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Delivering a thank-you to readers who have written

Columns

As 2025 comes to an end, I want to thank my readers who have emailed me throughout the year with encouraging and kind words. I truly appreciate the thoughtfulness put into every message. Due to my teaching and grading load, I am not able to respond to every email, but I am deeply moved that people would take the time to write me. I’m also grateful to those who shared their dissenting opinions. I think we can all agree that we need more civil and polite discussions in online spaces. Three recent columns that particularly resonated with readers were my Thanksgiving commentary on ...

Looking at Christmas, then and now

Columns

Perhaps some of the worst people to explain the real meaning of Christmas are those who claim to believe in its central message, but have trouble communicating it. Like the secularists, they try to define it on their own terms rather than let God speak for Himself. The reason for Christmas is easy to explain, but difficult for many to understand. Why would a Holy God offer up his only son to sinful people who would reject and ultimately crucify Him? Part of the reason I think is that too many of us define love as what we feel for another person, a pet, a favorite restaurant or a ...

Looking to the New Year

Editorials

As we wrap up one year and look hopefully ahead to the next, most in our region are looking forward to the possibility of peace, prosperity, success … all the good things that are possible when the blank slate of an entire year stretches out before us. Sure, we take some accountability by assigning resolutions to ourselves — improvement plans to which we say we will stick for 365 days. (On the other hand, some eat their pork and sauerkraut and hope for the best knowing they’ve done their part.) But it is worth asking ourselves: What do we truly want for ourselves, our families, ...

Spending an evening navigating the dark streets of San Francisco

Columns

We were at my brother’s residence in San Mateo County, just south of San Francisco — watching the college football playoffs — when my sister, who lives in San Francisco’s Richmond District, where I was planning on spending the night, texted us to let us know that the power was out in her neighborhood. Using our cellphones to do some quick research, we soon discovered that the power had gone down in most of the western half of San Francisco— including at the Presidio, which sits on the southern side of the Golden Gate Bridge, in the Richmond District, which sits south of the ...

No, the Liberty incident was not Israeli treachery

Columns

For elements of the anti-Israel right, it’s a time when everything old is becoming new again. So, a half-century-old theory that the Jewish state deliberately attacked the USS Liberty during the Six-Day War has renewed currency. Conspiratorial-minded influencers hostile to Israel like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens have promoted the notion, and it was a topic of discussion at the recent TPUSA conference. The fact is that the devastating Israeli attack on the Liberty, killing 34 and wounding 171, was a woeful case of mistaken identification. The series of faulty ...

The time has come for us to kill property taxes

Columns

The American dream of home ownership — the foundational building block of familial wealth — has been central to our culture for generations, but it’s slowly being killed off when it becomes clear that this dream has a catch: You never really own your home. Who does? Well first, the bank, but even if you achieve the increasingly impossible dream of paying off your home, you still don’t own it. And who does? The government. Every year, millions of homeowners are reminded of this uncomfortable truth when their tax bill arrives in the mail, but because, like most taxes, ...