A Rough Month in America for Women By Froma Harrop
Mark Sanford's heralded engagement to Maria Belen Chapur is apparently over. The rep from South Carolina released the news to America through a Facebook post. That's how Chapur found out, too.
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September 18, 2014
September 18, 2014
Senate Ratings Changes: North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Minnesota By Kyle Kondik
Another week is down the drain in the race for the Senate, and while our overall outlook is unchanged — a five to eight seat gain for the GOP — some of our ratings are in need of adjustments.
One of these comes as a surprise, as Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) is proving to be quite resilient.
September 17, 2014
Immigration Is American By John Stossel
Conservatives rightly point out that America is a nation of laws. No one should be exempt. That's why many oppose amnesty and other paths to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are here now.
"If they want to be in America," the argument goes, "they ought to return to their own countries and apply for a visa legally. America should not reward law breaking."
That sounds sensible -- but what happens when the immigrant does that, goes to the U.S. embassy and says, I'd like to work in America legally?
September 16, 2014
How Not to Get Your Country Back By Froma Harrop
The tea party mantra, "I want my country back," resonates with many. The racial undertones can be ugly (as well as pointless). But the longing for an economically secure America centered on a strong middle class is on point and widely shared.
Older and mostly white members of the far right tend to see themselves as model Americans who worked hard, saved up and played by the rules. They may have done all the above, but many also have no idea of how easy they had it.
September 16, 2014
Obama Forced by Events to Reverse Course --- and Disillusion Base by Michael Barone
Iraq, immigration, inversion. On all three of the issues referred to, President Obama finds himself forced by events to do something he dislikes -- and he's in trouble with much of his Democratic Party base for doing so.
September 15, 2014
Republican Reaction to Obama Speech Reveals Much -- About Them by Joe Conason
Minutes after President Barack Obama concluded his strong and sensible address explaining how he intends to destroy the terrorist organization the Islamic State, Republicans popped up on television like political snipers. He should have kept a "residual force" in Iraq, complained Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and he is to blame for the Islamic State's advances. He sounds just like George W. Bush, gloated former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and he is reluctantly enacting the advice of Dick Cheney.
September 12, 2014
Large Government Out of Place in a Society Based on Small Technology by Michael Barone
"Twentieth-century technology," writes economic historian Joel Mokyr in the Manhattan Institute's excellent City Journal, "was primarily about 'large' things."
Large in physical size, that is. Mokyr's examples include the diesel engine and the gas turbine, shipping containers, communications satellites launched by giant rockets, oil-drilling platforms, massive power stations, giant steel mills and huge airplanes.
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September 11, 2014
Do We Need a Place Called Home? By Froma Harrop
There's this scene in Shakespeare where the straight-talking Rosalind tries to make sense of Jaques, a guy who travels all the time and is plagued by melancholy.
September 11, 2014
What Is a Wave in the Senate? By Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley
For several months, we’ve held steady on our range of expected gains for Republicans in the Senate: a net of four to eight seats. With Labor Day in the rearview mirror and with less than 55 days to go until the midterms, we’re giving Republicans a slight bump: Our new range is a Republican net of five to eight Senate seats.
This means that the best-case scenario we can now envision for Democrats is a 50-50 tie in the Senate, with Vice President Joe Biden’s tiebreaking vote narrowly keeping Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) as majority leader.
September 10, 2014
Hold On, Mr. President by John Stossel
Do you have a strategy now, Mr. President? asked the cover of the Daily News next to a photo of the second American journalist to be beheaded by the terrorist group ISIS.
September 9, 2014
Obama's Delusions Dispelled? Well, we Can Hope for Change by Michael Barone
"If you watch the nightly news, it feels like the world is falling apart," President Obama told Democratic mega-contributors last month in one of the 400-plus fundraisers of his presidency.
But not to worry. "The world has always been messy," he said. "In part, we're just noticing now because of social media and our capacity to see in intimate detail the hardships that people are going through." Like being beheaded by Islamist terrorists. Or having your country invaded by Russian soldiers.
Michael Barone, senior political analyst at the Washington Examiner, (www.washingtonexaminer.com), where this article first appeared, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. To find out more about Michael Barone, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2014 THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
September 9, 2014
Casinos Just Aren't the Answer By From Harrop
The video for the Bruce Springsteen song "Atlantic City" opens with a scene of the grand Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel imploding into a pile of dust. That was almost 40 years ago. The Traymore Hotel and other grand hotels were leveled in much the same spectacular fashion.
In their place rose glass boxes and concrete hulks to house new casinos. The Atlantic City dream was to fill New Jersey state coffers with gambling gold.
September 5, 2014
Democrats Look Increasingly Like the Party of the Past by Michael Barone
Liberals like to think and talk about themselves as if they were the wave of the future. Note, for example, how Barack Obama and John Kerry have denounced Islamist terrorists and Vladimir Putin for behaving as if they are still in the "19th century."
September 4, 2014
Celebs Nix Nude Pix: Whose Problem? By Froma Harrop
The FBI is looking into what millions of people are looking at: hacked photos of naked celebrities. Pictures from the formerly private collections of Jennifer Lawrence, Scarlett Johansson, Christina Aguilera and others are being posted for the world to see.
September 4, 2014
2016 Presidential Update: For Republicans, a Vacancy at the Top By Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley
It’s lonely at the top of the Republican field — like, “top of Mt. Everest” lonely.
In our latest shuffle of the 2016 Crystal Ball presidential outlook, we’ve decided that the Republican first tier is…empty. Our Republican friends might object, but deep down, we think they would be hard-pressed to argue for any single name to head this long list: There’s simply no one in the field who is clearly more likely to get the nomination than a half-dozen or more others.
September 3, 2014
The 'Spiral of Silence' by Froma Harrop
With folks yapping all day on social media -- Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and the rest -- how can there be such a thing as a "spiral of silence" online?
August 29, 2014
Obama's Segue From Constructive Tax Proposals to Low-Grade Demagoguery by Michael Barone
The tax system should be simplified and work for all Americans with lower individual and corporate tax rates and fewer brackets.
August 28, 2014
The Smallness of Being in Economy Class by Froma Harrop
Americans are in the dumps about their future. What does that have to do with legroom in economy class? Everything.
The middle class sees its stature shrinking in the global pecking order and in a culture that favors money over well-being. There can be no better example for this than the indignities of flying economy.
Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2014 CREATORS.COM
August 28, 2014
Off to the Races By Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley
The overall picture is this: A Republican Senate gain of four-to-eight seats, with a GOP Senate pickup of six-to-seven seats the likeliest outcome; a GOP gain of somewhere around a half-dozen seats in the House; and little net party change in the gubernatorial lineup even as a few incumbents lose. So what could shift these projections in a significant way, beyond candidate implosions that move individual races on and off the board?
August 27, 2014
Green Monster By John Stossel
Thanks, Environmental Protection Agency! You've required sewage treatment plants, catalytic converters on cars and other things that made the world cleaner than the world in which I grew up. Good work.
Today, America's waterways are so much cleaner that I swim in New York City's once-filthy Hudson River -- right beside skyscrapers in which millions of people, uh, flush. The air we breathe is also cleaner than it's been for 60 years.
