America ended Prohibition 75 years ago this week. The ban on the sale of alcohol unleashed a crime wave, as gangsters fought over the illicit booze trade. It sure didn't stop drinking. People turned to speakeasies and bathtub gin for their daily cocktail.
When the journalistic pack bites into a tasty cliché they often refuse to let go, lazily chewing and regurgitating a phrase like "team of rivals" long after the flavor is gone. Derived from the Doris Kearns Goodwin book on Lincoln's cabinet, that morsel had scant relevance to the cabinet being assembled by Barack Obama, as the president-elect bravely tried to explain when he introduced his national security team.
If you're not a "Star Trek" fan, you might not get this, but as I've watched President-elect Barack Obama these past few weeks, I feel as if the country is passing the torch from the brash, rule-breaking Capt. James T. Kirk, whose Starship Enterprise boldly went where no man had gone before in the original sci-fi series, to the more cerebral governance of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, who ran the Enterprise not so much as his merry ship but as a cutting-edge corporate venture, which culled databases and held meetings to brainstorm possible responses to new challenges.
You can tell a lot about a person by the people who surround them. In theory, the "bigger" you are, the bigger and better the people around you should be. What makes a great leader is a great team. All that.
From The Huffington Post and Daily Kos to National Review and The Washington Times -- and all the mainstream media in between -- commentators are puzzling over who the dickens President-elect Barack Obama really is.
The American "love affair" with cars is close to dead, then-Ford Motor chief Bill Ford lamented six years ago. "In California, people used to write songs about T-Birds and Corvettes," said Henry Ford's great-grandson. "Today, they write regulations." Ford had earlier shocked Detroit by admitting that sport utility vehicles caused environmental problems.
Here's another reason why people don't trust newspapers. When science reporters write about, say, hormone therapy or drinking red wine, they report on studies that find that hormones or red wine can be good for you, as well as studies that suggest otherwise.
How can we reduce risk for individuals? That's a natural question when a financial crisis has vaporized trillions of dollars of personal wealth in residential real estate and financial instruments.
New economic stats on consumer spending and business durable-goods investment show an economy that’s sinking fast across-the-board. Wall Street economist John Ryding expects a 4 percent drop in fourth-quarter real GDP.
This would seem a heckuva time to unfurl a national health plan. Washington has big fires to put out in the financial markets.
While Barack Obama introduced the first members of his economic team, a wailing noise could be heard somewhere in the background.
As President-elect Obama's apparent choice for health and human services secretary and as White House health care czar, it is a fair guess that Tom Daschle's view on health care legislation may be decisive.
The woman going up in the medical building elevator with me was so young and beautiful and carefree that it took my breath away. Young and beautiful is not so unusual in Beverly Hills. But carefree?
When President-elect Obama had a chance to squash the tax-hike threat once and for all at his news conference Monday, he took a pass and let the question linger for another day. But his new economic cabinet appointments strongly suggest there will be no tax hikes next year.
Thanksgiving is upon us. This is the time for expressing gratitude. But what does one do on Thanksgiving this year, smack in the middle of perhaps the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression? You give thanks, dummy.
We Americans are blessed with a history that teaches that things work out right. Our first president set the precedent of relinquishing power he could have had for life and returning to his farm. Two of our greatest presidents were struck down, Abraham Lincoln by an assassin and Franklin Roosevelt by grave illness, at a moment of transcendent victory.
As Barack Obama makes his way through the transition to power, he is learning the steps of an old dance. Having promised change, he now surrounds himself with experience. Having poured scorn not only on the Bush administration but at times on the Clinton administration as well, he now welcomes those who served his Democratic predecessor, including the former first lady who ran against him.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has called for a pause in the financing request for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), halting it at $350 billion.
Here's the worst kept secret in politics: Presidential campaigning never ends. For periods of time it becomes quieter--a little subtler--but it never stops.
As routine as elections may seem, they are the seminal events in the life of a democracy. Campaigns and elections not only set the direction of the Republic, they also shed light on America's political health. Every November we have the opportunity to take stock of what we did at the polls, and what that says about the status of the 232-year-old American experiment.
