Speaking at Ohio State just a few days before abuse of power and dishonesty scandals swept over his administration, President Obama sang one of his trademark odes to the benevolence of government.

Two years ago, this column, along with others, raised an alarm about the Obama administration's decision radically to diminish the due process rights of those accused of sexual harassment on American campuses.

Steven Hawking, the world-renowned physicist and celebrity, has cancelled a planned trip to Israel to participate in a conference sponsored by Israeli President Shimon Peres. His explanation: "I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference."

Clinton's demand -- "What difference does it make?" -- deserves a reply. The public deserves to know if the mistakes the administration made -- conceptual, tactical or both -- contributed to the deaths of four Americans. The public also deserves to know whether the president and his agents audaciously and brazenly lied about a national security matter for political gain.

The Obama administration is quite worried about stereotyping Muslims as violence-prone terrorists. They fear that any acknowledgment that some Muslims commit acts of terror because they are religiously motivated (however twisted the terrorists' interpretation of Islam may be) is to encourage a backlash of intolerance (at best) and violence (at worst) against Muslim Americans.

"Personal charm may be Obama's last best hope" headlined the Washington Post on Monday. That charm was on ample display at the annual vanity fest called the White House Correspondents Association dinner over the weekend.

We do not hesitate to condemn utterly the behavior and the beliefs of the Ku Klux Klan (the perpetrators of this bombing and others) and their white supremacist fellow travelers. We do not worry that reviling white supremacists and their grotesque deeds will somehow taint all white people. But when it comes to other groups and other motives for the same kind of terrorism -- we lose our moral focus.

If there was one thing the left was certain about in 2008 it was this: George W. Bush had catastrophically undermined America's world reputation with his unprovoked aggression and use of torture. The advent of Obama would reverse the damage.

Obama doesn't care about dead children. He's indifferent to the suffering of their parents. There isn't a single coherent argument on his side of the case. He lies about the issue. It's pure politics.

A Gallup poll released this week shows that almost 60 percent of adults in America believe that wealth is distributed unfairly, with over 50 percent saying that "the rich" should be taxed heavily to accomplish a fair distribution of resources.

To understand the magnitude of what Egyptian columnist Khalid Muntasir has done, it helps to get a taste of what most Egyptian and Arab media are like.

We tell ourselves, we parents of college-bound kids (not to mention ordinary citizens), that American campuses really aren't as bad as all that, that students can avoid the most tendentious indoctrinators and that the press tends to exaggerate. And then we read headlines like "Kathy Boudin Teaching at Columbia" and sharp reality once again punctures the comfortable cushion of denial.

President Obama's statement honoring Margaret Thatcher was an example of the chameleon-like nature of liberalism. Rewriting history is a liberal specialty. Just as the anti-Cold War liberals were miraculously transformed into cold warriors after the war had been won, yesterday's anti-Thatcherites are today morphing into something else.

I plunged into Thomas Sowell's latest book "Intellectuals and Race" immediately upon its arrival but soon realized that I needed to slow down. Many writers express a few ideas with a great cataract of words. Sowell is the opposite. Every sentence contains at least one insight or fascinating statistic, frequently more than one.

It's a deeply felt conviction among liberals that they are the caring party. It's not too much to say that liberals are quite confident that they are nicer, more moral people than conservatives.

Same-sex marriage is probably inevitable in America whatever the Supreme Court decides. That's because the public is clearly leaning that way.

This week, together with about 13 million Jews worldwide (yes, that's all there are), our family will celebrate the Feast of Passover -- perhaps the oldest continuously celebrated religious holiday in the world.

The battle over health care reform is not over. Yes, the 2012 election ensured that the law would not be repealed and replaced in 2013. But when the American people are unhappy with a policy, they find a way to alter it.

The Republican National Committee is out with a 100-page analysis of how the party can revive its sagging fortunes.

My favorite talk show host is John Batchelor, whose often expressed, playful worry is that he isn't being cynical enough. The wisest (or is it the most cynical?) among us recognize that a degree of caution is always advisable when dealing with fellow human beings, and that the world has never lacked for frauds, liars, and hypocrites.