Armstrong Williams

This past weekend the entertainment world lost one of its biggest stars with the death of Whitney Houston. Based on the news coverage of this event, you would think that much more was lost than an individual life.

Although any loss of life is tragic, the obsession of our culture with celebrity is reminiscent of the adulation bestowed upon royalty and sports figures in many other cultures. This also reminds us of the undue attention paid to athletes and famous people in the Roman and Greek empires prior to their fall.

The president’s ObamaCare compromise is that Catholic charities don't have to offer contraceptives to their employees through their mandatory healthcare insurance policies. Instead, their insurance companies must provide employees the contraceptives for free. This is not a compromise, but a sleight of hand.
 
Who does the administration think is going to pay for these contraceptives? If they think the insurance company, out of the goodness of its heart, will pay out of profits, they are gravely mistaken. Instead, when the insurance company quotes a Catholic charity a health insurance policy that excludes free contraceptives, they will knowingly price it at the same rate as that of an institution that must provide contraceptives to its employees. If they are prohibited from charging the Catholic charities the same rate as other institutions and must charge a lower rate, then the insurance companies will pass the costs on to all the non-Catholic-charity policyholders. That means the rest of America must subsidize contraceptives for the workers of Catholic charities.

Isn't it convenient how this administration continues to manipulate our separation of church and state? In fact what they're doing is trampling on the First Amendment without any conscience. Our government was never designed to control the church, and the church should never have control over the government.

This administration is constantly testing the waters to see how much it can erode the rights of the people. There is no justification for forcing people to disregard their deeply held religious convictions in a "free" country. This, coupled with the president's pronouncement a couple of years ago that we were not a Judeo-Christian nation, and his tolerance of restrictions on Catholic priests who serve the military, calls into question his allegiance to our Constitution.

With unbelievable hubris, the ObamaCare bureaucrats in Washington exclude the Church’s non-liturgical mission from the religious exemption of Obamacare. (Not the elected Congress, but self-righteous bureaucrats made this decision!)

These bureaucrats claim the Church serves non-Catholics in its non-liturgical mission, and therefore this is not its core religious mission. Imagine, the bureaucrats understand the Church’s mission better than the clergy! Even many liberal Catholics understand that the mission of the Catholic Church extends beyond the sanctuary.

In 2012 we have yet another election year that is primarily a reaction against the establishment, and the country has swung back and forth yet again, unhappy with both parties. But why?
 
The problem with George W. Bush was not that he was conservative, but that he was not conservative enough — he hurt the credibility of the GOP by bloating the government further, and not just the military and the Department of Homeland Security, but, in his "compassionate" conservatism, blowing money on domestic spending as well.

Recent polling data indicate that Rick Santorum is rapidly moving up in the polls as the anti-Romney candidate. Gingrich seems to be losing his edge in that category simply because of his continued mean-spirited attacks, rather than focusing on issues that truly matter.

Romney has permanently damaged himself among independents by destroying his nice-guy image with negativism while not emphasizing his 59-point economic plan. It is rather pathetic that with so many glaring issues facing our diminishing nation, the Republican candidates can find nothing better to do than tear each other down.

Rick Santorum has tried to focus on the issues, and it's now paying dividends for him. If he can resist the urge to engage in the mudslinging, he could emerge as a serious challenger to Romney.

Friday’s impressive jobs report is a positive shot in the arm for what the economy needs about now. Politically speaking, adding 243,000 new jobs — the most since last April — is good news indeed for the president’s approval ratings.

What caused many economists to breathe a sigh of relief is that many in the private sector appear to be hiring again, including specialty trades such as manufacturing. While this is no time to be popping champagne and celebrating the demise of the Great Recession, last month’s jobs report gives us many indications of the economy moving forward.

Our congressional members’ plan for a serious budget reduction in the future does not work without a big initial down payment in spending cuts.

Today's Congress cannot bind future Congresses, and Congress has been notoriously unreliable with respect to the fiscal management of the country's finances.

Only a naive observer of today's political environment could believe that Congress will constrain spending to bring the deficit under control when the economy improves. The only point that the left might have is that fiscal stimulus might have a small temporary benefit when the money is originally spent, but the extent of the benefit depends on how the money is spent, e.g., infrastructure, tax rebates, government program, etc., and technical arguments about the multiplier effect of the spending. However, it has a negative impact when it is finally paid for.

I have been very critical of this president. Across the board, I often find myself in 180-degree disagreement with him and his administration's policies. Among those disappointments have been his handling of Iraq and the sheer demagoguery he displayed regarding the war on terror, beginning with Iraq and certainly including issues such as Guantanamo Bay.

But I have to admit, he gets credit on his handling of one area specifically — the use of the military's special forces.

The hit musical “Jersey Boys” is currently playing in Washington. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. It’s a great show depicting the rough-and-tumble life of Frankie Valli — frontman for the Four Seasons beginning in 1960.

Early in the group’s career, 1963 to be exact, Valli released his third of several No. 1 chart toppers — “Walk Like a Man.”

That should be the theme song of the Romney campaign. Candidate Romney is doing all the right things, and getting not enough credit for it.