Political Commentary

April 9, 2015

2016 Republican Nomination: The Race “Officially” Begins by Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley

Last week, a Crystal Ball reader sent us an e-mail asking if now would be the time to remove “low name ID nationally” from our list of negatives for possible presidential aspirant Gov. Mike Pence (R-IN). We absolutely agree, given the turmoil surrounding Indiana’s new religious freedom law: There’s little question that name identification is no longer a problem for the Hoosier State governor.

April 8, 2015

A Right to Discriminate by John Stossel

Bake me a cake, or go to jail!

April 7, 2015

Good People Sometimes Back Bad Laws By Froma Harrop

A law in Indiana and a bill in Arkansas making life harder for their gay neighbors have lost their wheels in a surprising smashup. Business interests, usually associated with the conservative cause, lowered the boom on "religious freedom" legislation supported by social conservatives.

April 7, 2015

Most U.S. 21st Century Population Growth Came in Just 27 Metro Areas By Michael Barone

It's springtime, and the Census Bureau has released its population estimates for counties and metropolitan areas as of July 1, 2014. Initial analysis has focused on year-to-year movements or changes since the 2010 Census -- subjects worthy of attention.

But it's also interesting to take a longer look, to see where population has been booming over the 14 years since 2000, one-seventh of the 21st century. The headline here is that growth has been concentrated in relatively few large metropolitan areas.

April 6, 2015

Iran Deal: Do the Critics Want War? By Joe Conason

Before too much credibility is lavished upon Republican critics of the Iran nuclear agreement draft, including all of the assorted would-be presidential candidates, someone ought to urge them to explain what they would do instead. And when those critics start blathering, someone should interrupt to ask whether they are actually talking about a simple three-letter word: war.

April 3, 2015

Indiana Religious Freedom Act in Accord With Traditional American Toleration By Michael Barone

There has been a great ruckus about Indiana's recently passed religious freedom law. Some, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, see it as endorsing anti-gay bigotry. Democratic Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy has banned state employees from traveling to Indiana, even though Connecticut has a similar law even more favorable to claims of religious objectors. Perhaps he should ban state employees from remaining inside Connecticut.

April 2, 2015

Suing Over Soft Sexism Can Hold Women Back by Froma Harrop

Ellen Pao's gender discrimination suit against her employer contained the juicy elements that captivate us. The plaintiff was a Harvard-educated lawyer suing for a healthy $16 million. The defendant was Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the high-powered venture capital firm. The locale was Silicon Valley, where many complain that the big fortunes go overwhelmingly to men. And Pao's evidence resided largely in gray areas, where things said and things done could be interpreted in several ways.

April 2, 2015

Notes on the State of Politics By Kyle Kondik

The retirement of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) last week gives Republicans something they have been lacking in the early stages of this Senate cycle: a 50-50 shot at picking up a seat currently held by a Democrat.

True, Reid’s poor approval numbers meant he was going to be a target of Republicans anyway. But he’s also a proven commodity who would have had the power of incumbency. In our view, the open-seat race is now a Toss-up, as opposed to the prior rating of Leans Democratic.

April 1, 2015

The Next Bubble By John Stossel

They're doing it again!

When the last housing bubble burst, politicians blamed "greedy banks." They said mortgage companies lent money recklessly, making loans to people with dubious credit, for down payments as low as 3 percent.

March 31, 2015

Privacy vs. Security: How the Debate Changes by Froma Harrop

The pilot who crashed the Germanwings plane, taking 150 lives, was too ill to work, according to doctors' notes found at his home. But Germany's strict medical privacy laws barred the doctors from conveying that judgment to the airline.

March 30, 2015

Where the Red Line Came From -- Before it Was Crossed By Michael Barone

There are still nearly two years left in Barack Obama's presidency, but historians looking back on his record in foreign policy will surely identify one costly error: his refusal to follow through on the implied threat in stating that the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons would be a "red line."

March 30, 2015

Country Music, Tea Party 'Populism,' and Ted Cruz By Joe Conason

Nobody who knows Ted Cruz -- the Texas freshman Senator who became the first official contestant for the Republican Party's presidential nomination this week -- doubts that he is very, very smart. That includes Cruz himself, whose emphatic confidence in his own superior intelligence has not always endeared him to colleagues and acquaintances (whose opinions of his personality are often profanely negative).

March 27, 2015

Can Family Breakdown in Low-Education America Be Reversed? Maybe By Michael Barone

Our kids, at least many of them, are not doing very well. The reason, writes Harvard professor Robert Putnam in his just-published "Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis," is the "two-tier pattern of family structure" that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s and continues to prevail today.

March 26, 2015

Obamacare Should Be Less Complex by Froma Harrop

Let's start on an upbeat. Next to what we had before, Obamacare has been a spectacular success. The Affordable Care Act has brought medical security to millions of previously uninsured Americans and has helped slow the rise in health care spending.

March 26, 2015

Why This Scandal Won't Hurt Hillary By Larry J. Sabato

Admit it: You love a juicy scandal. We claim to be high-minded and policy-oriented, but our noses are buried in the accounts of the latest political calamity -- and we read those stories before anything else.

The Hillary Clinton e-mail controversy is just the latest entrée in a decades-long, calorie-rich menu provided by the former first lady and her husband. But will it make a difference in 2016?

March 25, 2015

Gentrify! by John Stossel

No matter what you do, modern liberals will tell you you're wrong.

March 24, 2015

The Sun Is Rising on Solar Panels, and There's No Fighting It By Froma Harrop

On the average sunny day, Germany's huge energy grid gets 40 percent of its power from the sun. Guess what happened one recent morning when the sun went into eclipse. Nothing.

March 24, 2015

Gentry Liberals Have Increasing Clout in Chicago's Shrinking Electorate By Michael Barone

Rahm Emanuel heads into a runoff April 7 in his bid for a second term as mayor of Chicago. He's the favorite going in, having won 46 percent in the Feb. 24 first round against longtime local officeholder Chuy Garcia's 34 percent and topping 50 percent in recent polls.

Emanuel, President Obama's first White House chief of staff and architect of the Democrats' 2006 takeover of the House, is politically astute, energetic and profane. Given all that, it's surprising that his support is down from the 55 percent he won in the first round in February 2011.

March 23, 2015

Measuring the Moral Posture of Rand Paul By Joe Conason

Expecting morally serious debate from any would-be Republican presidential contender is like waiting for a check from a deadbeat. It could arrive someday, but don't count on it.

Yet listening to someone like Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., feign outrage over a real moral question can still be amusing, if you know enough about him to laugh. The Kentucky Republican has seized on stories about millions of dollars donated by Saudi Arabian agencies and interests to the Clinton Foundation, demanding that the Clintons return those funds because of gender inequality under the Saudi version of Islam.

March 20, 2015

Will Hispanics fire up America? By Michael Barone

"Firing up America" is the cover line on the March 20 issue of The Economist, heralding a 16-page special report on America's Latinos. Its tone is resolutely upbeat -- perhaps a bit too much so.

If it's in the News, it's in our Polls. Public opinion polling since 2003.

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