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May 26, 2014

In VA Scandal, Accountability for All -- Including Congress by Joe Conason

While Congress eagerly prepares its latest political stunt -- a resolution to oust Gen. Eric Shinseki as Veterans Affairs Secretary -- individual members might consider their own responsibility for the scandalous inadequacy of veterans' health care. Unlike most of them, especially on the Republican side, Shinseki opposed the incompetent war plans of the George W. Bush administration that left so many American service men and women grievously wounded. And unlike most of them, especially on the Republican side, Shinseki has done much to reduce the backlog of veterans seeking care, despite the congressional failure to provide sufficient funding.

Anyone paying attention knows by now that those secret waiting lists at VA facilities -- which may have led to the premature deaths of scores of injured veterans -- are a direct consequence of policy decisions made in the White House years before President Barack Obama got there. The misguided invasion of Iraq -- carried out with insufficient numbers of troops shielded by insufficient armor -- led directly to thousands of new cases of traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other physical and mental disabilities requiring speedy treatment.

To find out more about Joe Conason, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2014 CREATORS.COM

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May 26, 2014

Fight Heroin With Marijuana by Froma Harrop

A plague of heroin addiction is upon us. Another plague. Heroin was the crisis that prompted Richard Nixon to launch the war on drugs in 1971.

Time marched on. Cocaine and then crack cocaine and then methamphetamine overtook heroin as the drugs of the moment. Now heroin is back -- and badder than ever.

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

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May 23, 2014

End Crony Capitalism, Sell Federal Land, Limit Tax Breaks for the Rich By Michael Barone

Gummit don't work good. That conclusion, often that inelegantly expressed, seems to be more and more common, not only in the United States but around the world.

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May 22, 2014

Don't Privatize the Veterans Hospitals by Froma Harrop

President Obama can do himself a big political favor this month by saying simply this: "I will not privatize the VA hospitals."

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May 22, 2014

Nationalization of Senate Elections Poses Challenge to Democrats in 2014 By Alan I. Abramowitz

Democrats face several challenges in trying to maintain their majority in the U.S. Senate in the 2014 midterm election. In addition to the normal tendency of the president’s party to lose seats in midterm elections, Democrats are defending 21 of the 36 seats that are up this year including seven seats in states that were carried by Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. Moreover, six of those seats are in states that Romney carried by a double-digit margin.

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May 21, 2014

Good News by John Stossel

Are you worried about the future?

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May 20, 2014

Britain's Political Stalemate Resembles America's By Michael Barone

LONDON -- British politics has a familiar look to Americans, with a center-right Conservative Party and a center-left Labour Party resembling America's Republicans and Democrats.

Britain's parliamentary system, however, presents a contrast with the U.S. Constitution on the surface. A prime minister whose party has a majority in the House of Commons can pass any law he or she likes, since members of Parliament almost always vote on party lines.

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May 20, 2014

Other Paths to Better Pay by Froma Harrop

Did you read about investors in Chipotle Mexican Grill rejecting the outlandish pay package the fast-food chain's two CEOs had cooked up for themselves? Stockholders overwhelmingly booed the mega-million payout, which would have come on top of the $300 million the duo have harvested in recent years.

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May 16, 2014

Harvest of Shame: America's Poisoned Children Need a Hashtag By Joe Conason

More than 50 years ago, CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow revealed to America the awful conditions suffered by migrant farm laborers in "Harvest of Shame," an angry documentary that would become a classic. While conditions have improved for some of the families whose work provides our cornucopia of affordable food, there remains a special group of workers that our political system refuses to protect: the children who pick tobacco.

On May 14, Human Rights Watch issued Tobacco's Hidden Children -- a stunning report on child labor in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Interviewing kids in the fields who ranged in age from 7 to 17, the organization's researchers compiled their dismal stories of backbreaking work, inadequate water and toilet facilities, and worst of all, the chronic illness brought on by poisoning from nicotine and pesticides.

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May 16, 2014

The Revolt of the Wingers in British and American Politics By Michael Barone

In recent times, British and American politics have often flowed in parallel currents.   

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May 15, 2014

Fox News and GOP Are Not in the Same Business By Froma Harrop

The curtain has dropped on the tale of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher famous for refusing to pay grazing fees for use of public land. He became a hero to anti-government zealots who oddly failed to see this second helping of taxpayer largesse (the modest fees he didn't pay already reflected a government subsidy) as the action of a taker, not a maker.

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May 15, 2014

Notes on the State of Politics By Kyle Kondik

It’s become clear over the past few months that Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR), despite the increasing Republican lean of his state, has been holding his own, or better, against Rep. Tom Cotton (R, AR-4). Several positive polls for the incumbent, including a too-optimistic 11-point lead from NBC/Marist earlier this week, moved the HuffPost Pollster average in the race to 45.2% Pryor, 42.7% Cotton.

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May 14, 2014

Marriage: It's Complicated By John Stossel

It's wedding season! More Americans get married in June than in other months. Why June? The timing seems pretty arbitrary if you look up its history.

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May 13, 2014

Monica Lewinsky, Grace in Humiliation By Froma Harrop

How refreshing to hear Monica Lewinsky recount the depth of her shame. When it was revealed in 1998 that she had provided then-President Clinton with oral sex, Lewinsky now writes in Vanity Fair, she "was arguably the most humiliated person in the world."

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May 13, 2014

Demographics May Be Destiny -- But Not One Political Direction by Michael Barone

Demography is destiny, we are often told, and rightly -- up to a point. The American electorate is made up of multiple identifiable segments, defined in various ways, by race and ethnicity, by age cohort, by region and religiosity (or lack thereof), by economic status and interest.

Over time, some segments become larger and some smaller. Some prove to be politically crucial, given the political alignments of the time. Others become irrelevant as they lose cohesion and identity.

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

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May 12, 2014

Bad Old Days: How Monica Lewinsky Deserves to Be Remembered By Joe Conason

Monica Lewinsky must be satisfied to learn that with a few stylish photographs and a few innocuous paragraphs, she can still discombobulate Maureen Dowd, Lynne Cheney and a swarm of demented figures in American politics and media. Few could resist the chance to reminisce about the tapes, the blue dress, the cigars, the salacious Starr Report and the drama of impeachment.

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May 9, 2014

Republican Primary Voters Seem Determined to Nominate Candidates Who can Win By Michael Barone

Results of Tuesday's primaries, particularly the victory of state House Speaker Thom Tillis in North Carolina's Republican Senate primary, are being hailed -- or decried -- as a victory for the Republican establishment over the Tea Party movement.

There's something to that. Tillis benefited from support from Karl Rove's American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and endorsements by Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush.

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May 8, 2014

Victims of Campus Rape Should Be Dialing 911 By Froma Harrop

If a 19-year-old high-school dropout raped by her ex-boyfriend wants justice, she calls the police. The same should apply to a 19-year-old college freshman similarly attacked by another student.  

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May 8, 2014

The Surprisingly Unrepresentative 2014 Senate Map By Kyle Kondik

This map shows the 2014 Senate races in blue and red, with the states sized according to their population and colored based on their current occupant. (The gray states are those with no regular Senate election this year.)

Senate Class 2, the one contested this year, is far less representative of the nation as a whole than the two other classes. Its 33 states contain slightly more than half (51.8%) of the nation’s population. Class 1 (the 2012 class) also features 33 states, but those states host three-quarters (75.2%) of the population; Class 3, coming in 2016 with 34 states, is similar to Class 1, with 72.6% of the population.

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May 7, 2014

Offensive Speech By John Stossel

Last week, when the NBA banned racist team owner Donald Sterling, some said: "What about free speech? Can't a guy say what he thinks anymore?"

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