Opinion

o much for Obama’s red line in the sand over Syria.

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama’s foreign policy dream — cordial relations with a Middle East tranquilized by “smart diplomacy” — is in a death grapple with reality. His rhetorical writhings illustrate the perils of loquacity. He has a glutton’s rather than a gourmet’s appetite for his own rhetorical cuisine, and has talked America to the precipice of a fourth military intervention in the crescent that extends from Libya to Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON — The sequel rarely lives up to the original, and those commemorating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington never had a chance.

During the cold war, the U.S. government assembled a huge propaganda structure in its messianic efforts to combat communism behind the “iron curtain.” Voice Of America and Radio Free Europe were the best known of these tools.

President Obama recently declared that “no one who works full-time in America should have to live in poverty.” His proposed solution is to “give” 15 million American workers a raise by increasing the federal government’s “minimum wage.”

WASHINGTON — Nowadays the federal government leavens its usual quotient of incompetence with large dollops of illegality. This is eliciting robust judicial rebukes, as when, last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia instructed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stop “flouting the law.” Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh said: “It is no overstatement to say that our constitutional system of separation of powers would be significantly altered if we were to allow executive and independent agencies to disregard federal law in the manner asserted in this case.”

BIG BEAR, Calif. — Kelli Walters sees it about this time every summer, and it never fails to amaze her.

ast week I made what I consider an unusually thoughtful argument for why President Obama, our beloved Sen. Harry Reid and the man who traded a lifetime federal job for a few years in Carson City, Gov. Brian Sandoval, were wrong on Yucca Mountain.

WASHINGTON — The Gallup polling organization reported Monday that President Obama has had a particularly pronounced summer swoon each year of his presidency, and that August typically brings his lowest approval ratings of all.

Desert View Hospital, the NyE Communities Coalition, and the Nye County School District would like to thank the Pahrump Realty Association for their generous donation toward school supplies for this year’s Back to School Health Fair.