Since Hamas took over in Gaza in 2007, Israel has attempted to enforce a blockade. No one doubts that hardships have resulted -- but not enough hardships for Hamas to renounce its commitment to terror or to the destruction of the state of Israel.
I am rarely accused of being overly sensitive to other cultures, and I've had my share of disagreement with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Yet even I was offended at the decision to center the plot of "Sex and the City 2" on an all-expenses-paid vacations to Abu Dhabi for New York's famed four best friends. The sequel's racy material was considered so objectionable that the Islamic emirate wouldn't let filmmakers work there, so the crew had to shoot in Morocco.
Obama Struggling to Show He's in Control," reads the headline on The Washington Post's story on Barack Obama's Thursday press conference, where most of the questions were about the Gulf oil spill. "Defensive, unauthoritative and equivocal," wrote Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford of Obama's performance. "He came across as a beleaguered bureaucrat in damage control."
If the eyes are the window to the soul, as the cliche goes, the political world has a corollary: Books written by candidates are the window into the soul the candidates would like you to believe they have.
Belgium has banned the burqa, the head-to-toe veil worn in parts of the Muslim world. French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants his country to follow suit. What's an open-minded person to think?
Rand Paul, tea party flavor of the month, is said to be avoiding "overexposure." Senior Republican Party operatives, worried by the Kentucky Senate nominee's all-too-revealing remarks after his primary victory, have urged him not to grant any interviews for a while. So he flip-flopped on his criticism of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, flaked out on a "Meet the Press" appearance and has scarcely been heard from since.
President Obama spoke in the unfinished hull of a new factory built by solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra in Fremont, Calif., Wednesday to highlight his administration's focus on creating jobs. The new facility, Obama explained to a crowd of hard hats and suits, created 3,000 temporary construction jobs and was expected to provide 1,000 production jobs.
Intraparty civil war. It's a story line journalists often employ, though usually about only one party, the Republicans.
Like many beleaguered sports fans, as the calendar turned to 2010, Republicans across the country were conjuring up the same thought: “This is the year!” After disastrous House elections in 2006 and 2008, Republicans dropped from their high-water mark of 232 House seats—their largest total since 1949—to just 178—their lowest total in a decade and a half. This precipitous decline brought considerable frustration to the new minority party. 2010 appeared to offer the chance for historic rebirth—and in many ways it still does.
One day Team Obama announces a plan for enhanced rescission authority to impound wasteful spending. The next day the House surfaces a $200 billion “stimulus” plan to spend on transfer payments for welfare, even more unemployment compensation, still more Medicaid, and a bunch of special-interest subsidies.
Historically, the American public -- confident, independent and undemanding-has not expected much out of Washington. Live your silver lives of limousines, private jets, power and celebrity; just do no permanent damage to the nation.
The candidates subject themselves to all those boring chicken dinners, weekends on the road and having to flatter unpleasant people. Their campaign workers, contributors and media friends struggle to pull them over the finish line.
This month, three members of Congress have been beaten in their bids for re-election -- a Republican senator from Utah, a Democratic congressman from West Virginia and a Republican-turned-Democrat senator from Pennsylvania. Their records and their curricula vitae are different. But they all have one thing in common: They are members of an appropriations committee.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon got the tough new Arizona immigration law wrong when he told Congress on Thursday, "It is a law that not only ignores a reality -- but also introduces a terrible idea of racial profiling as the basis for law enforcement."
U.S and world stock markets are slumping badly as intensified systemic risks from the Greek and European debt-default contagion continue to spread. Disciplinarian markets of stocks, bonds, gold and currencies are signaling the inadequacy of European Union rescue plans and the global fear that economic recovery will be blunted.
The more we learn about the BP oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the more we ought to question the basic assumptions that led us here. Like the explosion of the housing bubble that ruptured the world economy, this human and environmental tragedy resulted from a system that encourages reckless profiteering without effective regulation.
It began last November instatewide races in Virginia and New Jersey. Then it swept through Massachusettsin a stunning U.S. Senate special election this January.
The first rule of primary elections is that they are completely different from general elections. What it takes to win a primary is often exactly the opposite of what it takes to win a general, which is why potentially strong general election candidates are often especially weak primary candidates, and vice versa.
How is it that The New York Times reported that that the toll of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan reached the "grim milestone" of 1,000 Tuesday, but my newspaper, The Chronicle, had not bothered to report the story?
