It seems pretty obvious that the last three presidents -- Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama -- once smoked marijuana. OK, Clinton claimed he didn't inhale. Bush refused to say whether he ever used drugs; instead, he coyly alluded to mistakes in his youth. Obama didn't play games in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father" -- he wrote about using marijuana and cocaine as a kid.
Many conservatives think they've found a winner in tarring President Obama and his allies as "socialists." Earnest attempts to explain why "it isn't so" are futile, as is asking people what the heck they mean when they say raising taxes is "socialism."
Roadblocks. That's what Barack Obama has been encountering on the audacious path toward a European-style welfare state he has set out in his budget and other proposals.
What's Bill O'Reilly doing at a benefit for rape victims and their families?
We've had two good weeks of gubernatorial fun in the Crystal Ball, reviewing the early match-ups for the 2010 midterm Governor battles here and here. Now it's time to examine the remaining sixteen statehouses, all currently controlled by Republicans.
As Barack Obama's economic advisers confront choices that vary from bad to worse in their mission to revive the financial sector and the broader economy, it is worth remembering that those choices were in essence inherited by the president, who is still new to his office. Listening to his critics, especially on the right, it would be easy to believe that the president is personally responsible for ballooning deficits, gigantic bailouts, ridiculous bonuses, nationalized institutions and careening markets. It would be easy to believe but entirely false -- and merely the latest episode in an old political con game that is all too typical of Washington.
There was a time when New England sent lots of Republicans to Washington. These were fiscally conservative but socially liberal "Rockefeller Republicans," also found in the Northwest, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states. As the party turned socially conservative and fiscally reckless, many Yankees departed.
With another $2 trillion in federal interventionism announced within the last week alone, the price tag for America's economic "recovery" continues to soar to stratospheric, scarcely-comprehensible heights.
In a world growing more dangerous by the week in this dark spring of 2009, Washington may be the most dangerous city in the world.
Nothing gets people's attention faster than picketing them at home -- which is not necessarily a reason to do it.
The Duke basketball coach and most other Americans believe that President Obama is unwisely diverting his attention from the sick economy.
There is no group more dangerous than one with some power, no scruples and leaders who think that they are really smart and that everyone else is really, really stupid.
Taking advantage of the populist revolt against Wall Street and AIG bailouts, the House Democrats have passed a vengeance tax on TARPed financial firms that amounts to a 90 percent marginal tax rate on bonuses.
The Obama administration's budget is full of proposals that threaten to weaken our staggering economy.
Imagine how different things might be right now if there were a Republican Party. I mean a party like the one led by Ronald Reagan, George Bush or Newt Gingrich; a party with a program, a single set of talking points, and the technological and communications advantages to get their message across. That kind of Republican Party. The kind that doesn't exist right now.
Last week the Crystal Ball conducted a historical overview of gubernatorial midterm elections in the past sixty years. Now we'll continue our initial analysis of the statehouse battles to come by assessing the situation in each of the 36 states hosting a contest for Governor in 2010. Let's start with the 20 Democratic statehouses on the ballot.
When Tristan Anderson, now 38, was living illegally in the trees at the University of California, Berkeley, to protest the administration's ultimately successful bid to cut them down to build a sports training center, life was good.
Having long flattered themselves as "masters of the universe," the creative financiers of Wall Street and London are today exposed as grifters rather than geniuses. Their proud claim that society cannot prosper without them -- voiced so often whenever anyone raised subjects such as taxation or regulation -- would now provoke bitter laughter instead of credulous nodding.
Anyone who has watched "Law & Order" over the years, as I have, knows that the ending must feel right. The circumstances of the crime may be complex and the legal issues muddy, but in the end, most viewers are left feeling that some justice has been served.
He was positively infuriating. I e-mailed his then-girlfriend, as the crowd was applauding him at Madison Square Garden in 2004, that I hoped she wasn't dating the (expletive deleted) anymore. She was.
