John Edwards allegedly misused campaign money to cover a tawdry affair while posing lovey-dovey with his dying wife for the cameras. All this happened in 2008, as the former Democratic senator from North Carolina was running for president. Accused of six felony counts for violating federal election laws, Edwards faces up to 30 years behind bars. Let's go for the max.
Those who saw mass migration from Mexico as a threat and those who did not all agreed on one thing: It was unstoppable without dramatic action by the federal authorities. They turned out to be wrong about that. The title of a new report from the Pew Hispanic Center, "Net Migration From Mexico Falls to Zero -- and Perhaps Less," says it all.
A modern knowledge economy thrives on highly trained workers. The way to get them, obviously, is through education -- from basic reading skills for some, to mastery of algorithms for others. It thus would seem a basic public good to provide that learning at little or no cost to students, which most advanced countries do. But America has turned post-high-school education into a taxpayer-subsidized business -- a business not unlike real estate at the height of the housing bubble.
Lavishly paid executives have a new 1 percent number to ponder. It's not about their perch on the top branch of U.S. incomes. It's the lousy 1 percent rise in Citibank's quarterly revenues, which helped prompt the bank's stockholders to reject CEO Vikram Pandit's $15 million pay package. That they were earning a meager 1-cent-a-share quarterly dividend did not improve their mood.
A cornerstone of capitalism is that by richly rewarding successful managers who build up businesses, we all prosper. That makes sense but for one thing: Corporate America has learned to fix the game so that their honchos walk away with fortunes, whether their companies do well or not.
To quote "Adelaide's Lament" from "Guys and Dolls," "You can feed her all day with the vitamin A and the bromofizz/ But the medicine never gets anywhere near where the trouble is." That's the sense one gets from the recent tone-challenged courting of women voters.
Animal rescue once sent me a fabulous mutt. She was usually obedient and heartbreaking in eagerness to please. But I couldn't get her into the basement. I'd go down the stairs waving an entire bag of treats. With a pained look of indecision, she would not follow. During an earlier life, clearly, bad things had happened to her in a cellar.
The most dreadful disasters make us wonder how we would respond were we in the middle of it. That's especially true of those events that slowly evolve from concern to horror. On the Titanic, almost three hours elapsed between the thud of the iceberg and the final plunge into the icy Atlantic.
Imagine that. Former Republican President George H.W. Bush recently bought his son Neil a Chevrolet Volt as a birthday present. This is the car that all right-thinking right-wingers demand we hate. In their political prism, the Volt has everything going against it: It's beloved by environmentalists for getting 61 miles to the gallon. It's assembled by unionized workers at General Motors' Detroit-Hamtramck plant. It enjoys government subsidies intended to encourage the production of fuel-efficient cars (started actually by H.W.'s oldest son, former President George W. Bush).
Mitt Romney has three houses. The former Massachusetts governor would like to do a $12 million "fix-up" on one of them, a beachfront property in La Jolla, Calif. The plan is to tear down the existing 3,000-square-foot structure and build an 8,100-square-foot replacement, plus a car elevator.
Small wonder President Obama chose not to delay the U.S. Supreme Court case on his health care reforms until long after the election. His advisors are clearly in the lab transforming the president's signature legislation into a potent election issue -- whether the justices leave it intact or rip it apart.
There's one complaint visitors to Tokyo rarely make, and that is "not enough people." With a population of 36 million, the Tokyo metropolitan area stuffs an average 6,800 people in each square mile. By contrast, the New York metro area, with 19 million residents, has a density of 2,800 people per square mile.
The biggest challenge for fixing American health care isn't finding more money. It's learning not to spend money on the wrong things. The solution, conservatives say, is simple: Have patients bear more of the costs now being covered by private or government insurers. The concept has merit, except for this: How on earth can we mortals know we don't need something when the god wearing the stethoscope says we do?
Here's why I'm not panicked about rising gasoline prices, as many headlines suggest we all should be. It's a personal story. Let me start at the beginning.
The automotive love of my life was my first. It was a 1979 Pontiac Grand Prix, already 10 years old when it drove to my door on that mild spring day. A cloudy ocean color, the mid-size car had a V6 engine, and boy, did it move. A whole lot of hood stood between me and the car ahead.
Who is writing that brilliant, stupid, nasty, brave and/or dishonest online comment? We haven't a clue, because the author hasn't shared his or her name, hometown, gender, age and/or nationality. Or even worse, the author pretends to be another real person. Scammers, misfits, crooks, creeps, criminals and nice people all venture through cyberspace without identifying themselves. We can only guess what they're up to.
To many New Englanders, Olympia Snowe had come to resemble Marilyn of "The Munsters" TV family. The senator from Maine seemed a normal Northeast Republican surrounded by party leaders sprouting fangs and cooing at bats -- but who regarded her as the odd one.
"You can't be too careful these days," Herman Munster, a Frankenstein-monster clone, would tenderly advise the wholesome Marilyn. "There are a lot of strange people in this world."
Too bad the Republican candidates had to comment on Rush Limbaugh's flaming attack on a female law student at Georgetown University. El Rushbo plays troubadour to the party's right wing from his home in its entertainment wing. The business of the entertainment wing is show business. That means making money off talk shows, books and TV appearances -- and running the publicity machine at hysterical volume. It does not mean keeping the interests of the Republican Party foremost.
We who've been going on and on about the need to raise taxes on the rich need to catch our breath. There's no need to reverse course, but also no obligation to totally love President Obama's approach for doing what we've been asking for. An explanation is in order.
Nothing the Supreme Court deals with is not political. But a case over affirmative action in college admissions has arrived at an especially political time. This is an election year. Working-class whites are considered swing voters, and the president running for re-election is both African-American and a beneficiary of the finest higher education our country offers. Come early fall, the Supreme Court will probably hear a case in which a white student, Abigail Fisher, claims that a race-conscious policy for admissions to the University of Texas violated her constitutional rights.
Missiles are pointed at Social Security and Medicare, the broad-based programs for older Americans. Some are stealth missiles. Some are misguided missiles. But both parties are pointing them.
My, how you've changed, Big Brother. What happened to the sourpuss in "1984," George Orwell's grim novel about a thought-controlled future? Gone are the piercing eyes and the perennial threat: "Big Brother is Watching."
You've had quite the fashion update. I like how you dress in T-shirts and sweats, just like the proles. I like your boyish grin. No longer a tyrant without a name, you're now Facebook's founder and supreme leader, Mark Zuckerberg.
