After months of watching all sorts of political polls, we are finally just a few weeks away from actually beginning to see some voting in primary elections. Polls let people vent their emotions. But elections are held to actually accomplish something.
Is the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, a RINO -- a revolutionary in name only?
In his final State of the Union speech Barack Obama made at least a few bows toward the idea that America is an exceptional nation, an idea he once derided by saying, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks" -- this was before their fiscal crisis -- "believe in Greek exceptionalism." We remain exceptional, he said in Tuesday's speech, as the world's strongest nation militarily and because we're doing better economically than most other large nations.
To awaken Thursday to front-page photos of U.S. sailors kneeling on the deck of their patrol boat, hands on their heads in postures of surrender, on Iran's Farsi Island, brought back old and bad memories.
What is there to add about Donald Trump that has not already been said? The political world has moved from disbelieving that he would even follow through and become a candidate, to expecting him to wither on the vine as more conventional choices gained steam, to accepting his nomination as a distinct possibility, to speculating that he will go all the way and defeat Hillary Clinton in November.
In the commercial that President Obama released prior to his final State of the Union address, Obama said he would tell Congress how "optimistic" he is about America's future.
Ka-ching! Wednesday's Powerball jackpot soared to $1.5 billion as get-rich-quick mania seized America this week. But you don't need to wait for the drawing to know who'll score the royal payoff.
Even at the end of seven good and prosperous years, a president’s final State of the Union address is a tough act. There is no one left to blame. By this point in a presidency, he owns the current state of the union.
The Census Bureau has delivered its annual Christmas gift to demographic junkies: its estimates of the populations of the 50 states and the District of Columbia for mid-2015.
Three weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, and clarity emerges.
In recent years, a small but growing number of people have advocated a convention of states to propose amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The reaction to the proposal has been hostile, out of all proportion to either the originality or the danger of such a convention.
Rough and tumble. Hammer and tongs. In the race for this year's Republican nomination, Donald Trump has not hesitated to attack and ridicule many of his opponents, and some of them have teed up attacks on him, only to hold back when they seemed to help rather than hurt him.
For Xi Jinping, it has been a rough week.
Panicked flight from China's currency twice caused a plunge of 7 percent in her stock market, forcing a suspension of trading.
The CW on New Year's Day Has Often Been Wrong
Want to know who the next president will be?
On Thursday, CNN will host a town hall with President Obama as part of his "final-year push to make gun control part of his legacy." In addition to sitting down with liberal anchor Anderson Cooper, the network says Obama will "take questions from the audience."
Those who have been marveling at Donald Trump's political showmanship were given a reminder of who is the top showman of them all, when President Barack Obama went on television to make a pitch for his unilateral actions to restrict gun sales and make a more general case for tighter gun control laws.
When all the hectoring is finished, the professorial lecturing is done, all the political posturing is over, all that is left are tears. And crocodile tears at that.
Even for those of us long tired of the false hopes and outright lies from this White House, President Obama’s crude gunplay Tuesday was pretty shocking.
Battening down the hatches. That's what America and much of the rest of the world seem to be doing today, in an eerie re-enactment, though to much less of a degree, of what America and the world did in the 1930s. The result then wasn't very pretty. The result now is unknown.
The New Year's execution by Saudi Arabia of the Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr was a deliberate provocation.
