When House Republican leaders left Washington for their Fourth of July break, they felt good about outwitting the Democratic majority. The feeling was not reciprocated 3,000 miles away, where conservative California Republican activists were drafting an ultimatum.
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, whose stock as Sen. Barack Obama's possible vice presidential running mate had been rising, may have ruined his chances with his belittling attack on Sen. John McCain's war record.
"They're going to try to make you afraid of me," Barack Obama told the audience at a Jacksonville fundraiser last month. "He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?" Obama was doing here by inference what many of his supporters do more explicitly.
The nine august justices of the United States Supreme Court — or at least the five conservative Republicans — chose the wrong time to make a sea change in constitutional law, admitting the Second Amendment to our pantheon of civil liberties.
What are the politics of the housing meltdown? Foreclosure agony is undoubtedly a campaign issue, but the political question remains: What do the voters want their leader to do about it? Then there's the economic question: What can a president do about it -- other than ask taxpayers to bail out people who took on more debt than they could handle?
Despite all the feigned outrage fanned by the mainstream media and the right-wing noisemakers, Wesley Clark -- retired four-star general, former Supreme Commander of NATO, wounded and highly decorated veteran of ground combat in Vietnam and a military man to his core -- assuredly did not denigrate the war record of John McCain when he talked about the Republican candidate on television last Sunday.
Yousuf Raza Gilani, prime minister of Pakistan, will lunch with George W. Bush in the White House on Monday, July 28. That will not be merely another of the president's routine meetings with foreign leaders. As Pakistan's democratically elected government and U.S. diplomats understand, the lunch symbolizes a turn away from Washington's attachment to military rule under the discredited Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
President Bush was on message Wednesday in a Rose Garden news conference, when he kept up the pressure on his a drill, drill, drill offensive. He said he knows Americans are worried about gasoline prices and wants them "to understand fully that we have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home in environmentally friendly ways."
Barack Obama yesterday kicked off a week of patriotic speeches. It's much more than the normal politician's July 4 oration - it's Obama's answer to a crucial test.
Should John McCain have to "defend" his military record? Of course not. But the fact that he served in the military, with distinction, does not mean he's qualified to be president.
After months of claiming insufficient information to express an opinion on the District of Columbia gun law, Barack Obama noted with apparent approval Thursday that the Supreme Court ruled the 32-year ban on handguns "went too far."
Why is the president of the United States entertaining Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince, Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, at Camp David when his own State Department has singled out the Sheik’s homeland, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), for its continuing violations of human rights?
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has appealed to Senate Democratic leaders to confirm President Bush's long-pending nominations to fill two empty chairs as Fed governors, enabling a fully staffed central bank to handle the current financial crisis. He did not receive a favorable response from Sen. Christopher Dodd, Senate Banking Committee chairman.
"Not Exactly a Crime" is the title of a book on America's vice presidents published in 1972 -- a year before Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign for actually committing a crime.
On the day after an unusually important Fed policy meeting, both gold and stocks severely rebuked the central bank's decision to take no action in support of the weak dollar or to curb rapidly growing inflation. Gold spiked $30, a clear message that Bernanke & Co. won't stop inflation. Stocks plunged over 200 points, an equally clear message that the Fed's cheap-dollar inflation is damaging economic growth.
Precisely on schedule, the usual assortment of right-wing operatives is preparing its expected assault on the Democratic presidential nominee. While this unwholesome phase of the election cycle is known universally as "Swift-boating" -- named after the defamatory media blitz against John Kerry four years ago -- the style and some of the personnel date back at least two decades.
News that life expectancy among some American women has fallen earned startled headlines, as well it should. In this country, life expectancy is something that's supposed to go up. It took a big scourge, such as the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, to depress it.
Much has been made in the past of presidential candidates' campaign theme songs, but there would be no more appropriate choice for this year's Republican nominee, John McCain, than the Rolling Stones' classic, "Time Is on My Side."
What is an "Obamacon?" The phrase surfaced in January to describe British Conservatives entranced by Barack Obama. On March 13, the American Spectator broadened the term to cover all "conservative supporters" of the Democratic presidential candidate.
Have you noticed a change in Barack Obama’s campaign? Instead of avoiding controversies over values, religion and race, he seems to welcome them and wade into the debates with an increasing enthusiasm.
