It's hard to imagine anyone graduating from high school today, much less college, without being computer literate. One way or another, kids learn how to get online, how to navigate the Internet, how to live in a wired world.
The Obama administration had gone to federal court to kill Arizona's new illegal-immigration law, scheduled to go into effect on Thursday. The Department of Justice argues that enforcement of the Arizona law "is pre-empted by federal law and therefore violates the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution."
As the debate rages over letting some of the Bush tax cuts expire, Republicans have raised their starve-the-beast theory from its coffin. They insist that government (the "beast") can be shrunk by cutting taxes: The less money government has, the less government there can be.
Grass somehow manages to grow up through small cracks in the sidewalk. Similarly, the American private sector somehow seems to be exerting itself despite the vast expansion of government by the Barack Obama administration and congressional Democrats.
Today's question is: Why have both major candidates for California governor -- Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman -- failed to endorse the governor's authority to furlough state workers?
Elections for the thousands of state legislative seats that determine partisan control of states are typically provincial battles drawing relatively little attention from national media. These legislative elections are often called hidden elections. However, the spotlight this November will spill over to these down-ballot races because redistricting is around the corner, so the results in hundreds of races in the hinterlands could have long term implications for partisan control of Washington.
One reason why people are attracted to politics is because, like sports, there are usually clear winners and losers. Moral ambiguity and shades of gray may overwhelm other sectors of life, but not the bottom-line of elections. Only finality on November 2 really matters. Raising more money or winning a primary or seeing your opponent sink into a scandal is a kind of victory, but it’s transient. Still, you savor what you can on your way to Judgment Day.
Ben Bernanke threw a curveball in his midterm report to Congress this week. The Fed view of the economy has been downgraded since it last reported in February. Although the official Fed forecast for 2010-11 is still 3 percent to 4 percent real growth, Bernanke sounded particularly gloomy when he characterized the economy as "unusually uncertain." And he indicated that the majority view of the Fed Board of Governors and Reserve Bank presidents is that the risks to growth are "weighted to the downside."
The most wrong assumption in the sci-fi movie classic "2001: A Space Odyssey" was that technology would liberate humans from a life of hassle. Made 42 years ago, Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece shows 21st century humankind going about its business in a leisurely fashion as machines do the bull work. A gentle Strauss waltz plays in the background.
Back in the bad old days of the Cold War -- when mutual nuclear annihilation was a policy option -- a culture of secrecy arose in Washington. What wise observers understood even then was that while governments tried to keep secrets from each other, their chief concern was to keep secrets from their own people.
Many years ago, I was privileged to attend a dinner with James Rowe, one of the "passion for anonymity" young aides to Franklin Roosevelt, original author of the winning strategy for Harry Truman's 1948 campaign and close confidante of then-President Lyndon Johnson.
You don't need to be a political pollster, much less a worried Democrat, to know that the president's approval ratings have plummeted. "Down to the immediate family," we used to say mockingly, when President Bush was at about the same point. Of course, it's a little bit better than that -- down to the hardcore, the yellow dog Democrats (as in, I'd rather vote for a yellow dog than a Republican), but there's no denying that the bloom is off the rose, and any other cliche you can think of.
Over the past year, the Democrats fixed on what they thought was a devastating four-word slogan to defeat Republicans in 2010: "The Party of No." Unlike many campaign slogans, it was fair enough. After all, the Republicans had opposed almost unanimously all of President Obama's major bills (socialized health care, stimulus, nationalization of GM and Chrysler, "cap and trade," financial overregulation, multitrillion-dollar yearly deficits, tax increases, etc.)
It's a savage wilderness, here in my city yard. From a distance, it looks like a Victorian postcard -- a pastoral scene of sweet flowers, sun-kissed vegetables and trilling birds. The reality is considerably rougher. Hang around, and one sees a Darwinian jungle of predators and prey. The Animal Planet's "Untamed & Uncut" program has nothing on my backyard.
Contrary to Barack Obama’s rhetoric about protecting consumers, his new financial reform law represents a dangerous big government power grab that willfully ignores the true roots of the recent financial crisis.
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA -- Australia is the rare major economic power that, under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, avoided a recession in 2009. The unemployment rate here is 5.1 percent. Yet the reigning Labor government is as fearful as Washington Democrats -- with a national unemployment rate of 9.5 percent -- of losing big in the next election.
With a bad-blood, confidence-destroying battle royale going on between Team Obama and business, you would think a highly publicized White House jobs summit would have produced some kind of positive announcement that gives a nod to the business point of view.
West Virginia Senate—It is looking very likely that we’ll have a 37th Senate election to noodle about, the extra being held in the Mountain State to choose the successor to the late Senator Robert C. Byrd (D), the longest serving member of Congress in history who passed away on June 28. At first, all indications were that a gubernatorial appointee would fill the seat until November 2012, when Sen. Byrd would have come up for his tenth Senate term. The Secretary of State in West Virginia tentatively ruled so, though West Virginia law is somewhat ambiguous on the point.
With a dozen weeks to go before the 2010 midterm elections, speculation is rising about the possibility of the Republicans retaking the House. On Sunday, that speculation rose to a fevered pitch when White House press secretary Robert Gibbs conceded during a Meet The Press appearance that there are enough House seats “in play” this November to put control of the chamber at risk.
One of the interesting things about the Obama administration is the strange dominance of labor unions. Yes, Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders do owe the unions something: Unions gave $400 million to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle, and they expect to get something in return.
