The most notable downsizing of the American home has been in its price. The luxury end usually escapes the worst of housing downturns, but not this time. For those seeking a reprieve from teardown mania, this is not a bad development. I refer to the trend whereby bungalows, Cape Cods and other assorted gracious homes are flattened and replaced by monster mansions. Perhaps the forces of sanity can regroup.
Move to the center. That's the advice Republicans are getting from quarters friendly and otherwise. It seems to make a certain amount of sense. If opinion is arrayed along a single-dimension, left-to-right spectrum and clustered in the middle in a bell-curve pattern, then a party on the right needs only to move a few steps toward the center or just beyond to convert itself from minority to majority status.
Get ready, folks: America is about to buy a car company. As of Monday, we the taxpayers will own more than 70 percent of GM. Whether the company will be formally renamed Government Motors remains to be seen. But that's what it will be.
Barack Obama has named his nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. What's the likely fallout, politically and judicially?
Of all the jaw-dropping comments made by politicians this year, the one that takes top prize was not uttered in the nation's capital but deep in the heart of Texas. There, in conjunction with a tax day "tea party," Republican Gov. Rick Perry floated the idea of his huge state along the Mexican border seceding from the Union.
Don't tell anyone: This is the season when lawyers left and right cross our fingers behind our backs and solemnly swear that judges don't make law. Conservatives insist they adhere to original intent.
Identity politics are not good for the country or for the groups they purport to advance. This is not to undercut Sonia Sotomayor, who, as the news reports all start out, is the first Hispanic nominated to the Supreme Court and, if confirmed, would be the third female justice. From what we know about her so far, she seems qualified for the job.
How will the GOP react to President Obama's pick to replace Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court? Who cares? It doesn't matter what Senate Republicans think of Sonia Sotomayor.
Choosing Sonia Sotomayor as his first nominee to the United States Supreme Court will allow Barack Obama to prove three important things. As a politician, he is not afraid of a fight. As a constitutional lawyer, he is willing and able to defend his conception of that living document. And as president, he is prepared to brush aside the phony consensus of Washington's gossipy elite.
Within a decade, same-sex marriage probably will be legal in California. Thanks to the California Supreme Court 6-1 ruling on Tuesday to uphold Proposition 8, the law will be changed in the proper way -- not by judicial fiat, but with California voters determining whether, when and how best to broaden the state's marriage laws.
In 1845, the French economist Frederic Bastiat published a satirical petition from the "Manufacturers of Candles" to the French Chamber of Deputies, which ridiculed the arguments made on behalf of inefficient industries to protect them from more efficient producers:
When former Vice President Dan Quayle scheduled a big speech, President Bill Clinton didn't hop in and schedule one for the hour before.
We’ve been wandering in the health care desert for years and if we’re to find our way out a good camel sure would come in handy.
Obama's liberal philosophy dictates that when the news is bad, shoot the messenger. The newest data from Arbitron, the company charged with measuring the size of radio audiences, suggests that listenership to hip hop, inner city, and minority radio has been overstated in the past and that the popularity of conservative talk radio has been under-reported.
President Obama often tries to defuse divisive debates by talking of "false choices." A false choice implies that by restating the argument, both sides can get what they want.
From Caroline Glick, deputy editor and op-ed writer for the Jerusalem Post, comes alarming news.
In 1992, after he stopped wearing clothes to his UC Berkeley classes, Andrew Martinez was something of a walking only-in-Bezerkeley joke as the campus' own Naked Guy. But his life was no laughing matter.
Britain's Parliament has been mired in a political scandal so damaging that Speaker Michael Martin resigned from office Tuesday. He's the first House speaker to step down in more than 300 years. Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party is dreading the next election -- which must be held before June 2010 -- as members of Parliament have been snared in a series of Daily Telegraph stories detailing how they filed bogus claims of up to $40,000 to cover their expenses needed to maintain two homes.
Defending their record in office these past eight years, figures from the last administration seem especially touchy on the subject of torture. Led by the former vice president, Dick Cheney, they have argued that there was no torture, preferring more vague and delicate terms such as "enhanced interrogation" or simply "the program." They have insisted that any harsh tactics were used only to extract "actionable intelligence" from recalcitrant terrorists in order to save "thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands" of innocent lives.
Come on, my Republican friends, you can do better than this.
