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?
Laments about polarization are filling the air -- or at least that part of the air in which friends and family members have political discussions. It has been widely noted that every Republican member of Congress has a voting record to the right of every Democrat and every Democrat is to the left of every Republican. There is no partisan overlap anymore.
The primary season is here, hot and heavy, and it has changed the Senate picture since our last update in April. Some of our individual race ratings have shifted, but our forecast still calls for sizeable Republican gains in November.
Guess MitchMcConnell's charm wasn't enough. The Senate minority leader's anointed man lostthe Kentucky Republican Senate primary to Rand Paul, son of tea partytoastmaster Texas Rep. Ron Paul.
Even though Las Vegas is full of never-sold and foreclosed-upon houses, a rumble of new home building has begun there. Similar trends are seen in other housing meltdown meccas: Phoenix, Florida and inland California.
When some 20 UC Berkeley students announced on May 3 that they were launching a hunger strike to protest the new Arizona immigration law, they also issued a set of "demands." They demanded that Chancellor Robert Birgeneau denounce the Arizona law, rehire laid-off janitors and drop disciplinary actions against students arrested after a violent protest.
If you want to watch someone squirm, take a look at the two-minute videotape of Attorney General Eric Holder dodging Republican Rep. Lamar Smith's question of whether "radical Islam" motivated the Times Square bomber.
Some time after he bowed out of the governor's race in January and jumped into the California GOP primary to challenge Sen. Barbara Boxer, Tom Campbell turned from a mild-mannered law professor into Rambo. Professor Rambo.
Forget "advise and consent." When President Obama nominated U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, the Dems just wanted a good liberal who won't embarrass them during Senate confirmation hearings, while the Repubs started trying to figure out whether it's safe to try to Bork her.
I'd like to believe it's the arrival of spring or maybe just the general decline in civility and common sense that seems to always be in the air in Washington. But it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the reaction to the nomination of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court has been a study in the sex discrimination that she has spent her career beating back.
Professor chooses professor. That's one headline you could write about Barack Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.
Someday, when Americans have learned to live the true meaning of our creed, a Supreme Court nomination of a woman, a Latino, an African-American or any other variety of human being -- including a gay man or woman -- will provoke no comment or concern. Until then, we should applaud every step toward that future.
