National columnists

Every Halloween, New York City residents are greeted by homosexual parade marchers dressed to impress bystanders with a message that “gay is good.”

After I saw the new Chrysler ad – starring Clint Eastwood and titled “Halftime in America” – I walked from our kitchen to my home office and picked up the rusty wrench my father used during his 30 years at the power plant in Ashtabula, Ohio.

To hear much of the American media tell it, Susan G. Komen for the Cure – the breast cancer charity that recently cut its ties with Planned Parenthood before (sort of) backing down – should simply be no more. It has gone from being a women’s health charity to becoming anti-woman, said National Organization for Women’s President Terry O’Neill.

This was for us.

It’s unusual when a reporter sympathetic to a politician writes a story that makes his subject look bad.

Two of the hottest topics on the political circuit are illegal immigration and “Obamacare.”

The story is grisly: A husband and wife murdering their three young daughters – ages 19, 17 and 13 – by drowning them along with their stepmother.

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation has severed its ties with Planned Parenthood.

If Mitt Romney wants to win the Republican nomination for president, he has one big hurdle to overcome – anger.

In a democracy, nothing is supposed to matter more than the will of the people.

We got mixed signals from a turbulent political week.

Florida is the state that put the first man on the moon, NBC’s Brian Williams noted at the Republican presidential debate in Tampa.

If Newt Gingrich is elected president of the United States, he will owe it all to his former wife, Marianne, and John King.

You might have noticed most of the presidential debates are moderated by men, which gives female journalists such as me lots of time to watch and listen.

Back when he was just another Republican running for his party’s presidential nomination, Texas Gov. Rick Perry condemned the Obama administration’s “war on religion.”

You might call this a requiem for reverence.

Those who take a certain pleasure in denouncing the evils negative political advertising should have spent the last week in South Carolina.

Every Sunday night, the mega-carriages drop millions of us off at “Downton Abbey,” the hit PBS series about an aristocratic family, its English country estate and the complexities of being them at the dawn of the 20th century.

Growing up in Levittown out on Long Island, I remember my father buying pants through the mail.

In 2001, a friend who was terminally ill asked me to interview her for a video to leave behind for her infant daughter.

I can’t begin this column with a quote from a presidential-election-themed Craigslist ad I saw this week, one so vicious that it shouldn’t be given wider publicity.

I have something for you.

Of course President Barack Obama is not concentrating on campaigning, White House press spokesmen assured us while the president headed to Chicago for three fundraisers and a drop-in at his campaign headquarters. This was two days after a high-roller fundraiser choked off traffic five blocks from the White House, with the assistance of a score of D.C. Police cars.

During the Great Depression, my father toiled in a box factory.

A few days ago, a Democrat handed me an Obama fundraising brochure even though he knows I never give political donations.

We have heard the admonishment that polite people never discuss politics or religion at the dinner table.