The retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens means that in coming months we'll have another hearing on a Supreme Court nominee. But it's not likely to be the sort of hearing we got used to in the two decades after Edward Kennedy declared war on Robert Bork in 1987.
There are two ways the Senate can approach a president's judicial nominees -- and specifically President Barack Obama's nomination of University of California, Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in San Francisco.
File this under: No good deed goes unpunished. In 2002, after now California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner sold his startup business for $1 billion, he became a volunteer, then volunteer teacher, at San Jose's Mount Pleasant High School. He even wrote a book about it and plans on donating the profits from the sales of "Mount Pleasant" to the school.
Over the last two decades, the United States has intervened militarily in several countries to protect human rights. Now, writes historian Mark Mazower in World Affairs, "the concept of humanitarian intervention is dying if not dead." And a good thing, too, he concludes.
If there is any subject that enrages those who now call themselves conservatives, it is federal spending -- and especially the stimulus program enacted by the Democratic administration and Congress last year. The government can do nothing right, they say. The stimulus was pure waste that created no jobs at all. The country would be better off without Washington taxing and spending at all.
A lot has happened since our last Senate update in January. And yet overall, the balance hasn’t changed dramatically.
The tax code needs fixing to be fairer and less complex. But let's set some rules for this debate. Here are the Five Commandments of Tax Reform:
Last summer, President Obama spent several months publicly anguishing over what he would or wouldn't do in Afghanistan. Finally, he agreed to ramp up troop levels but warned that he intended to start getting American troops out in 18 months. After anguishing in several columns over the president's anguishing, I concluded in November 2009:
The Rev. Al Sharpton says she must have "mystical powers" -- or the best luck anyone has ever seen. But if you ask me, there's nothing mystical about it. As for luck, if Kirsten Gillibrand has proved one thing during her brief tenure in the United States Senate, it is that you make your luck.
In June, comedian Bill Maher complained of President Obama, "You don't have to be on television every minute of every day -- you're the president, not a rerun of 'Law & Order.'"
If the new federal program to help homeowners pay their mortgage bugs you, read a Wall Street Journal article titled, "Bank of Mom and Dad Shuts Amid White-Collar Struggle." It will make you even madder.
Last summer, I wrote a column framed as a letter to a young Obama voter. It concluded: "You want policies that will enable you to choose your future. Obama backs policies that would let centralized authorities choose much of your future for you. Is this the hope and change you want?"
Here is why it is nearly impossible to fix the state budget.
In his first year in the White House, Barack Obama’s job approval fell about fifteen points. (The source for all poll data analyzed in this article is the Roper Center.) This steep decline was unusual but not unprecedented for a new president.
When the Department of Homeland Security released a cautiously worded report on the potential dangers of right-wing extremism last April, the talk-radio wingnuts and certain Republican lawmakers went into spasms of indignation. Clearly, that report -- an innocuous nine-page document commissioned by the previous Republican administration -- had been conjured up by White House Democrats to smear conservatives.
Such is our gadget obsession that the launch of a new electronic reader has set off a death match between two new-media gorillas, Apple and Amazon.com. Apple's iPad seeks to end the Amazon Kindle's domination of the market for devices that let you download books and read them on a screen.
Over the past 14 months, our political debate has been transformed into an argument between the heirs of two fundamental schools of political thought, the Founders and the Progressives.
With everybody focused on Obamacare, and its new entitlement spending and taxing, the administration has tried to sneak in yet another bailout for housing. Yet again, Team Obama is rewarding reckless behavior, punishing the 90 percent of responsible homeowners who are making good on their mortgages, and setting up a greater moral hazard that will surely lead to an expansion of bailout nation.
Karl Rove knew how to fire up an already fired-up crowd at a Contra Costa County Republican Party lunch in Lafayette, Calif., on Tuesday. While a handful of protesters outside waved an "arrest Rove" banner, he hit ObamaCare, crowed about the "delicious opportunity" 2010 offers in defeating Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, and picked local tea party activist Sally Zelikovsky out of the crowd to extol her activism.
Yesterday, Stanford University announced it had accepted a mere 7.2 percent of the tens of thousands of high school seniors across the country who applied for admission to the class of 2014. Other highly selective schools will be making similar announcements in the days ahead.
