Some of us called it the man-cession. In the deep recession that lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, many more men than women lost their jobs.
"Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" is the motto of San Francisco's Bohemian Club. The motto is supposed to represent the club's edict against doing business during its annual Bohemian Grove retreat, which commences on Thursday on 2,700 acres, 75 miles north of the city. As club spokesman and member Sam Singer explained, "It's a group of gentlemen who are really genuinely interested in arts, theater, jazz and rock 'n' roll." The retreat gives members a chance to "get away from work. It's forbidden to talk about or solicit business at the club or grove."
Suddenly Republican leaders in Congress, after months of staring down the Democrats over a potentially disastrous debt default, began blinking so fast that they might be signaling in Morse code. Although their message is muddled and illogical -- with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., saying he can accept closing tax loopholes only if such measures are "revenue neutral," thus canceling their budgetary value -- the Republicans now appear to understand that they will be blamed by voters if the negotiations collapse.
Here's some friendly fiscal advice: Anytime some Washington big-shot like Ben Bernanke or Tim Geithner claims that immediate spending cuts in the debt deal will harm the economy -- ignore them. Completely. You know why? Because in this great country of ours, spending never goes down. Never.
Casey Anthony killed her daughter. She may not have meant to, and she may have been much more interested in her own social life than in her daughter's well-being, but I have absolutely no doubt that she was responsible for her daughter's death.
Three years ago this month, then-Sen. Barack Obama told an enthusiastic throng in Berlin, "In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common."
The twisting rape case against former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has set off a whirlwind of journalistic creativity. Commentators are whipping a couple of broken eggs into a grand souffle of sweeping statements about the United States, France and their peoples. The facts still point to a violent sexual encounter between Strauss-Kahn and the African immigrant who accused him of attempted rape in the Manhattan hotel where she cleaned rooms.
It's racially discriminatory to prohibit racial discrimination. That's the bottom line of a decision issued last Friday, just before the Fourth of July weekend, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
One would be hard-pressed to find a better example of sheer misguided reporting than the story in The Washington Post last weekend in which it was reported that "Newt Gingrich thinks he can revive his debilitated campaign by talking about Alzheimer's. ... For most presidential candidates, Alzheimer's is a third- or fourth-tier subject, at best. But as Gingrich sees it, Alzheimer's, as well as other niche topics such as military families' concerns and pharmaceutical issues, are priorities. ... By offering himself as a champion of pet causes, Gingrich believes he can sew together enough narrow constituencies to make a coalition -- an unconventional one, yes, but a coalition nevertheless."
Poll after poll shows that the American people want higher taxes. That's not the same as liking higher taxes. The people have simply concluded that higher taxes are preferable to the alternative -- so vividly portrayed in the Republican plan to do away with government guarantees in Medicare.
One of the interesting things about our country, the independence of which the Founders declared 235 years ago today, is that we have been a property-holders' democracy.
Just days after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee and the coalition supporting similar legislation in that state effectively conceded defeat.
Anyone paying attention to the costs of U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan must have known that the president badly underestimated those numbers on June 22, when he told the nation that we have spent "a trillion dollars" waging war over the past decade.
The age of "residential adolescence" is upon us, apparently. Nearly 45 percent of adults ages 20 to 24 now live at home with their parents. That's 1.7 million more than in 2005.
It seems this is the Democratic answer for every single issue, every problem, every debate.
What's the fair way to run a large organization? That's a question that is squarely, and interestingly, raised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissenting opinion in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, a Supreme Court case decided last week.
It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes. In that context, the recent rise in oil prices seems to have turned the Obama administration into true believers (at least rhetorically) when it comes to the best method to keep gas prices down and the American economy growing.
For a Democrat, it's too good to be true. Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney running neck and neck in Iowa. Romney having to worry about the one in five who won't vote for a Mormon, and Bachmann hiring a cadre of top Republican consultants, starting with Ed Rollins and Ed Goeas.
"Centralizers," a conservative wrote disapprovingly in Reason magazine, "say that the responsibility for making tough decisions about how to keep health care costs under control ought to be made by enlightened, well-intentioned policy elites."
Which past leader does Barack Obama most closely resemble? His admirers, not all of them liberals, used to compare him to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.
