When Julia Gillard, 48, orchestrated the ouster of Labor Party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, whom she replaced, she made history as Australia's first female prime minister. But Gillard is much more than that. Gillard is the rare national leader of a modern country -- in fact, I cannot think of another, male or female -- who is not married and has never been married. Moreover, Gillard has not been a parent, and she's an atheist.
Abraham Lincoln: "I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence." Lincoln address in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Feb. 22, 1861:
The likely (and much deserved) confirmation of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the United States Supreme Court creates an opening for one of the "Top 4" positions in the Justice Department. While there are many qualified candidates, the fact is that Kagan was the only woman in the top ranks at Justice. Even below that, men substantially outnumber women.
HOBART, AUSTRALIA -- California GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman has been taking a lot of heat for her voting record. Or non-voting record. The former eBay CEO didn't register to vote in California until 2002. She failed to vote in the 2003 recall election. She didn't register as a Republican until 2007. Too bad Whitman didn't spend her business-big-shot years Down Under. In Australia, it's against the law for citizens age 18 or older not to vote.
The United States has shed 2 million factory jobs since 2007, yet many American companies can't find qualified workers to fill their available openings. That's a shocking problem, given the numbers looking for work. But it could also be a break for blue-collar Americans willing to engage their brains. For them, there is a road from unemployment to a good living, and it may go through a local community college.
Home mortgage interest rates are the lowest in history, but house sales are plunging. Banks can make money easily because of the Federal Reserve's low interest rates, but they're not making many loans. Major corporations are sitting on something like $2 trillion in cash, but they're not investing.
In a column published last week in The New York Times, Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman condemns recent attempts to inject some common sense into what has become an epidemic of mindless government growth in America and around the world.
While many people spent the July 4th weekend cooling off at the beach, the summer heat is still being felt in a number of marquee House matchups. As a result a few ratings changes are in order, as we explain below. As always you can visit the Crystal Ball website anytime for a complete chart of all competitive House races.
With just four months to go before the voting in November, many races have settled in—falling into the D or R column as Solid, Likely, or Lean. But then, there are those stubborn toss-ups. Some are unmovable since the primaries haven’t yet been held and the nominees in one or both parties are unknown. Still others haven’t gelled because candidates aren’t spending money or voters stubbornly refusing to focus on politics in the middle of a hot summer. (How dare they?)
In 1978, Justice Lewis Powell wrote an opinion in the Bakke case asserting that the need for diversity could justify racial preferences in university admissions. No other justice joined this opinion, but because the other justices were split 4-4, Powell's opinion decided the case, and in time his argument has been embraced by a majority of the court. A regrettable result, in my view, but a consequential one.
The Obama administration is challenging Arizona's tough new immigration law, and that's too bad. It's not that the Arizona law is good policy, because it isn't. And it's not that President Obama doesn't have a better idea on immigration reform, because he does. Democrats should know that they play with fire by going after a law that reflects the public's utter frustration with illegal immigration.
So often are the certitudes and pronouncements of the chattering class simply mistaken that they must always be treated with deep skepticism. That is especially true when anything important is at stake -- from the arguments for invading Iraq several years ago to today's economic stagnation. Whatever the conventional wisdom tells you must be true is almost certainly false.
The Afghan War may be the first one we lose primarily because our civilian leadership did not understand the effect of its public words on our government, our allies and our enemy. Throughout the summer and fall of 2009, as experts were getting more pessimistic about success in Afghanistan, President Obama began having second thoughts. He was conflicted between his campaign statement that Afghanistan was the good and necessary war and his supporters' concerns that America not get bogged down in another unwinnable Vietnam.
Trying to make news over the holiday weekend and trying to avoid the attention being paid to the latest gaffe from Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele (who is "the gift that keeps on giving," according to former Democratic National Committee Chair and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell), Republican leaders put out the story that the president needs to take a trip to the border to see just how dangerous it is.
A boy has apparently sent filthy text messages to your daughter over the weekend. Both are sixth-graders at the same school. You, the girl's father, coach sports with the boy's father. What would you do?
Elena Kagan famously wrote that Senate judicial confirmation hearings were "a vapid and hollow charade" in 1995. Of course, as a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, she gains nothing by being blunt, so who can blame her for taking the cagey route?
This whole debate about government stimulus versus austerity, and the impact of these policies on economic growth, misses a key point: It is business, not government, that creates jobs.
About 10,000 men and women have served in the United States Congress. Robert C. Byrd, who died Monday at age 92, served longer than all the rest - -more than 57 years, with six in the House and 51 in the Senate.
Thirty-six American cities and towns are named after the Marquis de Lafayette -- the best-known being Fayetteville, N.C., and Lafayette, La. Countless streets, parks and counties also honor the French aristocrat who left his country at age 19 to enlist with George Washington in the American Revolution. (There's also Lafayette College in Easton, Penn.) Many other American locales bear the name of La Grange, Lafayette's chateau in France. LaGrange, Ga., comes to mind.
I wrote for the Los Angeles Daily News during the Rodney King riots in 1992. I remember the first time I saw the shocking videotape of a group of officers beating and kicking a lone black motorist. Then I followed the trial of four police officers, the not-guilty verdicts, the rage and the ugliness. Six days of rioting left parts of Los Angeles charred and 54 people dead.
