Just in time for Independence Day, the bible of the American left, The New York Times, continues to opine that the United States is a “nation in decline.” Hoping to see a Democrat in the White House, the newspaper has been hammering home that theme on its editorial pages.

Here’s a Christmas story that might make you cry, but not for sentimental reasons. The town of Great Barrington, Mass., population 7,000, has ordered a curfew on “holiday” lights this season because of global warming.

Here’s what many parents and grandparents do not understand: The Internet is profoundly changing the behavior of American children and stunting their emotional growth. Many 8-year-olds are now exposed to things that 13-year-olds didn’t know just a decade ago.

The actress Julia Roberts, driving a Mercedes SUV, recently ran a man off the road, got out of her car and demanded he stop following her and photographing her young children.

So now we find out that NBC News wants to hire Rosie O’Donnell as a show host, and my question is: Was Hugo Chavez not available?

Reese Witherspoon can’t be pleased with the performance of her new movie “Rendition.” It is a colossal bomb and will disappear as quickly as one of the movie’s characters, courtesy of the evil CIA, of course.

While rockers Bruce Springsteen and David Crosby continue to run around the country spouting the preposterous assertion that America is doing evil in Iraq, the tide is quietly turning against the real bad guys: terrorists who kill innocent civilians in the name of Allah.

The Wall Street Journal did a good job this week of exposing the vicious tactics of the far-left outfit MoveOn. The story centers on Democratic Rep. Brian Baird, an ardent opponent of the Iraq War, who recently traveled to that hellish country and, surprisingly, came back saying that the “surge” is improving things there.

The eerie Kabuki dance that is Iraq is about to enter a new phase where death is the only certainty. The Democratic Party is hell-bent on pulling out of the desert killing fields, while the Bush administration is trying to buy time with an aggressive push against the murderous “insurgents.”

There is no doubt that some entertainment critics have glorified rap “artists” like Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Ludacris. Twenty years ago, pro-drug, anti-women and pro-violence lyrics would not have been embraced by the mainstream media for fear of public backlash. But today, bring on perversity in the name of diversity. Anything goes.

All around the country certain cities are refusing to inform federal authorities about the activities of illegal aliens, even foreign nationals who commit crimes in their jurisdictions.

When “The Simpsons” movie turns out to be more realistic than “The Bourne Ultimatum,” you know something is up. Nevertheless, the thriller is a big hit, proving once again that film audiences now want live action cartoons rather than crisp, realistic films like “The Ipcress File” or “The French Connection.”

Well, it took two-and-a-half years, but the University of Colorado finally axed the nutty professor.

Ward Churchill has been fired for academic misconduct, including plagiarism. Despite those assertions, this was really about an out-of-control teacher earning nearly $100,000 a year saying things so foolish that no institute of learning could support them.

For a guy thought to be sleeping in some shack in the middle of nowhere, Osama bin Laden is certainly a hot topic of discussion. A front-page headline in The New York Times this week blares: “Bush Advisers See a Failed Strategy Against Al Qaeda.” Really? Do all the president’s men believe that, after hundreds of billions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost, Osama and his killers are prospering? Can that be possible?

After another terrorist incident last week, it is obvious that Great Britain is paying a huge price for allowing millions of Muslims to enter the country largely unsupervised. If those bombs had gone off in central London, scores might have been killed, and it was just luck the lethal cars were discovered before they blew.

As Michael Moore runs around the country telling everyone that America is horrible because it does not provide free health care, intelligent people understand that there are limits to what a free, capitalistic society can do.