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Steve Huntley biography

Steve Huntley is a commentary columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and a member of its editorial board.

He served as editor of the editorial page …

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This may go down as the ‘Age of Terror’

In trying to understand the human journey, historians discern “ages” of mankind. In his nearly a dozen “The Story of Civilization” books, Will Durant wrote of “The Age of Faith” and “The Age of Reason Begins.” Page Smith started his series of books on U.S. …

Obama’s foreign policy stumbles

Spring may be the season of hope, but President Barack Obama faces a winter of discontent in foreign policy as he suffers setbacks from the Middle East to the Korean peninsula. Neither diplomacy nor the flexing of military muscle have produced desired results and have …

Obama is wise to go slowly in Syria

Pressure has been growing for President Barack Obama to intervene with military strikes to aid the rebels in Syria. But the president prudently has avoided a high-risk stake in that civil war out of a reasonable fear he would be throwing gasoline on the wildfire …

Weird: North Korea takes aim at Texas

Last year I fled south to Austin, Texas, to escape Chicago’s miserable winters. Little did I know that my move would place me in the crosshairs of possible nuclear annihilation. Or not. Maybe all I’ve done is replace Chicago’s bone-numbing wind chill with the mind-numbing …

Persecution of Christians grows

Nearly a third of the world’s population celebrates Good Friday and Easter this weekend, testimony to the influence of a religion that is a foundational pillar of Western civilization and the advancement of human rights. Yet, the observance of the faithful is shadowed by the …

No bank should be ‘too big to fail’

What do the U.S. Postal Service and the megabank JPMorgan Chase have in common? The government won’t let either one of them fail. At least Washington is up front about the mail service. But it keeps telling us that it has eliminated the “too big …

Obama puts his legacy on the line in Israel

One plausible takeaway from President Barack Obama’s trip to Israel is that he has assumed responsibility for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. While the words he said weren’t new, saying them in the Middle East and in such an uncompromising way sure made it …

Obama can’t be bluffing on Iran

Much is being made about the symbolism of President Barack Obama’s trip to Israel, such as his viewing of the Dead Sea Scrolls being seen as an affirmation of more than three millennia of Jewish life in the Holy Land. Little is being made of …

Tide turning on presidential power

The ground is shifting for Republicans, Democrats and Americans in general over the scope of presidential power and U.S. foreign policy in ways that seemed unlikely only a few weeks ago. The Republican Party is reconsidering its commitment to an assertive, interventionist role for the …

No bounce for Obama voters

The stock market hits record highs. Household wealth recovers to pre-Great Recession levels. That closely watched barometer of the economy, the unemployment rate, is declining. The Obama economy is lifting up Americans — except maybe not so much for Obama voters. The stock market boom …

Is media’s crush on Obama over?

It may go down as the straw that broke the camel’s back of the mainstream media’s obsequious, uncritical coverage of President Barack Obama: The White House’s decision to deny reporters and photographers even a peep at Obama playing golf with Tiger Woods last month in …

Turkey’s bigoted prime minister

It was another venomous blast from a leader in the Middle East calling Zionism a “crime against humanity.” But this time it didn’t come from the Holocaust-denying president of Iran. Nor was it a revelation of anti-Semitism uttered a few years ago by Egypt’s president. …

Obama is caught crying wolf

However the sequester cuts in federal spending play out in the weeks ahead, the controversy offers a telling view into the big-government arrogance and ambitions of the liberal ascendency in Washington. Exhibit A was a speech given by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) emblematic of the …

Compromise after falling off cliff

By all accounts, it’s too late to stop the so-called sequester cuts in federal spending from going into effect Friday. This latest fiscal crisis — if it is indeed that — demonstrates how bitterly polarized the politics in Washington are, and there’s no end in …

Most cons I’ve met are Illinois pols

Reading the news in the Sun-Times over the last several days, I was struck by a minor personal revelation: Most of the people I know who have gone to prison have been . . . Illinois politicians. What got me to thinking about this was, …

President Obama is playing games on immigration

Just when you have one of the Republican Party’s top leaders, Paul Ryan, praising President Barack Obama for not wanting to politicize the sensitive issue of immigration reform, the White House proves him wrong. What’s more, it fuels speculation — and not just from Republicans …

Liberal Obama massages reality

It says something about the quality, substance and seriousness of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union message that the most talked-about moment of the night was, well, Sen. Marco Rubio’s needing a sip of water to ward off nervous-induced dry mouth during his Republican …