Jay Ambrose
Syndicated Columnist
Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado. He can be reached at SpeaktoJay@aol.com
Recent Stories
Ambrose: Jefferson championed vigilance, but Obama fears it
Thomas Jefferson said and others chimed in that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Phooey, says President Barack Obama. He recently told graduating college students in Columbus, Ohio, to essentially ignore such advice.
Ambrose: U.S. could stand to take a few lessons from Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher saved Great Britain not the way Winston Churchill did earlier, through wartime leadership, but domestically, through reform.
Ambrose: Terror in Boston shows importance of preparation
Homegrown or foreign-directed, it was terrorism -- a coordinated act meant to kill, maim, confuse and frighten at a major American event -- that we saw at the Boston Marathon on Monday.
Ambrose: A look at some winners and losers, saints and sinners
This is a review of recent winners and losers, of saints and sinners, starting with the wonderfully impressive Pope Francis, the Argentine newly in the Vatican, himself as much a work of art as the paintings there by Michelangelo, or no, much more a work of art. When he washed the feet of young prisoners on Maundy Thursday, as just one example, he radiated love you could feel halfway around the world.
Ambrose: Television news fails to inspire great deal of confidence
Last July, a Gallup poll said 21 percent of American adults had a "great deal" of confidence in TV news, which is odd even though it is a minority, seeing as how there is so little really, truly to have confidence in.
Ambrose: With government on autopilot, U.S. headed for a crash
In the movie "Flight," something major goes wrong with a passenger jet. It starts plunging downward, the pilot amazingly rolls the plane upside down to keep it just barely under control, and, at this point, if President Barack Obama were watching, he'd probably stand up to reassure the audience. "We don't have an immediate crisis," he would say, an encouraging smile on his face. "The plane is in a sustainable place."
Ambrose: Obama dodges blame for sequester; GOP not so lucky
'Spit in the ocean" -- it's a phrase that's well-worn, and for a reason, namely that it sums up so splendidly the idea of something that is itsy-bitsy relative to something very, very big.
Ambrose: Hypocrisy lets Obama avoid heavy criticism on drones
Ideology and personal tastes often can speak louder in politics than evidence or logic, and, yes, that's as true for one side as it is for another. But it has been especially pronounced among leftists in recent years, as many found little that George W. Bush did as president that they did not abhor, even as they can find little in Barack Obama they do not very nearly worship.
Ambrose: Super Bowl exemplifies some vital American virtues
The Super Bowl has come and gone. Reports tell us it was the third most widely witnessed event in American TV history, beaten only by two other Super Bowls. In this land of ours, the game has become as big a celebratory deal as just about anything from the Fourth of July to New Year's Eve. It features a physically tough sport. It is enmeshed in commercialism. Is all this OK?
Ambrose: JFK corrected his mistakes; will Obama do the same?
You bump into an article in The Atlantic magazine. It's about John F. Kennedy, an American hero writ large — except that he wasn't. It tells of how he put the world at risk for the sake of politics during the Cuban missile crisis, though finally coming to his senses, and you think about another charismatic American president, Barack Obama. Will he come to his senses, too?
