Was that a $5,000 VBH alligator clutch that Michelle Obama was carrying in Italy? So the company bragged, absolutely certain it was theirs, until the White House responded that it was not the alligator but the patent, an $875 VBH clutch and not the more expensive model.
The new senator from Minnesota is a comedian, writer and actor who lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and raised a lot of money from friends in Hollywood.
Here's the reason Californians don't trust Sacramento: In July 2003, the state controller's office figured there were 230,000 state employees. Since then, every budget deal has featured legislators' howling protestations that they've been forced to make horrific budget cuts, yet the controller now estimates the state has 244,000 employees.
The financial system collapsed. Housing prices cratered. Unemployment is at a record high for the last quarter-century. The Democratic president has a solidly positive job rating.
Some years ago, I shared cocktails along San Antonio's River Walk with Richard Estrada, the legendary columnist for The Dallas Morning News. Estrada would trace the nuances of the Mexican-American experience while framing it in the long sweep of American history.
You don't need a briefing book on being a mother to answer this one: What do you do when your daughter comes home complaining that she wants to drop off the swim team or quit the play or, with the little ones, never go to school again because the other kids are being so mean, calling her names and saying unbelievably terrible things about her family and especially her mother?
Professional politicians and political journalists don't waste energy on political corpses. They reserve their energy -- positive or negative -- for viable politicians.
"A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not why the ship is built," Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said last year to explain why Sen. John McCain picked her to be his running mate. Those words may come back to haunt her. When she assumed office in December 2006, Palin committed to Alaskan voters to serve four years. Having failed to do so, she will be in no position to campaign in 2012 for four years in the White House.
Why are cities growing faster than the rest of the country? That's happening and reverses a decade-long trend, according to new U.S. Census figures. Gainers in 2008 included such diverse locations as Chicago, Los Angeles, Columbus, Ohio, and Lincoln, Neb. The Census found that cities losing people, such as Cleveland, were shrinking at a slower rate.
One policy of the Obama administration that has understandably attracted little public attention is its proposal to make the Federal Reserve a "systemic risk regulator."
After nine months of explosive monetary and fiscal stimulus, you'd think economic recovery would be upon us. But the June jobs report tells a much different story.
Americans hope to discuss health care, climate change, green economics or public infrastructure with any degree of realism, then the time has come to acknowledge that hearing someone say "a trillion dollars" is no reason to panic. Politicians and pundits cite that figure to argue that we cannot afford health care reform, following recent cost estimates by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), but the plain truth is that we spend (and squander) more than that on purposes not nearly so wise and humane as universal quality health care.
Americans agree on health care. Ask them, "Who should pay for it," and they all answer, "Not me." But follow up with, "Who, then?" and you have a fight on your hands.
The Supreme Court's decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, the case of the New Haven firefighters, was a ringing endorsement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964's ban on racial discrimination and a repudiation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's decision in the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Is there still a revolution about to happen in Iran? Is my state going to run out of money tomorrow, and start printing IOUs? Can the crazy North Koreans really attack Hawaii? Was there a coup in Honduras? Do we care? The short answer to all the above questions is -- who knows? What I can tell you is that the traffic on Sunset near Michael Jackson's house is backed up. Again.
How many California state employees does it take to screw in a light bulb?
An open-minded individual, I am willing to support an adulterer for elective office. But my ability to look past marital infidelity depends on how much humiliation was heaped on the wife. The details matter.
Democrats' plans to pass major health care legislation have been stymied, at least for the moment, by the Congressional Budget Office's cost estimates. To the consternation and apparent surprise of leading Democrats, the CBO scored Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus' latest offering at $1.6 trillion over 10 years, while it scored the completed sections of Sen. Christopher Dodd's bill at $1 trillion. Presumably, the incomplete sections would cost more.
This is not a joke. Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision that required an Oregon public school district to pay a $5,200 monthly tuition (plus fees) for a private boarding school for a high-school senior whose psychologist had diagnosed him with ADHD, depression, math disorder and cannabis abuse.
Why do we need President Obama's big-bang health-care reform at all? What's the real agenda here? If it's really to cover the truly uninsured, a much cheaper, targeted, small-ball approach would do the trick.
