Stop Making Excuses for Nonvoting Millennials by Froma Harrop
The recent economic crisis hit the American middle class hard. But for the youngest adults trying to gain a foothold in the good life, it's been devastating.
Political Commentary
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January 20, 2015
January 16, 2015
Why the Violent Extremists Welcome Attacks on Islam by Joe Conason
Whenever an act of horrific terror enrages the West, a predictable second act ensues. Furious commentators and activists on the right erupt with blanket denunciations of Islam, Muslims and their supposed plots to enslave us all under Shariah, urging that we ban the religion, stigmatize its faithful and restore the Judeo-Christian exclusivity of America. Sometimes a few even seek retribution in attacks on mosques, individual Muslims and anyone unfortunate enough to "look Muslim."
January 16, 2015
Protecting a Tolerant Society Against the Intolerance: A New --- and Old --- Challenge by Michael Barone
How far should a tolerant society tolerate intolerance? It's a difficult issue, one without any entirely satisfactory answer. And it's a current issue in the days after 40 world leaders and the U.S. ambassador to France marched together in Paris against the jihadist Muslim murderers who targeted the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
January 15, 2015
Gilded Youth and Their Pain By Froma Harrop
A Hollywood-handsome Princeton grad recently shot his hedge-fund-founder father to death. The alleged reason: Thomas Gilbert Sr.'s plan to cut his allowance by $200 a month. You can imagine what the tabloids are doing with the story.
January 15, 2015
Harry Reid & The Senate Survivors By Geoffrey Skelley
If history is any indication, it would be hard to pick against Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) if he runs for another term next year. His races are often close, but he has shown a remarkable amount of resilience over the years, frustrating Republican attempts to dislodge him. In fact, by some measures Reid has had a tougher time retaining his seat than any of the longest-serving senators during the century-long era of popular Senate elections. He is, in many ways, the heartiest of the “Senate survivors.”
January 14, 2015
The Better Option by John Stossel
It's easy to "fire" a business that rips you off. Just go to a different one. It's a lot easier to patronize another business than to get government to fix the problem.
January 13, 2015
Can Jeb Bush -- or Anyone -- Come up With a Platform for Primaries, General and Presidency? by Michael Barone
There are likely to be many surprises in a race for the Republican presidential nomination that has something like 20 plausible potential candidates. The first of those surprises came in the last hours before New Year's when Jeb Bush announced he was setting up an exploratory committee to consider running for president.
January 13, 2015
License Plates Are Not Bumper Stickers By Froma Harrop
A group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans has asked Texas to issue a license plate featuring the Confederate battle flag, which many consider an emblem of slavery. Texas said no, and the sons are suing because the state accepts other messages for specialty plates.
The sons have a point.
January 9, 2015
What 'Je Suis Charlie' Should Mean to Us By Joe Conason
Not long after 9/11, the leading figures in France's Champagne industry decided that they would hold their 2002 annual awards gala in New York rather than Paris. At no small expense, they displayed solidarity with New Yorkers -- and America -- at a time of sorrow and fury, like so many of their compatriots. It was one more instance when the French renewed the bond that has existed since this country's founding.
January 9, 2015
Martin Anderson: A Remembrance by Michael Barone
Lou Cannon has a nice remembrance in RealClearPolitics of Martin Anderson, the economist and adviser to Ronald Reagan who died last week at 78. He touches on all of Anderson's accomplishments, from his successful advocacy in the Nixon White House to abolish the military draft to his unearthing, with his wife Annelise Anderson and Kiron Skinner, the handwritten drafts of Ronald Reagan's radio speeches, which show the impressive breadth of Reagan's reading and depth of his thinking.
January 8, 2015
Playtime Is Over for Obamacare's Foes By Froma Harrop
Friends of Obamacare, horrified that the Supreme Court has taken a case that could blow up the federal health insurance exchanges, should recalibrate their dread. While the health reforms were safely humming along, there was little political price for demanding their demise. Thanks to the Supreme Court, now there is.
Years of carpet-bombing assaults on Obamacare have left many Americans thinking that they don't like the Affordable Care Act. But close down the federal exchanges covering 6 million people (so far) in 36 states and they may think otherwise. With a vengeance.
January 8, 2015
The New World Order By Larry J. Sabato
Well, that didn’t last long! By that, we mean our pre-Christmas ordering of the GOP presidential field. We shouldn’t be surprised. Politics never takes a long holiday break anymore.
First prize for early maneuvering goes to Jeb Bush. His unexpected, all-but-in announcement on Dec. 16 stunned his competitors and the political community. Bush didn’t just accelerate the entire process, including forthcoming announcements by rivals, but he also gained a leg up in conventional wisdom’s positioning.
January 6, 2015
Family Fragmentation: Can Anything Be Done? by Michael Barone
How big a problem is family fragmentation? "Immense," says Mitch Pearlstein, head of the Minnesota think tank Center of the American Experiment. "The biggest domestic problem facing this country."
January 6, 2015
The Rich and Their Anti-Vaccine Quacks by Froma Harrop
California parents are refusing to vaccinate their kindergartners at twice the rate of seven years ago. So the Los Angeles Times reports. The result has been the return of measles and other serious diseases that can lead to paralysis, birth defects and death. The state is now suffering a whooping cough epidemic -- it's amazing to say -- in the year 2015.
But the real shocker in the story is this: The rise in "personal belief exemptions" -- a loophole in the law requiring parents to have their children vaccinated -- is highest in rich coastal and mountain areas. For example, an astounding 23 percent of students at the Santa Cruz Montessori obtained belief exemptions and are not vaccinated.
COPYRIGHT 2015 CREATORS.COM
January 2, 2015
David Koch Loves Manhattan by Froma Harrop
One may start the day at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the way in, you'll pass through the new David H. Koch Plaza -- the result of a $65 million gift from David H. Koch.
January 2, 2015
Voter Turnout Boomed Under Bush, Not Under Obama By Michael Barone
There is a widespread assumption that President Obama has expanded the electorate and inspired booming voter turnout. One could make a case for that based on the 2008 election. But since then, not so much.
Looking back over the past 15 years, the biggest surge in voter turnout came during George W. Bush's presidency. In the Obama years, turnout actually declined in both the 2012 presidential and the 2014 congressional elections.
January 1, 2015
GOP, Stop Making Excuses for Scalise by Joe Conason
The unsavory story of Rep. Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican and House majority whip, should serve as a clear warning to the leaders of the Republican Party. They need to ask why their message attracts some of the most despicable elements in American society -- and why they can't effectively reject those extremists.
Despite many fervent vows of "outreach" and "inclusion" by top Republicans, they keep making the wrong choices. Both House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy have expressed their confidence in Scalise despite his "mistake." And the excuses they now offer on behalf of the man chosen for the third-highest position in their congressional caucus are rapidly eroding.
COPYRIGHT 2015 CREATORS.COM
December 31, 2014
Ignorance By John Stossel
No wonder Cuba wallows in poverty.
Last week, the New York Times reported that the Castro brothers opened a special business zone where foreign companies "would be given greater control over setting wages at factories. ... (P)roposals would be approved or rejected within 60 days."
What? If I want to give someone a raise, I have to wait up to two months for government approval! That's absurd.
December 30, 2014
Hollywood, Women and Angelina by Froma Harrop
Was Angelina Jolie unqualified to direct the big-budget World War II saga "Unbroken"? The movie tells the true story of Louis Zamperini, a champion runner and champion survivor -- of his bomber's crash, 47 days on an ocean raft and torture in a Japanese prison camp.
