In GOP Response to SOTU, Haley Defends Immigrants

Ka-ching! Wednesday's Powerball jackpot soared to $1.5 billion as get-rich-quick mania seized America this week. But you don't need to wait for the drawing to know who'll score the royal payoff.

In the commercial that President Obama released prior to his final State of the Union address, Obama said he would tell Congress how "optimistic" he is about America's future.

Michael Hiltzik, a columnist and Los Angeles Times reporter, wrote an article titled "Does a minimum wage raise hurt workers? Economists say: We don't know."

New York Times columnist David Brooks poses as a moderate who never stoops to being crabbily doctrinaire. He is the very model of a PBS/NPR "conservative" -- defining conservatism in a very 1950s way, as wearing dreary gray suits and liking Ike and Dick Nixon. Go along, and get along with the liberal elites.

A recent forum on fighting poverty, sponsored by the Jack Kemp Foundation and moderated by House Speaker Paul Ryan and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, showed why the Republican Party is America's party of vision.

According to conventional wisdom, the GOP nominates the guy whose turn it is, while the Democrats look for a savior. As Bill Clinton once said, "In every presidential election, Democrats want to fall in love. Republicans just fall in line."

At one time in the United States, when storied leaders like Thomas Jefferson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan walked the corridors of the White House, the annual State of the Union actually meant something.

As a Washington DC outsider, patriot and anti-politician who believes in the American Dream and American exceptionalism, I am proud to follow previous Tea Party leaders who have delivered this response to President Obama in previous years - U.S. Senator Rand Paul, U.S. Senator Mike Lee, Congresswoman Michelle Bachman, Congressman Curt Clausen, and former Presidential candidate and business leader Herman Cain.

It is a testament to the precarious state of the world today that in a week that saw North Korea carry out a possible test of a hydrogen bomb, the most frightening statement uttered did not come from Pyongyang. It came from Pakistan.

Last year, there were 452 suicide terror attacks across the world. Four hundred and fifty of them were committed by Muslims. Last month, Muslims pledging allegiance to ISIS murdered 14 people in San Bernardino, California. Last week, thousands of Muslims around Europe, from Germany to Sweden to Switzerland, sexually assaulted hundreds of young women on New Year's Eve. Just days ago, a Muslim man shot a Philadelphia cop at point-blank range and declared that he did it in the name of Islam.

President Barack Obama has a penchant for declaring peace. For example, his second inaugural, delivered in Jan. 2013: "A decade of war is now ending," he said. "An economic recovery has begun."

One doesnt exactly have to reach to come up with reasons why 2016 will be an important year. Particularly in political and policy circles.

More than 500 women filed police complaints after a New Year's Eve celebration in Cologne, Germany, with about 40 percent of the women alleging sexual assault. Of the 32 suspects identified by police, 22 are asylum seekers, mostly North African or Arabic, according to the German Interior Ministry.

A lack of background checks for gun buyers plainly had nothing to do with the mass shootings that have grabbed headlines in the last few years. The weapons used in those crimes were purchased legally from federally licensed firearms dealers, which means the buyers passed background checks.

It has been said time and again, but it bears repeating: about the only thing that restrictive gun laws have done in our country is prevent the good guys from defending themselves when bad guys attack.

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has voted overwhelmingly to go on strike during the 2016 spring semester, with a walk-out tentatively scheduled for late March. This would be the second teachers strike in the Windy City over the past four years and would serve as a glaring reminder shame has been fully expunged from civil society.

There is a new theme emerging in the media: an explicit attempt to normalize abortion to a degree we haven't seen before.

The NFL playoffs will be on TV in millions of American homes this weekend, and the games begin. Mom and dad in their jerseys, kids in their team gear, snacks on the coffee table, beer in the fridge, everybody reaching for something, the eyes of the family eager for impact, a truly American scene. Advertisers and marketers can't ask for anything better than that.

Gold is up 4% in the first week of 2016 while the stock market is down 6%, a 10% swing in one week.

"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."

In recent years, a small but growing number of people have advocated a convention of states to propose amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The reaction to the proposal has been hostile, out of all proportion to either the originality or the danger of such a convention.