While the extension of Bush-era tax cuts dominated headlines during the recently-concluded lame duck session of Congress, the coming year will bring with it a renewed focus on public debt – whether policymakers like it or not.
My little neighborhood sandwich shop was invaded today by a horde of high school students from a school I'd never heard of. The students were more diverse than the neighborhood.
Curious fact, unearthed by Gerald Seib of The Wall Street Journal. The average age of Republican House members in the new Congress convening this week is 54.9, younger than the Republicans' average age in the previous Congress, 56.5. But the average age of House Democrats has risen, from 58 to 60.2.
Over the next four weeks, the Crystal Ball is going to roll out its very first look at the 2012 contests for Senate, Governor, House, and President.
The pas-de-deux between the Republican House and the Democratic president and Senate can get old pretty quickly. The Republican House passes repeal of ObamaCare. The Senate either kills it or Obama vetoes it. The Republican House passes spending cuts. The Senate ... you get the drift.
As we begin a new year, it may be useful to look back to one particular piece of advice that George Washington gave us in his farewell address. In paragraph 28, he reminded us that:
"It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who, that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?"
The past is not always a prologue to the future. But looking at some of the big winners and losers of 2010 does provide some strong hints of a positive 2011.
As he was sworn in as governor at Sacramento's Memorial Auditorium on Monday "with no mental reservations," Brown gave Californians reason to be optimistic that he might succeed where predecessors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger failed. In the face of a $28 billion shortfall, Brown's team is floating savvy cuts in California government.
A daffy Wall Street Journal editorial about the "vanishing millionaires" of Oregon lit a spark in a fairly humorless week. It offers the usual boilerplate about the rich fleeing to tax-friendlier provinces because their state raised taxes, but this time with a great visual: "One-quarter of the rich tax filers seem to have gone missing."
Consider one conundrum in American politics. Income inequality has been increasing, according to standard statistics. Yet most Americans do not seem very perturbed by it.
California has more prisoners on death row than any other state. Last year, according to the Los Angeles Times, it added 28 more, for a total of 717, contrary to trends elsewhere.
Profound thanks are due televangelist Pat Robertson for stating so clearly what many of us have been screaming in the wilderness for years -- that the criminalization of marijuana is a plague on young people. May he lend courage to politicians who know better but won't do the right thing for fear of seeming "soft" on drugs.
Michigan prosecutor Jessica R. Cooper's bio boasts that she is a "pioneer in the world of women in the law." As it turns out, she is a pioneer in the world of busybodies in the law as well. Cooper is the Oakland County prosecutor who charged Leon Walker, 33, with a felony for hacking into his now ex-wife's e-mail, as he suspected that she was having an affair.
Don't believe all the Washington talk that President Obama had a great lame duck session and goes into the new year and the new 112th congress with the whip hand. Utter nonsense.
Born on Christmas day in California to a surrogate mother, weighing in at 7 pounds 15 ounces.
The son of proud fathers Sir Elton John and his civil partner David Furnish.
No statement as to whether or which of the two was the sperm donor.
Twenty-two years ago last week, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Scotland. The terrorist attack killed 270 people, including 189 Americans and 11 Scots on the ground in the small village of Lockerbie.
If you don't already know about the Kardashian sisters, you probably don't want to know. Kourtney, Kim and Khloe have grown very rich dressing like tramps and otherwise exhibiting themselves, including sessions on the toilet (viewable on their E! channel program, "Keeping up With the Kardashians").
On the day after Boxing Day, it's worth noting that Barack Obama is down but not out.
2010 was a year consumed with silly stories. The more trivial the controversy, the more airtime it consumed. Although not all the silly stories made conservatives look stupid, the more a squabble tarnished the right, the surer it was to generate talking-head babble. And then they fizzle, as most non-stories do.
Was it only a month ago that the chattering class was writing off the president as being almost as thoroughly defeated as the lame duck Congress, as the failed leader who had lost his way, popularity plummeting, accomplishments vulnerable? Insiders worried about who was up next.
