I have talked with soldiers from Afghanistan -- both American and British, both in the ranks and field-grade officers -- in an effort at making sense of what we are doing there. The White House and Pentagon publicly say they are reassessing policy in Afghanistan. It is well that they should. So far, both means and goals are confused.
She was the candidate's sister, the former president's sister, the wife of the former vice presidential candidate. Legend had it that she was smarter than any of them.
The most ominous signal yet for the Obama health care plan emerged in the poll by Scott Rasmussen released today. While public support for the plan fell to a new low (42% support, 53% oppose -- down five points in two weeks), the elderly emerged as the strongest opposition group.
The first thing you have to know when you read that California's 33 adult prisons -- like the state prison in Chino where riots erupted over the weekend -- are operating at 190 percent capacity is that 100 percent capacity means one inmate per cell, single bunks in dormitories and no beds in spaces not designed for housing. Put two inmates in a single cell and bunk beds in lieu of single beds and you get 200 percent capacity.
Let's talk about greedy geezers. The term displeases me because I find the vast majority of older people to be wonderfully generous and concerned for others.
One video is worth a thousand words (or, as in this column, about 730). The video in question, put together by a group called Verum Serum, shows public statements by three advocates of single-payer (government monopoly) health insurance explaining that a health care bill with a "government option" would move America toward a single-payer government health care system. You may not have heard of the first two, Rep. Jan Schakowsky and professor Jacob Hacker. But you have heard of the third, President Barack Obama.
Imagine it's four years ago and an aide to President Bush posted a blog on the Whitehouse.gov website that bemoaned Internet criticism of the Iraq war, then continued: "These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversations.
Last month, when reports surfaced that Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Bratton and his wife, Rikki Klieman, were putting their house on the market, people in L.A. started getting nervous. The chief is in the second year of his second five-year term. It is the first time in the 20-plus years I've lived here that no one was trying to show him the door.
On Aug. 4, President Barack Obama celebrated the anniversary of his birth, an event that occurred 48 years ago in the state of Hawaii. This is an indisputable fact, as sane critics on the right, such as the editors of the National Review and the veteran pundit Patrick Buchanan, acknowledge.
You know that American voters aren't feeling the love for ObamaCare when House members hold town-hall meetings in their districts, only to be heckled and booed.
In an entertaining but silly political game, partisans score points by comparing statistics of so-called red states and blue states. Conservative Ross Douthat does that in a recent column, "Blue-State Blues."
As a free-market capitalist who does not believe in artificial spending and pump-priming from Uncle Sam, I'm going to eat a little crow with the following statement: At this moment in history, if we're going to use fiscal stimulus as Washington insists, I favor extending the cash-for-clunkers car-rebate program.
We Americans tend to take the great strengths of our country for granted. In the hubbub of political debate, we concentrate on things that are allegedly wrong with America and lose sight of our great achievements.
The president's health care initiative is vulnerable to defeat (and the high esteem in which the public generally has held him is in jeopardy) because of unforced errors on his part deriving from the emerging legislation's failing to carry out his stated policy and because of his political and policy responses to that problem.
I know.
The North Koreans are using President Bill Clinton's visit for all their own reasons. Attention world: Here we are, our leader is alive, Bill Clinton is paying his due.
This is what I told my friend Frank: Under the "cash for clunkers" program, you could get more money for your '93 Mercury Grand Marquis than it was worth -- up to $4,500 if you used it to buy a new vehicle with much better gas mileage.
A teachable moment last Thursday night -- no, I'm not referring to the beer-in-the-garden session featuring Professor Henry Gates and Sgt. James Crowley and the shirtsleeved president and vice president. We didn't learn anything more about the Gatesgate controversy except that only the least experienced of these four men -- Sgt. Crowley -- was the only one willing to speak at length before the cameras.
Because courts can sentence murderers to life without parole, why not get rid of the death penalty? It's a frequent question posed by readers and advocates who oppose the death penalty. For years, my answer has been: If death-penalty opponents ever succeed in eliminating capital punishment, their next target for elimination will be life without parole --or as lawyers call it, LWOP.
Something truly astonishing appeared in a Washington Post column on July 25, 2009. It was written by Frank Mankiewicz, former press secretary to Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) and the man who is perhaps most widely remembered for announcing RFK's death in June 1968. Mankiewicz was also the political director of Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern's losing 1972 campaign. The column contained a two-fold revelation about the just-deceased Walter Cronkite, the longtime CBS News anchorman. Here are the disclosures, in Mankiewicz' own words:
In the mid-nineteenth century, a delegate to a Virginia constitutional convention argued against the office of lieutenant governor, calling it, "the fifth wheel of a wagon, and much more useless." Worse has been said about the vice presidency over the centuries. Franklin Roosevelt's first VP, John Nance Garner, declared his position was not worth a pitcher of warm spit. He actually cited another bodily excretion, but the press of the day cleaned up the language.
