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MSNBC somehow hit another new low all over again. Filling in as host on The Ed Show, Michael Eric Dyson accused George Will of being a "rapist" and "re-raping" women by writing his opinion in the Washington Post. No. Seriously. Mr. Will stated that colleges have become a haven of progressivism, where so-called "vicimizations" are "ubiquitous." Mr. Will writes that empty buzzwords like "triggers" and "micro-aggressions" are now thrown around colleges to the point of ubiquity. The passage that Mr. Dyson took offense to was one in which Mr. Will stated that, at times, "sexual assault" accusations that are put...

Legendary conservative columnist George Will says he is an atheist. […] “I’m an amiable, low voltage atheist,” Will explained. “I deeply respect religions and religious people. The great religions reflect something constant and noble in the human character, defensible and admirable yearnings.” “I am just not persuaded. That’s all,” he added. …

On this Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Washington Post columnist George Will criticized a New York Times article by Jim Rutenberg and Richard Stevenson that suggested the Conservative Political Action Conference revealed deep divisions in the conservative movement. “First, here’s The New York Times headline on the CPAC conference: ‘GOP divisions fester at conservative retreat,’” Will said. “Festering an infected wound — it’s awful. I guarantee you, if there were a liberal conclave comparable to this, and there were vigorous debates going on there, The New York Times headline would be ‘Healthy diversity flourishes at the...

When pundits on ABC's "This Week" Sunday discussed recent news that the Supreme Court would take up two major gay marriage cases -- challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California's Prop 8 -- conservative commentator George Will issued a blunt characterization of same-sex marriage's opponents. There is something like an emerging consensus. Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying. It’s old people. According to a Politico poll out Sunday, Will is right in saying that older Americans are less likely to support gay marriage. The poll said that while 63 percent of 18 to...

Syndicated columnist George Will, appearing Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” said opposition to same-sex marriage is “quite literally” dying, because opponents tend to be older Americans. “There is something like an emerging consensus. Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying. It’s old people,” Will said. …

Time's Joe Klein on Sunday found out what it's like to actually have to debate conservatives rather than the liberal media members he normally appears with on political talk shows. When he uttered the typical left-wing line on ABC's This Week about the need for more gun control in the wake of Friday's movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado, Klein got a much-needed education from George Will and the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin (video follows with transcript and commentary): George Will and Jennifer Rubin Demolish Time's Joe Klein on Gun Control Laws GEORGE WILL: The killer in Aurora, Colorado, was...

A few millennia from now, when archaeologists from an ascendant Brazil or Turkey or wherever sift the shards of American civilization and find the ruins of the Big House in Ann Arbor, Mich., they will wonder why a 109,901-seat entertainment venue was attached to an institution of higher education. Today, the accelerating preposterousness of big-time college football is again provoking furrowed brows and pursed lips. But there probably were few of either among the 20 million who Saturday night watched Alabama's student-athletes play those of LSU. These teams' head coaches' salaries are $4.6 million and $3.75 million, respectively, and their...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Yesterday on This Week with Christiane Amanpour, George Will -- this was during the roundtable discussion, George Will discussing Mitt Romney. WILL: It has a lot to do with Romney. He is rising as more and more Republicans come to the conclusion that the Republican Party has found its Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor running on competence, not ideology. RUSH: Did you hear that? George Will characterizing Mitt Romney as the Republican Party's Michael Dukakis. Michael Dukakis, a Democrat loser running for office in 1988, one of the most famous things that Dukakis did was he...

In a stinging comparison that is sure to leave a mark, on Sunday’s This Week With Christiane Amanpour, George Will said the rise of Herman Cain had a lot to do with Republicans coming to the realization that Mitt Romney is their Michael Dukakis. “A technocratic Massachusetts governor running on competence, not ideology,” Will observed.

This week, prominent conservative pundit George Will wrote a column advocating the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. His piece, not surprisingly, was met with instantaneous anger, disdain and derision from most of the right. "But let's be honest," wrote noted neoconservative William Kristol on The Washington Post's blog. "Will is not calling on the United States to accept a moderate degree of success in Afghanistan, and simply to stop short of some overly ambitious goal. Will is urging retreat, and accepting defeat." Tossing around the words "retreat" and "defeat" -- or, as one critic more creatively asserted, Will's column...

California's increasingly severe and largely self-inflicted economic crisis will deepen on May 19 if, as is probable and desirable, voters reject most of the ballot measures that were drafted as part of a "solution" to the state's budget deficit. They would make matters worse. ... Under Arnold Schwarzenegger, the best governor the states contiguous to California have ever had, people and businesses have been relocating in those states. For four consecutive years, more Americans have moved out of California than have moved in. California's business costs are more than 20 percent higher than the average state's. In the last decade,...

WASHINGTON -- Listening to political talk requires a third ear that hears what is not said. Today's near silence about crime probably is evidence of social improvement. For many reasons, including better policing and more incarceration, Americans feel, and are, safer. The New York Times has not recently repeated such amusing headlines as "Crime Keeps on Falling, But Prisons Keep on Filling" (1997), "Prison Population Growing Although Crime Rate Drops" (1998), "Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction" (2000) and "More Inmates, Despite Slight Drop in Crime" (2003). If crime revives as an issue, it will be through liberal complaints...

Two Democratic presidential candidates with national campaign experience are stumbling. A Republican candidate who has run only municipal campaigns is confounding expectations, calling into question some assumptions about Republican voters. Regarding the Republican race, for many months commentators have said that when the Republican base learns the facts about Rudy Giuliani's personal life (an annulled first marriage, a messy divorce, then a third marriage) and views on social issues (for abortion rights, gay rights and gun control, in each case with limits), support for him will evaporate. But such commentary is becoming self-refuting. The insistent reiteration of it during Giuliani's...

WASHINGTON -- Henry J. Friendly, who died in 1986, was perhaps the most distinguished American judge never to serve on the Supreme Court, and he almost spared the nation the poisonous consequences of that court's 1973 truncation of democratic debate about abortion policy. The story of that missed blessing was told recently by Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in an address to the Federalist Society. In 1970, Friendly, then on the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, was a member of a three-judge panel that heard the first abortion-rights case...

Listen to the language. It is always a leading indicator of moral confusion. ...cut... The lawyer's client probably will offer -- this should deepen Americans' queasiness -- the Nuremberg defense: I was only obeying orders. If the abuse was the result of orders -- or of the absence of them -- fault must extend up the chain of command. So, forgive the lawyer's language. But note what it betokens: a flinching from facts. Americans must not flinch from absorbing the photographs of what some Americans did in that prison. And they should not flinch from this fact: That pornography is,...

EAGER TO IMPROVE their town’s moral tone, Los Angeles city councilors are considering an ordinance to improve decorum at strip clubs: No lap dances — dancers are required to remain six feet from customers — no direct tipping, no private VIP rooms in clubs with full nudity. Advocates of the ordinance say such goings-on lead to prostitution. Opponents of the ordinance, including the dancers, deny that prostitution flourishes at the clubs. And they call the ordinance an unconstitutional abridgement of free artistic expression. But a federal appeals court upheld a law in Washington state requiring dancers to stay 10...

The burglary occurred in 1972, the climax came in 1974, but40 years ago this week — May 17, 1973 — the Senate Watergate hearings began exploring the nature of Richard Nixon’s administration. Now the nature of Barack Obama’s administration is being clarified as revelations about IRS targeting of conservative groups merge with myriad Benghazi mendacities. This administration aggressively hawked the fiction that the Benghazi attack was just an excessively boisterous movie review. Now we are told that a few wayward souls in Cincinnati, with nary a trace of political purpose, targeted for harassment political groups with “tea party” and “patriot”...

Republicans supposedly revere the Constitution, but in its birthplace, Pennsylvania, they are contemplating a subversion of the Framers' institutional architecture. Their ploy — partisanship masquerading as altruism about making presidential elections more "democratic" — will weaken resistance to an even worse change being suggested. Pennsylvania's GOP-controlled Legislature may pass, and the Republican governor promises to sign, legislation ending the state's practice — shared by 47 other states — of allocating all of its electoral votes to the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote. Pennsylvania would join Maine and Nebraska in allocating one vote to the winner in each congressional...

A new U.S. book claims Ernest Hemingway was a not-very-effective spy for the KGB during the 1940s. The Nobel prize-winning author is listed in "Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America," Yale University Press, co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev from notes Vassiliev took in Moscow archives. A former KGB officer, Vassiliev was provided with access in the 1990s to Stalin-era files, The Guardian reported. In the book, Hemingway is referred to as a "dilettante spy." His file says he was recruited in 1941 before he went to China, the book claims. He...

WASHINGTON -- Because John McCain and other legislators worry they are easily corrupted, there are legal limits to the monetary contributions that anyone can make to political candidates. There are, however, no limits to the rhetorical contributions that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright can make to McCain's campaign. Because Wright is a gift determined to keep on giving, this question arises: Can people opposed to Barack Obama's candidacy justly make use of Wright's invariably interesting interventions in the campaign? The answer is: Certainly, because Wright's paranoias tell us something -- exactly what remains to be explored -- about his 20-year parishioner....