I remember Sept. 10, too. On that crisp night 10 years ago, friends and I went to hear Les Paul at a basement club in Times Square. The place was packed, and as was my habit in such settings, I quickly noted the fire exits.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney joined me in Las Vegas yesterday to discuss his new jobs and economic plan. He also shared some thoughts on his new Republican rival, Texas Governor Rick Perry.
The race for the Republican presidential nomination finally seems to be gelling. On Wednesday night, candidates debated at the Reagan Library in California -- the first of five scheduled debates over the next five weeks.
In the last few weeks, leading Democrats in Congress have called Tea Party constituents terrorists, said they should go to hell and accused them of wanting to lynch black people.
Please, everyone, stop monkeying around with Social Security and Medicare. We mean you, Republicans, and you, Democrats. No one's saying that Social Security can't be slightly recalibrated to keep the program on a sound footing or that significant savings can't be found in Medicare waste. We're saying that if Americans are not vigilant, these programs can be undermined by seemingly small "fixes."
I can't remember a more stunning rebuke of a president by a congressional leader than House Speaker John Boehner's refusal to agree to President Barack Obama's demand -- er, request -- that he summon a joint session of Congress to hear the president's latest speech on the economy at 8 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, Sept. 7.
No sooner had President Obama shocked the political world with a gloomy economic forecast -- projecting 9.1 percent unemployment for this year and a reelection-killing 9 percent for 2012 -- than the dismal August jobs report arrived showing no gain in nonfarm payrolls. That’s right, no gain at all. Private jobs increased a scant 17,000, while hours worked and wages actually declined. Obama’s economic policies have failed.
If volunteerism is suddenly unpatriotic and even "socialist," that will come as a nasty surprise to many of the Republicans and conservatives who always have supported such efforts, notably including both presidents named Bush.
With Barack Obama's 2012 renomination speech in Charlotte now about a year away, here's a very simple political question with a potentially complex answer: In his 2012 bid to win re-election, what messages and themes will the president employ?
The third week in July, Republican Gov. Rick Perry said that the U.S. Constitution -- whose 10th Amendment limits federal power -- gives states the right to decide on such matters as abortion and gay marriage. The fourth week in July, the Texan recanted. He now supports a federal ban on abortion and gay marriage. Social conservatives told him they didn't cotton to giving states the right to defy their views on things they care about.
The recent decision by ex-Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) not to seek the seat of his retiring colleague, Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl, was a big moment for Republicans because it gave them yet another clean shot at a Democratic-held Senate seat. Feingold, still popular despite his reelection loss last year, would have been a favored quasi-incumbent had he run. Instead, his decision is just another piece of miserable news for Democrats in this cycle's race for the Senate.
President Obama's post-Labor Day "jobs" speech will be his last chance to launch an economic policy with any chance of manifesting its effect -- both economic and political -- before the November 2012 elections.
"It's not the consumers' job to know what they want" -- Steve Jobs
Some of society's most intractable problems come not from its failures but from its successes. Often you can't get a good thing without paying a bad price.
When Scott Brown was elected U.S. senator from Massachusetts in a special election last year, Republicans rejoiced. They had wrested the Senate seat held by the late liberal icon Edward Kennedy in a Democratic stronghold.
In the vengeful world of politics, what goes around often comes around.
Not long ago, I wrote about how the private sector outraces and laps government. While governments dither and dispute, the private sector discovers.
Have you noticed that our immigration laws are finally being enforced? That illegal immigration is way down? That employers hiring undocumented workers are finally being punished? And that this is being done in the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama? If not, take note.
One of the few issues on which opinion has moved left over the last few years is same-sex marriage. In 1996, Gallup found that Americans opposed it by a 68 percent to 27 percent margin. Last May, Gallup found Americans in favor by 53 percent to 45 percent. That's a huge change in 15 years.
As the Iowa Straw Poll in Ames was wrapping up Saturday, a reporter rushed onto the floor of Iowa State University's Hilton Coliseum, where the press was filing their stories. She went up to her colleagues with what she said was a new, breaking quote from Michele Bachmann: Bachmann, the reporter said, had just vowed to make Barack Obama a "one-term president."
