John T. Reed’s news blog

Obama says they will thoroughly vet would-be-Syrian refugees to make sure there is no bad information on them. That’s what you get when you put a naif who never had a real job in the White House. I had a job—lots of them. One was landlord and another was property manager. I wrote a book called How to Manage Residential Property for Maximum Cash Flow and Resale Value. The 6th edition of that book is temporarily out of print. But this same situation comes up in apartment leasing. You can’t check a guy out because he says he has been...

Sometimes leadership consists of persuading the lynch mob to go home. In the cowboy movies, the reasons for the lynch mob to go home are rule of law, presumption of innocence, fair trial, hear both sides, jury trial, and so on. Those do not apply to IS. They have declared war on us thereby conferring upon us the right to summarily kill the SOBs on sight. And we should stop pussy-footing around and just do that in the territory they hold in Iraq and Syria. The maps we keep seeing of IS-occupied territory in Syria and Iraq would have been...

There were 1,000 people in the Bataclan theater in Paris when the terrorists came in. Paris has strict gun-control laws of the kind America liberals say would prevent mass shootings.In the U.S., 5.2% of the population has a concealed-carry permit. I do not know if that includes off-duty police who also have guns and permission to carry and are encouraged to carry when off duty.Do the math. If terrorists tried that in a U.S. theater containing 1,000 people, 52 of them would have loaded guns on their person. In seven states, no permit is needed. Anyone who wants can carry...

Regarding a wall on the Mexican border All Republican candidates are in favor of a wall. During my active-duty Army days, one of the best practices or required practices on perimeter defense was that although inanimate devices like berms, Claymore mines, contact mines, trip wire mines, and concertina wire, were useful and good to have, the core of all perimeter defense was human, armed guards observing every inch of the perimeter 24 hours a day. The inanimate things were only to be used as supplements to the human sentinels.All this talk of a wall is just putting our nation of...

In response to Ben Carson’s claiming he was offered a scholarship to West Point, I said that people who did not receive an appointment to West Point claiming that they could have gone there is surprisingly common. I have encountered such people about ten times since I graduated from West Point. It typically goes like this. I’m at a backyard barbecue with friends and acquaintances. A man I do not know says, “My wife says you went to West Point.” “Yup. Misspent youth.” “I could have gone there. Turned it down.” “Who nominated you?” “What do you mean? “The first...