The president's speech last week, which was described by the White House in advance as a speech intended to reach out to the Muslim world, will probably go down as one of the least well-understood major presidential speeches in modern memory.
The U.S. Supreme Court effectively ordered California on Monday to release 33,000 inmates over two years from an in-state prison population that numbers about 143,000.
New polling by Rasmussen shows voters highly conflicted over which party to blame for our economic troubles and which is best able to end them. But Americans agree on one thing: The economy is lousy. And from that, we can reasonably deduce that they don't want a lousier economy.
"The State Department is a fitting venue," declared Barack Obama at the beginning of his speech on the Middle East last Thursday.
Shame on The New York Times. A housekeeper gets pregnant by the famous and powerful man for whom she works. For 10 years, she continues to work in the home and never says a word. After 20 years of service, she retires and buys a house 100 miles away to raise her son.
The nation got a preview of the Democrats' sweeping congressional election victories in 2010 when Democratic candidates pulled off victories in three close special House elections. The results were just the first of many for Democrats in the last cycle, when…
It is hard to see why anyone was surprised by Newt Gingrich's self-ignited implosion in the earliest hours of his presidential candidacy. The career of the former House speaker and Georgia congressman is practically bursting with proof that he suffers from chronic paranoid hysteria -- a condition that has done more to advance than diminish his status among conservatives.
As the International Monetary Fund gets ready to choose a successor to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who resigned following his arrest on charges that he sexually assaulted and raped a hotel housekeeper, it would be a good thing to step back for a moment and ask: What should the IMF do? More specifically, can the IMF possibly morph itself into a worldwide force for economic growth instead of Bailout Nation?
After two strong congressional cycles in 2006 and 2008, the Democrats were "shellacked" by Republicans in 2010. As the 2012 cycle approaches, uncertainty prevails for both parties: Each is trying to hold or expand its majority in one chamber while attempting to weaken and maybe topple the opposition in the other.
Just as busts follow booms, booms are supposed to follow busts. But there has been no boom, not even a boomlet, to light a candle in the gloom of the housing collapse. Many economists thought that a recovery from the real-estate meltdown that started in 2007 would be well on its way by 2011.
Exit Mike Huckabee. Enter Newt Gingrich. Exit Donald Trump. It's been a busy week in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
"I didn't wish to be the girl who had a problem with a politician for the rest of my life." So said Tristane Banon, in explaining why she didn't file charges nine years ago against Socialist politician and current International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
In 2004, Maria Shriver told Vanity Fair that many people were surprised that a Kennedy clan member would marry Hollywood bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger.
This White House, like its predecessors, can take some comfort in the fact that the Middle East has been breaking the hearts of diplomats and foreign politicians for at least 2,000 years.
Before John Ensign resigned as Nevada's junior senator on May 3, the Republican faced a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into a possibly illegal cover-up that followed an affair between Ensign and Cindy Hampton, a campaign aide who was married to the senator's administrative assistant. Last week, the committee released a report on the probe -- and it is ugly.
Most every detail surrounding the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn blew right out the "Law and Order" storybook. Detectives board an Air France jet about to taxi off for Paris and pull Strauss-Kahn right out of his first-class seat.
Barack Obama's immigration speech in El Paso May 10 was an exercise in electioneering and hypocrisy. Hypocrisy because while Obama complained about "politicians" blocking comprehensive immigration bills, he was one of them himself.
As governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin "demonstrated many of the qualities we expect in our best leaders," The Atlantic's Joshua Green reports in a must-read story.
Raj Rajaratnam should be about the last person in the world that I have any sympathy for. I don't know him. I don't have a lot in common with billionaires who would cheat to save $3 million, as he was convicted of doing. I dislike insider trading, not so much because it's unfair (it's also unfair that so many people are so much better than me at investing) but because it undermines confidence in the markets, and our economy depends on that confidence.
For the longest time, a certain admirable, independent senator from Arizona disappeared from public life, replaced by an irresponsible, opportunistic and occasionally demagogic figure, who seemed to have been warped by his presidential ambitions and his disappointment in losing. But John McCain has now returned, just in time to refute the sinister attempt by his fellow Republicans to justify torture as the instrument of Osama bin Laden's demise.
