear of those hunters, the Dodo bird was driven into...

It's coming down to one number.

Just weeks after the "Gang of 8" bi-partisan senators presented a blueprint for comprehensive immigration reform, nasty political storm clouds are forming over Washington.

Of course, it was to be expected that the anti-immigrant wing of the Republican Party, principally in the...

Hugo Chavez is dead -- but he is no hero. Even as his supporters pour into the streets to mourn their fallen idol, the damage he caused to Venezuela is incalculable.

From an over-dependence on oil revenues, to a forced nationalization of the...

I was asked on my radio show to explain why labeling President Obama a "socialist" is incorrect. Short answer: I think it comes down to objective reality.

A more thoughtful answer would start with the facts. Socialism is an economic/social/political system with specific attributes. Whereas historically the...

In a matter of weeks we've gone from promises of enacting "self-deportation" policies, to a real shot at bi-partisan, comprehensive immigration reform -- a whiplash, surely. How did we get here? For Republicans seeking a path to winning a national majority again, understanding what's...

When the incoming missile attack siren sounded I was paralyzed. Some 50 feet from the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the world's holiest site for Jews, I was in the middle of a mass stampede of men, clutching their various religious possessions, Bibles, prayer shawls and many-colored kipas on their heads,...

The recent controversy surrounding a visa for Fidel Castro's daughter to visit the U.S. is another example of the obvious: the United States' embargo of communist Cuba is a failure.

Fifty-two years after U.S. policy first sought to break the communist dictatorship with an economic embargo, the Castro regime is...

Living in Los Angeles I drive by multi-car pile-ups on the freeway at least once a week. An occurrence so common that it no longer shocks or surprises. Yet it is impossible to take your eyes off the wreckage.

Similarly, you'd think that when the Republican presidential candidates debate each...

Forget everything you're reading about Newt Gingrich's supposedly ephemeral boom in the polls.

Disregard the increasingly sardonic mini-exposes of the former Speaker's hypocrisy, such as attacking former Senator Chris Dodd's financial industry reform, even as he was becoming a super lobbyist cha-chinging millions of dollars for "strategic advice" as...

Why is Mitt Romney so unloved by the Republican base?

Even after Rick Perry's meteoric rise and fall in the polls, the main beneficiary of the Texas governor's stumbles has been Herman Cain, not Romney.

In a series of polls over the last few days, Cain, a man...

The second largest city in America has the public education system of a poor, sub-developed third world nation.

Los Angeles' public schools are factories of failure, despair and poverty. The kids who survive this system, the students and parents that somehow transcend the culture of dysfunction to graduate, are...

The Obama Administration's announcement that it would review, on a case-by-case basis, the approximately 300,000 pending deportation cases in immigration courts to weed-out non-criminal immigrants and focus on deporting felons was greeted with both high praise and wild alarm.

A wave of celebration broke out yesterday among undocumented kids...

Not that you'd know it by the pie-throwing contest in Washington over the last few weeks, but America is actually not falling apart.

The ideologically pure politicians in the Congress, with their ability and lust to disagree on even such idiocies as to what French fries should be called in...

Can the United States pay 100% of its financial obligations? Of course. That is not the issue driving the downgrade of U.S. creditworthiness by Standard & Poor's.

Rather, S&P's downgrade is a pointed critique of our political system -- the reality that we have a group of political extremists,...

So it's not about the deficit after all.

For months we've heard the increasingly shrill alarms being sounded by supposedly sober-minded Republican Congressional leaders that America is the next Greece -- balancing carefully over a debt precipice, destruction inevitable unless radical action is taken.

These alarms have been so effective...

Dear Congressman Gutierrez,

Are you a secret Republican? Are you now actively engaged in making sure that Obama is a one-term president? Are you trying to destroy any chance for comprehensive immigration reform for the next 10 years?

Based on your words and actions over the last two years, it...

If the American Revolution started with the flinging of British tea into Boston Harbor, the new American Revolution started last week -- when a majority of parents in a poverty stricken part of Los Angeles took control of their dismal, failing public school.

California has been going through some tough...

The Republican Party is killing the dream - again.

The 42 Republican U.S. Senators have signed a pledge to filibuster all pending bills, except those dealing with spending and taxes, during the lame duck session of Congress.

Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership, with support from the White House, have...

Listen to right-wing talk radio and well, it would seem that America has been taken-over by Lenin and the rest of his Communist cadres. Depending on the radio program, we're either about to become a communist or fascist nation (okay, sometimes both), all because of the suspiciously foreign-looking guy in...

You could almost hear Meg Whitman's campaign coming off the rails the day she became "tough as nails" on undocumented immigrants.

Faced with the accusation by her GOP primary opponent, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, that Whitman was soft on "illegals," the Whitman juggernaut responded with the political equivalent of...