The word "prevention" has a nice ring in any health-care discussion. Thus, many politicians argue that programs to stop smoking, improve diets and otherwise promote wholesome living save money in the long run. A healthier population at less cost --sounds like a win-win situation.
"Too big to fail" was the verdict in the U.S. Treasury decision to backstop mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But is the taxpayer risk of moral hazard still as big as ever?
An expression of outrage is the highest compliment that politicians can bestow upon a satirist. So when spokesmen for Barack Obama and John McCain echo each other and many another stuffed shirt in complaining about the current cover of The New Yorker, the magazine's editors and cartoonist Barry Blitt should accept such remarks in precisely that spirit.
As financial storm signals appeared the last 18 months, there were Bush officials who urged drastic reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But, according to internal government sources, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson objected because it would look "too political."
After almost six weeks of a constant Obama lead, generally in the five to seven-point range, Scott Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll records two consecutive days of a tie race (July 12-13) and a one-point Obama lead on July 14. What happened to the Democrat’s lead?
Before he was a radio host, or a network news anchor, or the White House Press secretary, Tony Snow was a writer. He started his career as an editorial writer and editor for newspapers such as The Virginian-Pilot, The Washington Times and The Detroit News, eventually becoming a nationally syndicated op-ed columnist, with more than 200 newspapers publishing his commentary every week.
To borrow a Barack Obama line, "There's not a liberal America and a conservative America, there's a United States of America." That's true -- and everyone in it tried to make a quick buck off the housing bubble.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, back from the Fourth of July break, last week delivered a typical harangue on Republican obstructionism and Democratic virtue that included a promise: By week's end, he would show Republicans his proposal to deal with "this speculation thing" that he calls the root cause of $4-a-gallon gasoline.
Despite assurances to the contrary from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democratic insiders are certain Sen. Joseph Lieberman next year will be kicked out of the party's caucus and lose his Senate chairmanship if he addresses the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., as planned.
Sixty years ago this month, the top story in campaign year 1948 was not the big poll lead of Republican nominee Thomas Dewey or the plight of President Harry Truman. It was the Berlin airlift.
Want to fix an election? No, I'm not proposing any Election Day shenanigans, but rather some preventive maintenance for a very old machine.
In a recent Crystal Ball article , Michael Baudinet of the University of Virginia Center for Politics argued that despite a very difficult national political environment for Republicans, John McCain has a good chance of winning the 2008 presidential election because he enjoys one key advantage over his Democratic rival, Barack Obama: McCain clinched his party's nomination three months earlier than Obama.
Nobody now knows the exact contours of the November 4th Electoral College map. Nobody will know it until after the polls have closed. But except for the guessing game about the vice presidential nominations, there's no greater fun to be had in July.
Watching liberals grope for first aid as Barack Obama does an about-face on their most cherished issues, one recalls a scene from the 1950 movie "All About Eve."
"I would say he was pretty underwhelming," said Lawyer Gus several days after he and some 200 other big-money supporters of Hillary Clinton's failed presidential campaign met with the victor, Barack Obama, in Washington on June 26. Lawyer Gus is a longtime Democratic activist, who will support and contribute to Obama as the party's nominee, but will not be enthusiastic about it.
The list of issues on which Barack Obama has flipped now that the primaries are over is long and growing rapidly.
Immigration is said to be a divisive issue, but it really isn't. Large majorities of Americans favor legal immigration, and large majorities oppose illegal immigration.
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.
