Published for The Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2012

A funny thing happened on the way to the New Hampshire primary: ABC moderator George Stephanopoulos embarrassed himself on national television with questions plainly intended to embarrass the Republican candidates. Therein lies a lesson.

On Saturday night, Mr. Stephanopoulos stepped outside the role of honest interlocutor when he pursued Mitt Romney with the issue on nobody’s lips or legislative agenda: whether states have the right to ban contraception. Likewise, fellow moderator Diane Sawyer, who asked Republicans what they would say, “sitting in their living rooms,” to a gay couple.

As the audience appreciated—they booed after Mr. Stephanopolous’s sixth follow-up—these questions were designed less to illuminate than to paint Republicans as people who hate gays and are so crazy they might just ban contraception if elected.

For conservatives, this is nothing new. Conservatives are used to a world where the referees often seem to be playing for the other team. In this case, however, the responses from the candidates were revealing.

Rick Santorum essentially answered directly, opposing the Supreme Court’s definition of privacy and defending traditional marriage. On the question about gays, Newt Gingrich called marriage between a man and a woman a defining part of our civilization. He then turned the question back on Ms. Sawyer, wondering why the press never asks about how same-sex marriage is driving the Catholic Church out of the adoption business. As for state bans on contraception, Mr. Romney noted that no state was in fact proposing to do so, “and asking me whether they could do it or not is kind of a silly thing.”

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Published for The Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2012

This new year, spare a thought for that most underappreciated class of citizen: American expatriates.

In a world where 95% of consumers live outside our borders, Americans working abroad serve as the sales and marketing force for Brand USA. All things being equal, people go with what they know: An American engineer will turn to American technology, an American businessman will hire fellow Americans, and an American contractor will likewise prefer American goods and services. In a nation trying to reach President Obama’s goal of doubling exports by 2014, that makes the expat a pretty valuable resource.

Alas, the U.S. tax code—the ugliest of ugly Americans—doesn’t work that way. To the contrary, new changes in tax law regard foreign financial institutions (banks, pension funds, etc.) as colonial subjects who must be dragooned into enforcing ill-thought-out U.S. regulations, or face huge fines. Indeed our tax code appears to rest on the assumption that the American expat is a criminal and must be treated that way.

This assumption is embodied in the IRS’s new Form 8938, which requires Americans who live abroad to report any foreign financial assets from stocks to partnerships to derivatives above a designated threshold. It comes on top of another form (the FBAR, or Foreign Bank Account Report) already required if a citizen has any foreign accounts that add up to more than $10,000. In some cases, you can be fined for failing to file even if you don’t owe the IRS any money.

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Published for The Wall Street Journal, December 27, 2011

Poor Kim Kardashian. Well, poor may not be the right word. By all accounts—especially those she televises for her reality shows—Ms. Kardashian manages quite comfortably on her income. According to the New York Post, that includes as much as $17.9 million that she raked in for her well-publicized August wedding to NBA star Kris Humphries.

Public morality can be a tricky thing, however, and apparently Ms. Kardashian has now crossed a line.

It’s not her split from Mr. Humphries only 72 days after their wedding, which raised questions about whether the marriage was simply one big publicity stunt. Nor was it the earlier sex tape that earned her celebrity and riches. Only a prude would object to that.

No, Ms. Kardashian’s sin is this: She pays what she owes in state taxes under California law, instead of the much larger amount that some self-appointed advocacy group thinks she ought to be paying.

The organization is called Courage Campaign and its website reveals it to be a California mélange of activist groups and labor unions. In a video that presents Ms. Kardashian in some of her more conspicuously consumptive moments, Courage Campaign claims that while Ms. Kardashian made more than $12 million in 2010, she paid only one percentage point more in taxes (10.3%) than a middle-class Californian (9.3%).

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Published for The Wall Street Journal, December 20, 2011

When Jews begin their Hanukkah celebrations this week, they will commemorate a 2,200-year old revolt led by Judah Maccabee against a Greek empire attempting to crush the Jewish faith. For some, the holiday holds an added resonance, linking their military service to one of the greatest Jewish warriors of all time.

These are the Jews of the United States Marine Corps.

In the popular mind, a Jewish Marine may sound exotic. In fact, Jews have their own chapters in the history of the Corps. In his book “Semper Chai!” Howard J. Leavitt explains the compatibility with a refreshing lack of nuance: “[M]any Jews were—and are—Marines, and the basic and lofty precepts and spiritual underpinnings of the United States, the U.S. Marine Corps and Judaism are one and the same, without any differences or conflict.”

In my life, Jews and Marines just go together. Maybe it started with my sister’s father-in-law, Harold Green. Having grown up in a family whose first song was “The Marines’ Hymn,” none of my brothers were surprised that when our sister gave her heart to a nice Jewish boy, he would be one whose dad—like hers—had been a Marine.

There are also the children of friends. When Bill Kristol’s son was graduated from Harvard two years ago, many of his classmates went on to law school or hedge funds. Lt. Joseph Kristol deployed to Afghanistan, where he led Marines in the fabled 3/5 (3rd Battalion, 5th Marines) during combat in Helmand province. Another Ivy Leaguer who also exchanged Harvard Crimson for Marine Crimson is Lt. Matthew Blumenthal, son of Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.).

Then there’s the Ledeen family. Among my most memorable evenings was a farewell for Marine Lt. Gabriel Ledeen, who was shipping off to pre-surge Iraq. That night we brought our three young daughters to his mom and dad’s house, so they might remember the pride and anxiety of families whose sacrifices enable ours to sleep safely at night. Gabriel Ledeen is no longer on active duty but has been followed into the Corps by a brother who is: Lt. Daniel Ledeen.

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Published for The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2011

In the church of Kathleen Sebelius, there is little room for dissent. “We are in a war,” the Health and Human Services Secretary declared to cheers at a recent NARAL Pro-Choice America fund-raiser. Give the lady her due: Her actions mostly match her words.

Mrs. Sebelius’s militancy explains the shock her allies are now feeling after last Wednesday’s decision to overrule the Food and Drug Administration on Plan B, a morning-after pill. The FDA had proposed allowing over-the-counter sales, which would give girls as young as 11 or 12 access without either a prescription or a parent. Now the secretary’s allies are howling about her “caving in” to the Catholic bishops.

On this score they needn’t worry. Notwithstanding the unexpected burst of common sense on Plan B, the great untold story remains the intolerance so beloved of self-styled progressives. In this Mrs. Sebelius has proved herself one of the administration’s most faithful practitioners: here watering down conscience protections for nurses and doctors who don’t want to participate in abortions; there yanking funding for a top-rated program for victims of sexual trafficking run by the Catholic bishops, because they will not sign on to the NARAL agenda; soon to impose a new HHS mandate that will require health-insurance plans to cover contraception, sterilization and drugs known to induce abortion.

Alas for her president, her zeal for this agenda has yielded two unintended consequences. Within her party, it is creating a rift between the Planned Parenthood wing and the president’s Catholic and religious supporters. Outside her party, it is illuminating the danger of equating bigger government with a more just society.

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Published for The Wall Street Journal on December 6, 2011

He’s young, dynamic, and well-spoken. As a Republican vice presidential nominee, he could help with Latino voters in 2012.

And he’s not Marco Rubio.

His name is Luis Fortuño, and he’s part of a rising generation of Republicans pushing pro-growth, small-government agendas. Like many of these men and women, Mr. Fortuño is a governor. What makes him striking is that he’s governor of an American territory, Puerto Rico, rather than an American state.

“I’m flattered,” says Mr. Fortuño when a reporter pitches the vice presidency to him. “But what I’ve done in Puerto Rico hasn’t been about my own re-election or advancement. It been about doing what I think is right.”

Spend any time with Mr. Fortuño, and you will learn that high on his list of doing what’s right is ensuring government lives within its means. When he was elected governor in 2008, one out of three Puerto Ricans were working for the government. When he was sworn in, there wasn’t enough money to meet the payroll. In response, Mr. Fortuño cut spending and 20,000 government workers, provoking angry protests.

The governor stood his ground. Earlier this year, he signed a bill slashing individual and corporate taxes—and he says there’s much more to do. For example, because Puerto Rico is not connected to the U.S. electric grid, it gets 68% of its electricity from oil (against about 1% for the U.S.), making its economy especially vulnerable to high oil prices. Just last week, Mr. Fortuño won a huge victory when the Army Corps of Engineers issued a favorable preliminary ruling on a natural-gas pipeline that would run 92 miles from southern Puerto Rico toward San Juan.

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Published for The Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2011

When President Obama visits Scranton Wednesday, he will speak at the same high school gym where Hillary Clinton kicked off her Pennsylvania campaign in March 2008. We forget it now, but even then Scranton folks were skeptical about the guy promising hope and change.

In that primary, Mr. Obama never did connect. On St. Patrick’s Day, he showed up in Scranton wearing no green until someone asked him why and he borrowed a green tie from a staffer. It didn’t help that a few weeks before the vote, he explained his inability to gain traction in Pennsylvania by accusing its small-town citizens of being “bitter” and clinging “to guns or religion.”

Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, played the homecoming queen. In a speech to an overflow crowd, she spoke about the Scranton Lace Company where her grandfather worked; about the Court Street Methodist Church where she had been baptized; about the slice she’d enjoyed that afternoon at Revello’s Pizza-Café.

Mrs. Clinton’s message resonated: She won the Pennsylvania primary handily. Most telling was her strength among the non-college-educated white working class, which went for her by as much as three to one. Indeed, though Mr. Obama would go on to win Pennsylvania that November, he would still lose its white working class to Republican John McCain.

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Published for The Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2011

This Thursday, in a parish hall not far from the New Jersey town green where George Washington once made his winter headquarters, as many as 300 people will gather for their Thanksgiving meal. Some will be homeless, some will be mentally ill, some will be old, and some will be folks and families who have just hit a hard patch. For all of them, Morristown’s Community Soup Kitchen and Outreach Center is one of the few blessings they can count on.

In many ways, this soup kitchen illustrates Tocqueville’s point about the American genius for voluntary association. Having started out in a local Episcopal church, it has grown into a network that links restaurants, corporate sponsors and community groups with volunteers from nearly three dozen church congregations, including this reporter’s. The result is a hot meal to anyone who comes to the door each noon, no questions asked.

This the men and women of the Community Soup Kitchen have provided for 26 years, not once missing a day. Now comes a challenge greater than any snowstorm or power outage. Earlier this year, the Morristown Division of Health ruled that henceforth the soup kitchen would be considered a “retail” food establishment under New Jersey law.

From that single word far-reaching consequences have flowed. In a column for a local blog, Ray Friant, a volunteer from the Morristown United Methodist Church, called the rule “crazy.” Over Sunday breakfast at a local diner, Mr. Friant, his wife, Emmy Lu, and another church couple who also volunteer at the kitchen, Barbara and Jim Morris, spell out what they mean by crazy.

Most obvious is the higher cost: at least $150,000 more a year. To meet this increase, the kitchen is asking each participating church to up its own contribution. Some congregations don’t have the money. For those that do, it will mean less for some other need.

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Published for The Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2011

New York gave us banks too big to fail. Washington bequeathed us Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Still, when it comes to crony capitalism, no one quite matches Chicago.

Soon the Illinois state legislature will meet in special session to consider the Chicago machine’s latest favor: legislation designed to deliver tax relief to three of the state’s largest companies. These tax breaks for the lucky few come just 10 months after the Illinois legislature approved what has been described as the largest tax increase in the state’s history. It’s no coincidence that both have been supported by Gov. Pat Quinn and other top leaders of the state’s Democratic Party.

In so doing, Chicago is giving America a window into the logic of crony capitalism: Raise taxes on everyone—and then cut side deals with those big enough to lobby for special relief.

The legislature is considering this limited tax relief because three corporate mainstays of greater Chicago have threatened to leave without it. One is the CME Group, operator of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the world’s largest futures exchange by volume. Another is the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), the world’s largest options exchange. The last is Sears, one of America’s oldest and most famous retailing giants.

Earlier this month, CME chairman Terrence Duffy told Illinois lawmakers that his company is entertaining “very, very lucrative offers” from other states. Meanwhile, his counterpart at the CBOE, Bill Brodsky, says his exchange needs relief from a tax code that is “virtually punitive.” Sears has chimed in too, with its general counsel reporting that it has a $400 million offer from a nearby state to relocate there.

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Published for The Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2011

In 1982, two social scientists—George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson—published an article in the Atlantic in which they argued that a city window left broken is an invitation to further disorder. Their message was as simple as it was unconventional. Sweat the small stuff (graffiti, aggressive panhandling, petty crime) and you’ll stop problems before they grow bigger.

In the three decades since, mayors and police chiefs across America have transformed their cities by taking the broken-window message to heart, especially in New York. Now Occupy Wall Street has taken a high-profile part of Manhattan and turned it into an anarchist campground worse than the Tompkins Square Park of the 1980s, when it stood for the worst of New York—encampments of the homeless and a haven for drug dealing. The OWS protesters seem to have no fear of Michael Bloomberg: A sign at one entryway warns hizzoner that if he tries to interfere, he will be the one arrested.

For most, the Occupy movement has been a lark. For Woodstock wannabees, it’s a romantic trip back to the Vietnam War protests they weren’t around for. For television cameras and leftish documentarians, it’s a feast of crazy signs and even crazier behavior. For a certain kind of Democrat, it’s the answer to the energy of the tea party (“We are on their side,” President Obama said of the Occupy movement to ABC News just three weeks ago).

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