Froma Harrop Archive02/09/2012 Big Brother Is ‘Sharing'
My, how you've changed, Big Brother. What happened to the sourpuss in "1984," George Orwell's grim novel about a thought-controlled future? Gone are the piercing eyes and the perennial threat: "Big Brother is Watching." You'... 02/07/2012 What Komen Affair Means for November The blowup at Susan G. Komen for the Cure set off a political alarm that Republicans dare not ignore. The leading breast cancer group, Komen tried playing Republican-base politics by cutting its funding to Planned Parenthood for breast-health services.... 02/02/2012 Immigration and ‘Obamacare' Join as Issue Two of the hottest topics on the political circuit are illegal immigration and "Obamacare." They can come together into a third steaming discussion: How the Democrats' Affordable Care Act of 2010 would hasten America's journey toward a more ... 01/31/2012 In Defense of Southern-fried Paula Deen Celebrity chef Paula Deen lustily massages salt into "a mighty fat hog," as the dogs circle the cooking island. For the yams, "I'm only using half a stick of butter," she drawls before breaking into high laughter. Deen's popular ... 01/26/2012 I Want My Planet Back Florida is the state that put the first man on the moon, NBC's Brian Williams noted at the Republican presidential debate in Tampa. He asked the candidates, "At a time when you all want to shrink federal spending, should space exploration be a ... 01/24/2012 Being Rich Is Not Mitt's Political Problem It's no secret that Mitt Romney is rich. He was born rich and got mega-millions richer as a financier. Nor is it a secret that his income is mostly taxed at 15 percent, a far lower rate than middle-class grunts pay. Nor does he have any obligation to ... 01/19/2012 How "Downton Abbey" Is More Democratic Than We Are Every Sunday night, the mega-carriages drop millions of us off at "Downton Abbey," the hit PBS series about an aristocratic family, its English country estate and the complexities of being Them at the dawn of the 20th century. We revel in ... 01/17/2012 Obama's Biggest Threat Was Huntsman Politically astute Republicans, including many social conservatives, see Mitt Romney as the strongest candidate to beat President Obama in November. The former Massachusetts governor may not be their kind of Republican, but any Republican would be ... 01/12/2012 The Missing 'Humanity Clause' at Bain During the Great Depression, my father toiled in a box factory. The workers were all flat broke, he recalled, and desperate for every nickel. But when overtime hours appeared, the men made sure they went to a guy with kids. The laborers were obeying ... 01/10/2012 Consumer Bureau Protects the Prudent, as Well Let's set aside the back-and-forth over the recess appointment of Richard Cordray as chief watchdog at the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. President Obama named the former Ohio attorney general to lead the agency when the Senate was ... 01/05/2012 The Unbearable Consequence of Iowa So Mitt Romney "won" Iowa by eight votes, giving him the "Big Mo" (that's momentum) as he marches forth into the primaries. What happened to Rick Santorum's surge? Did a Dodge Caravan full of supporters break down on the way to the ... 01/03/2012 'Nuts' to Iran When the Germans told Gen. Anthony McAuliffe to surrender his forces in Belgium during World War II, the commander of the 101st Airborne Division famously replied, "Nuts!" The German officers didn't quite get his drift, which was "Go to ... 12/29/2011 The Little State That Could? Rhode Island shouldn't even be a state. It's basically a city, Providence, with some suburbs, factory towns, a little countryside and Newport. The smallest state in area (19 Rhode Islands could fit into California's San Bernardino County), the Ocean ... 12/27/2011 Middle Class Aided Its Own Decline This was the Year of the Middle Class — as in, its falling incomes, loss of job security and anger. The global economic forces fueling the decline, such as foreign competition and computers, have been well reported. But what about cultural ... 12/22/2011 ‘Cool' Cities Are Not Necessarily Warm The soft economy has left lots of Americans in place, whether they want to be or not. That would include the most mobile group, young people. But to the extent that adults ages 25 to 34 are still moving, their preferred destinations seem to be "... 12/20/2011 Gifts for the Unemployed To many rational economists, holiday gift-giving is "an orgy of wealth-destruction," writes Dan Ariely in The Wall Street Journal. A behavioral economist at Duke University, Ariely makes pro-gifting arguments while acknowledging the bah-... 12/15/2011 Driving Under the Influence of Cellphones Moving at a stately 30 miles an hour, the woman drove her tank-like vehicle right through the stop sign and almost through me as I crossed the street. Like the psychiatrist assigning mental illness at the mere sound of crazy shouting, I didn't have to ... 12/13/2011 Other Reasons Why French Women Don't Get Fat Yes, there are those charming reasons "French Women Don't Get Fat," as outlined in the popular book of that name by Mireille Guiliano. Portion control is key. Frenchwomen may eat their famously rich sauces and fatty pates with gusto, but ... 12/08/2011 Newt and the Donald A-courting Go Liberals and conservatives both seem obsessed with the behavior of "the 1 percent," but there the similarity ends. Liberals seek to change the ways of the richest 1 percent, while many conservatives focus on the bottom 1 percent. The latter ... 12/06/2011 Paper Is More Forever How many of you want your holiday greetings to arrive in the form of thick paper cards delivered by the United States Postal Service? Now, how many prefer your cheery wishes to arrive in your e-mail inbox, always available via a click or two, assuming ... 12/01/2011 Hipsters Without Walls Dwell magazine is the Architectural Digest for hipsters. It promotes minimalist living stripped of color and frou-frou. In this ultramodern world, cries for help bounce off bare concrete walls. Plastic sculpted chairs stare from bare corners. ... 11/29/2011 The Right's Health Care Fantasies A real conservative would say: "Government should stay out of health care. Let Americans meet their medical needs in the free market." I respectfully disagree, but thanks for being clear. The political problem for Republicans is that ... 11/24/2011 Thanksgivings, Past and Present Note to Readers: The following Thanksgiving column by Froma Harrop was originally published in 2002. Thanksgiving is the most American of holidays. But there is something almost un-American about it. It is a day opposed to striving, to ... 11/22/2011 Dirty Jobs Don't Have to Be Lousy Jobs "Why Americans Won't Do Dirty Jobs" is the presumptuous headline on a Bloomberg Businessweek cover. The subject is Alabama's new no-tolerance policy toward illegal immigrants and the people who hire them. As expected, the law has ... 11/17/2011 Clean Energy Worth the Political Muck Princely U.S. government subsidies have made developing wind, solar and other clean energy nearly risk-free to investors — and that's bad. But the price of this domestically produced power has tumbled, thanks in part to such aid. That helps ... 11/15/2011 The Angst in Giving Thanks Americans typically eat over 1,000 meals a year. But for many, Thanksgiving dinner seems to be the one that, like a magnet, gathers the iron shavings of every food anxiety. Why should that be? You'd think that this feast with family and friends would ... 11/10/2011 Defining Poverty in the Land of Plenty The "poverty issue" opens a vast highway system of social and economic observations headed in every direction. Some say poverty is a national disgrace. Some say it's the poor people's own fault. Some say the government must end it through ... 11/08/2011 Andy Rooney Was Really Real It was odd becoming a personal friend of Andy Rooney so late in his life and so far into my own. I'd seen him on "60 Minutes" for all 33 years, first while sitting on the rug in my parents' house. Through one of Andy's close friends and ... 11/03/2011 A Less Super America Will Be Happier A perceived decline in "national greatness" haunts Americans of all political persuasions. Many equate it with the drop in our superpower status. But others ask, "Are the costs of perpetually commanding the high ground worth it?" ... 11/01/2011 Keeping the Silent Majority on the Occupiers' Side Conditions at some of the "Occupy" tent sites started going downhill at a most inopportune time. A New York Times/CBS poll had just reported that 47 percent of the public said that the movement's views reflect those of most Americans (with ... 10/27/2011 The Dietary Supplement Scam Continues Since I was a wee pill-popper, I've taken more vitamins and other supplements than I care to admit. If over the years I'd invested that money in an S&P 500 stock fund ... oh, well. Now we learn that most of those oils, minerals, exotic ... 10/25/2011 Recalling the Lost Paradise of Budget Surpluses Hard to believe, but once upon a time, economists worried that the U.S. government would pay off all its debt. Also hard to believe, once upon a time was only 11 years ago. President Clinton had bequeathed his successor budget surpluses "... 10/20/2011 Domestic Misfits and Foreign Terrorists When trying to make sense of terrorists, we examine their "causes." In the cases of Muslim terrorists, we search their religious views and political indoctrination. But when looking at other Americans who commit outrages not overtly tied to ... 10/18/2011 Class Warfare: Q&A Demands to let taxes rise for Americans topping the income charts have led to charges of "class warfare" by the usual Republican suspects. To move the conversation forward, here are some questions and answers: Question: Do you ... 10/13/2011 The Street They Should Occupy As "Occupy Wall Street" sweeps up attention, a smaller group is running something called Occupy K Street. If the goal is to loosen the financiers' grip over the American economy, the folks protesting on K Street are getting closer to bingo. ... 10/11/2011 Why We Need More Government in Health Care "Home-Health Firms Blasted." The headline refers to a Senate Finance Committee finding that major providers of home-based services to Medicare patients were bilking the government program. Big time. Paying for nurse and therapist ... 10/06/2011 A Fantasia Guide to Republican Primary Politics You can't blame Chris Christie for not running. Monied Republicans had been urging the popular New Jersey governor to seek their party's nomination for president. But by deciding against it, Christie spared himself the ordeal through which all ... 10/04/2011 Keystone XL Pipeline Not Worth The Risks In Washington, D.C., conference rooms, the proposed pipeline running from Alberta, Canada, to Texas refineries on the Gulf of Mexico may look rather attractive. The 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline would supply the United States with abundant crude ... 09/29/2011 Saving Civic Culture From Online Mayhem INDIANAPOLIS — More speech is not necessarily a positive development. News sites' online forums have unleashed speech in quantity, for sure. But they've given a stage to swarms of moronic insults and outright lies, most cloaked in anonymity or ... 09/27/2011 The Middle Class and Its Entitlements To what are Americans entitled? Government-guaranteed health coverage in old age? Government-guaranteed health coverage at any age? Subsidized housing if they're low income? Subsidized food? Subsidies for growing wheat but not making shoes? Subsidies ... 09/22/2011 The Housing Bust Has a Good Side The Housing Bust Has a Good Side Anyone who has seen a friend kick an addiction — be it to alcohol, drugs or cigarettes — knows the extreme discomfort and force of will required. America has long suffered repeated bouts of ... 09/20/2011 Obama Has It Right in Deficit Plan President Obama's deficit-cutting plan is not perfect, but close to it. It's fiscally smart and politically smart. He said that about a third of the money would come from higher taxes and the rest from reductions in spending. The cuts would be ... 09/15/2011 Global Warming Is Here, All Right Bark beetles and egrets don't care whether Governor This or Senator That believes in global warming. They feel it in their whatevers. Responding to warmer temperatures, plant and wildlife are moving north or uphill to cooler elevations, according to a ... 09/13/2011 Disapproval, of Course, Is a Relative Thing If the 2012 election were held today, Republicans could very well have their heads handed to them. I do not think this alone. Their debt-ceiling high jinks were no doubt immensely amusing to the tea party fringe, but to those of us not getting the ... 09/08/2011 No Exit From the Realities of Sept. 11 I remember Sept. 10, too. On that crisp night 10 years ago, friends and I went to hear Les Paul at a basement club in Times Square. The place was packed, and as was my habit in such settings, I quickly noted the fire exits. The father of the ... 09/06/2011 Beware Easy 'Fixes' for Entitlement Programs Please, everyone, stop monkeying around with Social Security and Medicare. We mean you, Republicans, and you, Democrats. No one's saying that Social Security can't be slightly recalibrated to keep the program on a sound footing or that significant ... 09/01/2011 The Progressives' Freedom Agenda The third week in July, Republican Gov. Rick Perry said that the U.S. Constitution — whose 10th Amendment limits federal power — gives states the right to decide on such matters as abortion and gay marriage. The fourth week in July, the ... 08/30/2011 Steve Jobs Told Us What We Wanted "It's not the consumers' job to know what they want" — Steve Jobs Steve Jobs didn't make his billions shorting stocks, feeding off the taxpayers or simply being around when a rich relative died. The college dropout from ... 08/25/2011 Scott Brown No Shoe-in for Re-Election in Mass When Scott Brown was elected U.S. senator from Massachusetts in a special election last year, Republicans rejoiced. They had wrested the Senate seat held by the late liberal icon Edward Kennedy in a Democratic stronghold. Brown remains quite ... 08/23/2011 'Enforcement' of Immigration Laws Already Here Have you noticed that our immigration laws are finally being enforced? That illegal immigration is way down? That employers hiring undocumented workers are finally being punished? And that this is being done in the Democratic administration of ... 08/18/2011 The Commentary Pages Are No Tea Party Several columnists recently referred to the tea party "patriots" as terrorists. The terrorist label set off a stormy protest among the group's legion of message writers. I was one of those columnists. I figured that had some radical ... 08/16/2011 Putting England Back Together Again Watching the riots in Britain's cities, I recalled visiting an English friend who ran a big company and had a country house grand enough to be called a "hall." (I will not disclose his identity.) Though hardly liberal, my friend was ... 08/11/2011 Letting States Make Policy Majorities in liberal states often back policies that most folks in conservative states abhor — and vice versa. The difficulty of reaching accord among warring but heartfelt views partly explains Washington's paralysis. But note this: New ... 08/09/2011 This Is What Happens When a City Goes Bankrupt CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — The stock market plunged over 500 points last Thursday, but no one seemed very perturbed about it in this tiny factory town. Three days before, Central Falls had filed for a Chapter 9 bankruptcy. These working-class folk ... 08/04/2011 Detroit Loves Good Mileage At Last Fifty years ago, Ford unveiled a small-scale model for its atomic-powered car of the future. A capsule in the rear would contain the nuclear power and could be replaced. The engineering challenge would be dealing with the weight required for shielding ... 08/02/2011 Democrats Also Need a Presidential Primary in 2012 Ed Rendell, do you have plans for 2012? Hillary Clinton? If you, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, or you, the secretary of state, are free next year and wouldn't mind, would you please launch a primary challenge against President Obama? ... 07/28/2011 Why Can't Women Be Comfortable? Women run companies and countries. Some even play on co-ed football teams. But there's one glaring gender disparity that never gets better and only seems to grow: comfort. Yes, many women sacrifice their physical ease on the altar of sex ... 07/26/2011 What the Oslo Killer ‘Wanted' Doesn't Matter "What did the Oslo killer want?" asks one of many irritating headlines over the weekend. The Norwegian terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik, called for a number of societal changes as he massacred his countrymen in a meticulous assault, Foreign ... 07/21/2011 Confessions of a Recovering Light Bulb Hoarder I have a horrible confession to make. I'm an environmentalist who's been hoarding old incandescent light bulbs before they become illegal in January. But it was all unnecessary, so I learn. In 2007, Congress passed a law (signed by President ... 07/19/2011 No New Pledges Among the Republicans vying for their party's presidential nomination, only former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson had the self-respect to denounce the ludicrous "Marriage Vow" pledge. Such pledges are a means through which small interest ... 07/14/2011 What Happened to the Jobs? So where are the jobs? Job creation has basically flattened over the past two months — very bad news, as unemployment exceeds 9 percent. The Democrats' economic stimulus was inadequate, and it's mostly over. And the Republicans' ... 07/12/2011 Feeding Average Joe to Wall Street Republicans want to make Americans more responsible for their own economic security while curbing the protections that would help them do it safely. A double win for Wall Street operators. Republicans deliver them a new batch of easy marks — ... 07/07/2011 What the Strauss-Kahn Case Is Not About The twisting rape case against former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has set off a whirlwind of journalistic creativity. Commentators are whipping a couple of broken eggs into a grand souffle of sweeping statements about the ... 07/05/2011 The People Want Higher Taxes Poll after poll shows that the American people want higher taxes. That's not the same as liking higher taxes. The people have simply concluded that higher taxes are preferable to the alternative — so vividly portrayed in the Republican ... 06/30/2011 Exactly Why Are the Kids Coming Home? The age of "residential adolescence" is upon us, apparently. Nearly 45 percent of adults ages 20 to 24 now live at home with their parents. That's 1.7 million more than in 2005. Nicholas Retsinas, a real estate expert at Harvard ... 06/28/2011 Yes, Let Government Control Medical Costs "Centralizers," a conservative wrote disapprovingly in Reason magazine, "say that the responsibility for making tough decisions about how to keep health care costs under control ought to be made by enlightened, well-intentioned policy ... 06/23/2011 Why Tim Pawlenty Is No Reagan They, some Republicans, are at it again with the pipe dream of helping the middle class by making the rich much richer. We speak of Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota governor and candidate for president. His extraordinary vision for reviving the economy: Stop ... 06/21/2011 High-Tech, High-Touch: Back to the Future While fetching my digital camera from the repair shop, I noted a bunch of clunky old film cameras and their flashes lining a back table. I thought no one used film anymore. Wrong. The proprietor explained that a growing subset of young people ... 06/16/2011 The Right Question for the Defense Budget "Can we afford the military budget?" Not quite the right question, but one being asked these days even in hawkish circles. It reflects a break in the Republicans' traditional reluctance to cut defense spending and a declining enthusiasm for ... 06/14/2011 Anthony Weiner, You're No Patrick Kennedy Sunday's Tony Awards program reminds us that new media didn't invent the egotist who doesn't know when to exit. Live theater is millennia old, and one awardee hogged so much time offering "thanks" that his co-winner couldn't say a word. ... 06/09/2011 The Sad Politics Over a Cancer Drug "I shudder at the thought of a government panel assigning a value to a day of a person's life." Louisiana Sen. David Vitter said that in response to the Food and Drug Administration's possible removal of the drug Avastin as a treatment for ... 06/07/2011 Mr. Weiner, Put up That Wall! A New York Democrat has joined what had been a largely Republican caucus of congressmen committing sexually inappropriate online behavior. A picture of Rep. Anthony Weiner's crotch (in underwear) appeared on a Twitter stream sent to a Seattle college ... 06/02/2011 "News" That Frees up Time Keeping up with the always-spinning news cycle can eat into a media hound's free time. Thus, I'm grateful when cable television plugs its news holes with stories of no consequence. One can safely check out, secure that nothing important has escaped ... 05/28/2011 In Cyberspace, Everyone's a Critic; Business Laments On the prowl for a good dinner in a Florida town we didn't know well, I went on Yelp. Yelp is a social networking website that lets anyone review a business. One Italian restaurant looked promising, with mostly positive reviews and few grumbles. We ... 05/26/2011 All Eyes on the Storm In 1954, E.B. White wrote a piece in The New Yorker about a hurricane hitting his part of Maine. The moment it left Boston, he notes in "The Eye of Edna," the radio voices declared the violent storm over — even as it continued ... 05/24/2011 Playing Chicken With Full Faith and Credit New polling by Rasmussen shows voters highly conflicted over which party to blame for our economic troubles and which is best able to end them. But Americans agree on one thing: The economy is lousy. And from that, we can reasonably deduce that they ... 05/19/2011 Housing: A Healthy Bust Just as busts follow booms, booms are supposed to follow busts. But there has been no boom, not even a boomlet, to light a candle in the gloom of the housing collapse. Many economists thought that a recovery from the real-estate meltdown that started ... 05/17/2011 The Rights of a Chambermaid Most every detail surrounding the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn blew right out the "Law and Order" storybook. Detectives board an Air France jet about to taxi off for Paris and pull Strauss-Kahn right out of his first-class seat. (They ... 05/12/2011 The Naked and the Red: Republicans Exposed Two is a coincidence, they say, but three is a trend. Hot body shots of three Washington politicians are all over the Internet. All three are of Republicans, and all three are men. Do we have a trend here or just a creepy coincidence? The ... 05/10/2011 GOP: Try Again on Medicare Nice try, Republicans, running a political protection racket to push your Medicare scheme. Scrubbed of the sweet talk about saving Medicare, your offer boiled down to this: You older folks support us, and we won't touch a hair on your government ... 05/05/2011 Bin Laden Was Already Stopped The big story was that they got him, not that he was stopped. Osama bin Laden was already stopped. Sure, the al-Qaida movement could still massacre Christians at a Baghdad church and try to put package bombs on cargo planes headed for the ... 05/03/2011 Osama Gone, but Not Terrorism WASHINGTON, D.C. — Of course, we're celebrating. And of course, they're threatening retaliation. Osama bin Laden is dead, and with him died as much twisted malice as can be found in a man who would send jetliners into office buildings. ... 04/28/2011 Is the New Walmart New Enough? I found this quote, buried in a news story about rising prices in China: "I hear that many Chinese exporters are rejecting orders from Walmart and other Western retailers," said Dong Tao, an economist for Credit Suisse in Hong Kong. &... 04/26/2011 When Trees Are Gone With the Wind Monster winds recently ravaged the South, leaving behind all varieties of loss — human and material. The photos often centered on the exposed, tangled root systems of giant trees to illustrate nature on the rampage. Raleigh, N.C., the &... 04/21/2011 Curbing Medicare Costs Without Vouchers About 10 years ago, a new radiation treatment for prostate cancer came on line. A single course of "intensity-modulated radiation therapy" cost Medicare about $42,000. The older radiation therapy cost $10,000. Hospitals bought the new ... 04/19/2011 America Is Not a Third World Country ... Yet Let's start with the assumption that America is not a Third World country. In poor countries, many people never see doctors. Only the elite go to college. Rattletrap trains take two hours to go 70 miles. Visit the Third World, and you see a ... 04/14/2011 When French Food Didn't Have to Advertise "The gastronomical meal of the French" has landed on the UNESCO world heritage list for "intangible" cultural treasures. That was great news for French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He's been pushing this for two years. But is it good ... 04/12/2011 As American Culture Hurtles Into Decline America's tailspin toward the cultural abyss has gained speed with an ad featuring single-mother celebrity Bristol Palin. Bloggers unfriendly to her mother, conservative entrepreneur Sarah Palin, have bashed a charity for paying Bristol $262,500 to ... 04/07/2011 The GOP Plan for Medicare Is Not Nice The House Republican plan for balancing budgets includes deep cuts in federal health care spending. It is honest but not nice. It's not nice at all. Give the blueprint's author, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, credit for this: He bravely goes ... 04/05/2011 God Versus Man on the Beach SINGER ISLAND, Fla. — The Florida sun flashes off the row of oiled bodies, their owners largely unmindful of the politics being played on this strip of sand. The ocean waves are eating the beach. Residents of the luxury condo towers behind us ... 03/31/2011 Foggy Thinking in the Sunshine State FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — You'd think that a state knocked cold by the real-estate meltdown would invest in a future not based on housing bubbles. And that if the feds dangled a bag of money to help it address a serious economic drag — a ... 03/29/2011 When Government Was a Bear Are conservatives right that our government has become overbearing? Is it true that the rights of the individual, enshrined at the dawn of the Republic and cried over by Glenn Beck, are being smashed by the modern state? One doesn't have to be ... 03/24/2011 Praise for (Some) Tea Partiers When it comes to my sanity, the tea party often taketh away. I go nuts when they throw out huge sums to cut from budgets without getting into details. Ditto when they bash the scraps spent on poor children, then defend their plush Medicare benefits. ... 03/22/2011 The Madness of Slamming Midnight Basketball Eighteen years ago, "midnight basketball" was the big har-har-har on the conservative talk circuit. It was a federal program that sought to coax young men off the late-night mean city streets and onto supervised basketball courts. ... 03/17/2011 Politicians and Their Self-Serving Charities Not long ago, Republicans mounted their high horse over Charlie Rangel's ethical lapses. They had a right to. Among other questionable conduct, Rangel had solicited charitable donations from executives with business before the House Ways and Means ... 03/15/2011 Mother Nature Defeats Best Laid Plans A wall of water now rules our freak-of-nature nightmares. Like the whirling funnel that drops down from the sky, it gives scant warning. But unlike a tornado, it devastates wide swathes of civilization, and there's no tsunami equivalent of a tornado ... 03/10/2011 Who's Missing in Utah's Immigration Deal Someone is missing at the celebration for the Utah Compact on immigration. Who could that be? Latino activists, the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, the Chamber of Commerce and the state's political establishment — they're all there, ... 03/08/2011 Spending's Not Better the Second Time Around Before we take an ax to the federal budget, let's try a scalpel. Many things done in one federal department or agency are also done in others, according to a new Government Accountability Office study. Even wonderful programs don't get better in the ... 03/03/2011 Public Workers Join the New Reality Too bad the showdown with public employee unions has come to this, however long in the making. One can be pro-union and still feel a growing resentment at these workers' ability to set their own dream retirement benefits as the private sector's were ... 03/01/2011 The Left Wing Needs an Update Though I deem myself a sort-of liberal, I don't closely read the left-wing magazine The Nation. Its views don't budge for decades at a time, so one can get by just checking in now and then. Case in point is a recent analysis of the gap between ... 02/24/2011 Michele Bachmann, Let's Make a Deal I'll make a deal with you, Michele Bachmann. We taxpayers don't have to subsidize breast pumps in return for not subsidizing your business. From 1995 to 2006, the Bachmann family glommed $251,000 off the farm program, according to the Environmental ... 02/22/2011 Federal Policies Skew House Values Everywhere Not Seattle! Home prices in the "Queen City" of the Northwest were not supposed to go south. This isn't Miami, Phoenix or Las Vegas, where suntanned speculators built big, borrowed big and went bust with a bang. Yet just as the ... 02/17/2011 Don't Buy Simple Talk on Budget In politics, simple phrases can hide complex agendas. The budget debate offers the perfect stage for mouthing "home truths" that are not quite true. Let's air a few examples. — Big government, not the Bush tax cuts, created the ... 02/15/2011 Thankfully, the Egyptians Did It Without Us As a rationale for invading Iraq, then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said: "The people of the Middle East share the desire for freedom. We have an opportunity — and an obligation — to help them turn this desire into ... 02/10/2011 The Blubber Hits the Road Projects The blubbering has hit the road projects, as the congressional ban on earmarks becomes reality. Tea partiers and other foes of "Big Government" demanded the end to earmarks, also known as pork. Earmarks are but a drop in the federal spending ... 02/08/2011 Where Spanish Is a Threatened Language SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The ice, snow and sleet that paralyzed American aviation last week forced upon me two extra days in tropical Puerto Rico. Somehow I managed. And so did the legions of other Americans and Canadians sharing stories of ... 02/03/2011 Missing Moderate Republicans One of the more disagreeable traits of many tea party "spokespeople," aside from their loose connection with facts, is their zest for threatening Republicans who don't leap when they say "jump." I appreciate that these ... 02/01/2011 From Psycho to Tourist Draw Billy the Kid was a psycho. It took the balm of time and multiple retelling of Old West sagas to turn this killing machine into a folk figure. You may recall former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's causing a fuss when he considered granting the ... 01/27/2011 Boomers' 'Second Adolescence' Goes on Hold A few years ago, baby boomers needed 3-D glasses to take in the gorgeous vision of their decades to come. Books and articles foresaw baby boomers skipping off into a "Second Adolescence" of self-fulfillment. No longer chained to the 9-to-5 ... 01/25/2011 Deficits as Far as the States Can See Like me, you may be wondering why 96,000 California state workers were given cell phones courtesy of the taxpayers. For, like me, you probably use a cell phone in the course of your work. And we know that if we asked our employers to pay for it, the ... 01/20/2011 No Tears for Joe Lieberman My eyes are dry as I ponder Joe Lieberman's decision to not seek re-election. Voices on the right regard Connecticut's independent senator as a victim of left-wing intolerance. I see him as a sanctimonious hypocrite, political opportunist and double-... 01/18/2011 Whipping Health Care Reform, in a Nice Way Following the attack against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and bystanders, Republicans put off action to scuttle the Democrats' health care reforms. The GOP House leadership is now back, determined to repeal a law that gives Americans health care security ... 01/13/2011 Going Down in an Up Economy In the typical economic downturn, Americans thrown out of work make a deal with Euthenia, the Greek goddess of prosperity. They say (in their heads): We will get through this. We'll move in with family, find any part-time job. All we want is an ... 01/11/2011 Crazy Gunman, but a Political Attack House Speaker John Boehner seemed truly appalled by the murderous rampage against Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and constituents at a supermarket in her Tucson, Ariz., district. But the Republican's contention that this was "an attack on all ... 01/06/2011 Immigration Reform No Place for Games Consider this immigration case from Canada: Three years ago, a Mexican sister and brother moved illegally to Toronto. Brenda Garcia, 30, filed for refugee status, claiming fear of persecution back home for being lesbian. Her brother, 18-year-old ... 01/04/2011 Mystery of the Missing Millionaires A daffy Wall Street Journal editorial about the "vanishing millionaires" of Oregon lit a spark in a fairly humorless week. It offers the usual boilerplate about the rich fleeing to tax-friendlier provinces because their state raised taxes, ... 12/30/2010 New Soldiers in the Fight Against the Drug War Profound thanks are due televangelist Pat Robertson for stating so clearly what many of us have been screaming in the wilderness for years — that the criminalization of marijuana is a plague on young people. May he lend courage to politicians ... 12/28/2010 How the Kardashians Can Really Shock Us If you don't already know about the Kardashian sisters, you probably don't want to know. Kourtney, Kim and Khloe have grown very rich dressing like tramps and otherwise exhibiting themselves, including sessions on the toilet (viewable on their E! ... 12/23/2010 Slow-Growing Population? Great! The analyses of the new census numbers were predictable, and I take issue with nearly every one. Let's start with the suggestion that population rising at the lowest rate since the Great Depression is to be lamented. Anything likened to the Great ... 12/21/2010 Can We Break the China Habit? It's been tough watching fellow shoppers fill their carts with Chinese imports as the People's Republic stomps on American interests and values. At WalMart, Bed Bath & Beyond and other big chains, it's hard to find goods NOT-made-in-China. Lamps, ... 12/16/2010 So You Thought Health Care Was Fixed … So you thought health care was fixed. Well, maybe not "fixed," but you assumed that the new law had put us on the path to solving one of America's most pressing problems — spiraling health care costs amid surging numbers of uninsured ... 12/14/2010 Madoff's Saddest Victim Bernard Madoff went to jail for his stupendous financial con. His eldest son, Mark, has gone to oblivion, having hung himself from a dog leash on the second anniversary of his father's outing as perpetrator of a $20 billion con. Let us grieve ... 12/09/2010 The Blue-State Tax Blues The political lineup for and against the controversial tax deal evokes great bemusement. Once again, Republicans representing the poorer conservative states are pounding the table for the lower taxes that benefit the richer, liberal ones. Once again, ... 12/07/2010 Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Care Don't ask, don't tell — don't know why we're still talking about this. "Don't ask, don't tell" is the rule barring openly gay soldiers from serving in the U.S. military. This relic of the culture wars is so past its prime that even ... 12/02/2010 The American Dream Is Not All About Money We always talk about "The American Dream" — about living it, saving it, wondering what happened to it. Few bother to define it. The stereotype shows a single-family house, with white-picket fence, Mom and Dad, Dick and Jane. A ... 11/30/2010 The Nuclear Threat Is Not a Partisan Issue The recently leaked diplomatic cables reveal both Arab and Israeli horror at a nuclear Iran. Last year, Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, evidently told the American ambassador that the world had 18 months or less to keep Iran from acquiring ... 11/25/2010 Make Levies, Not War, on the Rich Most Americans dislike class-warfare talk aimed at rich people. It does not follow that they don't want the wealthiest among us to pay more taxes. Polls show they do. That puts Democrats in the mainstream on such matters. But Democrats still need a ... 11/23/2010 The Hard Work of a Downtown Christmas NEW YORK CITY — Friday night in the big city, I'm bopping along Fifth Avenue with my brother, and the place is one huge construction site. But this evening's industriousness differs from the usual after-hours midtown work. Guys aren't pouring ... 11/18/2010 EPA to California: Go for It Has the recent Republican sweep of the House doomed President Obama's clean-energy agenda? Possibly. Has it doomed America's? Hardly. It's simply moved the center for enlightened environmental policy 2,840 miles to the west — to ... 11/16/2010 Liberals Have Much to Like in Deficit Plan Many liberals went bananas over the new plan to reduce deficits. The ideas put forth by the chairmen of President Obama's bipartisan deficit commission ignore their priorities, they lament. Liberals are entitled to be crabby because they've ... 11/11/2010 Cheese Subsidies Are Full of Holes How interesting that one arm of the Agriculture Department is promoting sales of cheese as another urges the public to eat less of it for health reasons. Your tax dollars at work fighting other tax dollars. Dairy Management is a marketing ... 11/09/2010 Obama in Indonesia Barack Hussein Obama, the mixed-race president born in Hawaii, partly educated in Indonesia — defender of a controversial Islamic center near ground zero in Manhattan — is tentatively scheduled to visit Jakarta's Masjid Istiqlal, the ... 11/04/2010 The Democrats Did Good The Democrats did good. Not in the election — they did pretty miserably there. But they did good for the country. They led America back from the brink of economic disaster. The lead story in the Election Day Wall Street Journal was about ... 11/02/2010 From Geek to Geezer It's a fair generality that the young are more technologically up-to-date than the old. There comes a time when one concludes that the wizards of invention have gone far enough. There's no point in cluttering one's mind with new gadgets and their ... 10/28/2010 Hail the American Work Ethic Whenever I visit Italy, France or elsewhere in dolce vita Europe, I go: "Oooh! Aren't these cheeses wonderful? Ahh! Look how fit and well dressed everyone is. Oh! If only America would protect its downtowns the way these Europeans preserve their ... 10/26/2010 The Justice, His Wife, Her Voice Mail and Our Democracy I'm not going to waste everyone's time treating Virginia Thomas' message on Anita Hill's office voice mail as a genuine request for an apology. Hill had famously accused Ginni's husband, Clarence Thomas, of sexual harassment at his confirmation ... 10/21/2010 What Was Wrong With the Auto Bailout? Nothing Among the mysteries of public opinion, this one most strains the brain: Why do so many Americans think the government rescue of Detroit automakers was a bad — nay, an evil — thing? The bailout has been a rousing success, and that's the ... 10/19/2010 Sex, Violence and the Female Voter The line between crazy and creepy is not always a dark one. Voters may tolerate eccentric candidates if they have a good line and fairly coherent worldview. Creepiness is something else. Politicians who threaten violence or question the sexual ... 10/14/2010 Government Doesn't Have to Subsidize Everything When government tells restaurant owners that they can't let customers smoke on their premises, that's the nanny state. When it fines motorcyclists for not wearing helmets, again, the nanny. But is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg playing ... 10/12/2010 Real Patriots Demand Clean Energy Those orange fireballs you see in the news are NATO oil tankers exploding along the Khyber Pass. Afghani insurgents regard convoys bringing fuel to American fighters as easy marks. The trucks go slow and, once hit, blow up. The U.S. military ... 10/07/2010 Latinos Should Darn Well Vote The Hispanic activist grew defensive as we discussed Latinos' low turnouts in recent elections. Indeed, the subject popped up with no prompting from me. "Latinos don't vote?" said Lydia Camarillo, who runs voter registration drives ... 10/05/2010 Terrorism of a Personal Kind The schoolyard bully used to work his fists. His target might go home with a black eye, but the bruise would eventually go away. Later in life, victim and victimizer might become friends. Then came guns. Physical strength no longer mattered, ... 09/30/2010 Yes, the Swedish Model Swedish voters have re-elected their center-right prime minister, and that has caused rejoicing among my right-wing colleagues. "Sweden votes for tax cuts, privatization and deregulation," a Wall Street Journal editorial proclaims. "It'... 09/28/2010 Poor Immigrants: Asset or Burden? Dallas — America's fast-growing Latino population is famously hard working. It also has high rates for teenage pregnancy and dropping out of high school, two markers for poverty. Falling education levels should worry any country seeking to ... 09/23/2010 Where Good Men (and Women) Die Old There are few less-alike places in the continental United States than Ashley, N.D., and New York City. But Ashley (population 882) has one remarkable thing in common with New York (population 8,363,710). Its older residents enjoy longer and healthier ... 09/21/2010 Why Corvettes Cost Less Than College That was a pleasant stroll across the Ivy League campus of Brown University, in Providence, R.I. I saw the gardening crews, the maintenance trucks, the pricey restoration work on Faunce Arch. I passed the skating rink, the president's mansion and the ... 09/16/2010 Democrats Need to Turn Off Fox News During the 2000 presidential campaign, Democrat Al Gore became captive of the right-wing noise machine. The activists and their media had gone honking nuts over President Clinton's sexual indiscretion. Vice President Gore thought these people mattered ... 09/14/2010 'Art' Fights Nature in Colorado 'Art' Fights Nature in Colorado Colorado's Arkansas River is a masterpiece. Crafted by the Creator, it is a natural work of art that needs no improvement. That a ludicrous proposal to cover 42 miles of it with 120-foot-wide fabric has ... 09/09/2010 The Rich Are Not Here to Give Us Jobs Let's cut the baloney about jobs and rich people's taxes. If corporate profits automatically turned into jobs for the little folk, the unemployment rate would be plummeting. It happens that company earnings now exceed their lofty peaks of the ... 09/07/2010 Parties Mean Little in Governors' Races Professional partisans see every race as a mark on their team's scoreboard. But these activists err in treating the win of a state governorship and U.S. Senate seat as similar victories. Voters might care which party runs Congress, but why would they ... 09/02/2010 Government Protects the Little Guy Over a century ago, William Jennings Bryan presided over mass rallies of mostly middle-class Americans angry about economic inequities. The tea party activists gathered in Washington last weekend for Glenn Beck's event shared similar concerns. Both ... 08/31/2010 Mad Men in a Saner Time "Mad Men" just won its third Emmy for "outstanding drama." If there were a gold statue for "best nostalgic portrayal," the AMC series would have walked off with that one, too. The allure and success of "Mad Men" ... 08/26/2010 The Mosque and the ‘American Street' The circus around the mosque should start to lose audience. New York officials have the authority to decide whether an Islamic center may be built near the tragic site of the attacks on the Twin Towers. They've given it a green light. Our ... 08/24/2010 Democrats Made Their Own Lumpy Bed "Worried Democrats courting elderly voters as midterm elections near," reads a headline in The Washington Post. It's long been clear that if Democrats had been less afraid, they'd have less to be afraid of now. Case in point was the ... 08/19/2010 Washington Saved Our Economic Hide Clarence the angel has a tough job in "It's a Wonderful Life." He must show the suicidal George Bailey what terrible things would have happened had he not been born. Two prominent economists are playing Clarence to the multitudes who believe ... 08/17/2010 The Real JetBlue Heroes The JetBlue flight attendant who theatrically quit his job by cursing out a "rude" passenger and exiting via an emergency slide has become a working-class hero to many. But Steven Slater's story didn't hold up for long. It now appears that ... 08/12/2010 Regulation Made Canada Fat and Happy Suppose the U.S. government had posted a budget surplus in 12 of the past 13 years. Suppose not a single major American financial institution had failed or needed a government bailout. Suppose the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 6.1 percent in ... 08/10/2010 Republicans Overboard on Yachtsman Kerry I voted for the guy to be president in 2004, but I never much cared for Sen. John Kerry. So to my conservative friends now mocking the Massachusetts liberal for having saved $500,000 in taxes by docking his $7 million yacht in Rhode Island, I say, &... 08/05/2010 Ethics Trials May Help, Not Hurt, Democrats Democrats will "drain the swamp of Washington" if they win control of the House. So promised California Rep. Nancy Pelosi before the 2006 election that led to her becoming speaker of the House. Now that two Democratic reps have been ... 08/03/2010 The Real Illegal Immigration Story Arizona commands front and center stage in the national drama over illegal immigration. But the real action lies elsewhere. For those who prefer dealing with the problem in a more humane way, the news out of backstage is encouraging. By ... 07/29/2010 Dr. Donald Berwick, Taxpayer Hero Welcome, Dr. Donald Berwick. Once you pull the arrows out of your back, you can get down to the important work for which you are supremely qualified: fixing the government health-insurance programs. President Obama named you head of the ... 07/27/2010 Raise Taxes To Cut Government? As the debate rages over letting some of the Bush tax cuts expire, Republicans have raised their starve-the-beast theory from its coffin. They insist that government (the "beast") can be shrunk by cutting taxes: The less money government has,... 07/22/2010 "2010: A Space Odyssey" Updated The most wrong assumption in the sci-fi movie classic "2001: A Space Odyssey" was that technology would liberate humans from a life of hassle. Made 42 years ago, Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece shows 21st century humankind going about its ... 07/20/2010 Wild Kingdom in the City Backyard It's a savage wilderness, here in my city yard. From a distance, it looks like a Victorian postcard — a pastoral scene of sweet flowers, sun-kissed vegetables and trilling birds. The reality is considerably rougher. Hang around, and one sees a ... 07/15/2010 Democrats Can Avoid Rout -- It's Up to Them When the pollster calls and asks whether I think the country is going in the right direction, I will say "no." When she asks if I approve of the job Congress is doing, I will say "no." And when she follows up with a question on ... 07/13/2010 For Some, Manufacturing Can Be a Marvelous Career The United States has shed 2 million factory jobs since 2007, yet many American companies can't find qualified workers to fill their available openings. That's a shocking problem, given the numbers looking for work. But it could also be a break for ... 07/08/2010 Obama Should Leave Arizona Alone The Obama administration is challenging Arizona's tough new immigration law, and that's too bad. It's not that the Arizona law is good policy, because it isn't. And it's not that President Obama doesn't have a better idea on immigration reform, ... 07/06/2010 How Much Cyber-Parenting Must Schools Do? A boy has apparently sent filthy text messages to your daughter over the weekend. Both are sixth-graders at the same school. You, the girl's father, coach sports with the boy's father. What would you do? a. Disconnect your daughter from all ... 07/01/2010 Lafayette, We Are Embarrassed Thirty-six American cities and towns are named after the Marquis de Lafayette — the best-known being Fayetteville, N.C., and Lafayette, La. Countless streets, parks and counties also honor the French aristocrat who left his country at age 19 to ... 06/29/2010 Heaven Must Wait for a Money-Savvy Public In the conservative paradise, a nation of strong, hard-working individuals borrow responsibly and save for future needs. They don't need government telling them how to manage their money. If they do foolish things, they pay the price. I like ... 06/24/2010 Government Pensions Face the Music Very few of my friends in their 40s talk about their impending retirements, but every last one of them works for government, be it local, state or federal. That's because they can collect plush pensions at tender ages that other workers can only dream ... 06/22/2010 Electrify the Roads My magic wand is on the fritz, otherwise we'd have a big, new federal program to free America from its dependence on oil. Like other environmentalists, I'm sad that the calamity in the Gulf of Mexico hasn't spurred Washington to more vigorously ... 06/17/2010 Make Louisiana a U.S. Protectorate A modest proposal: The federal government should take over Louisiana. Might as well, at this point. "We will do whatever is necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy," President Obama said this week ... 06/15/2010 Is Being Half There OK? You've seen the zombie parents on the streets and at the mall. Off in some cell-phone cloud, they pay no attention to what's in the stroller. It could be a sack of potatoes. It could be a cocker spaniel. More often than not, it's a baby staring ... 06/10/2010 Voter Unrest Could Also Help Democrats It's hard to call the outcomes of recent primaries a "voter uprising." It looks more like democracy in action than a series of coup d'etats. Replacing party establishment favorites with others is only a revolution if one believes in the ... 06/08/2010 Blaming Obama for Not Being a God Gulf Coast residents are supposedly mad at President Obama for not keeping the oil from threatening their beaches and marshes. We hear this in stereo — from political opposition on the right and liberal pundits bored by the president's cerebral ... 06/03/2010 Time to Call the Tea Party's Bluff I'm done trying to hack through the tea party thicket of self-contradiction, self-delusion and self-serving positions. My last straw is Rand Paul, a tea party favorite and now Republican nominee for senator from Kentucky. What damns Paul wasn'... 05/29/2010 Ban the Burqa Belgium has banned the burqa, the head-to-toe veil worn in parts of the Muslim world. French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants his country to follow suit. What's an open-minded person to think? The answer is, you have every right to regulate your world. ... 05/27/2010 To Fix Immigration, Look North Ripped from the news: Haitians are illegally crossing into Vermont from Canada, looking for work. Why didn't the Haitians stay in Canada, where the social safety net is far cushier? Because, as the head of a Haitian radio station in Montreal ... 05/25/2010 What Were They (Politicians) Thinking? The candidates subject themselves to all those boring chicken dinners, weekends on the road and having to flatter unpleasant people. Their campaign workers, contributors and media friends struggle to pull them over the finish line. The ... 05/25/2010 What Were They (Politicians) Thinking? The candidates subject themselves to all those boring chicken dinners, weekends on the road and having to flatter unpleasant people. Their campaign workers, contributors and media friends struggle to pull them over the finish line. The ... 05/19/2010 Superb Tuesday: The Right People Won Guess Mitch McConnell's charm wasn't enough. The Senate minority leader's anointed man lost the Kentucky Republican Senate primary to Rand Paul, son of tea party toastmaster Texas Rep. Ron Paul. The Tuesday races went well for Democrats, less ... 05/12/2010 Gulf Shrimpers Had Economic Interests, Too A pile of beautiful Gulf shrimp beckoned from the fish counter, and I thought, better buy them soon. Louisiana shrimpers are now trying to grab all they can get before the oil takes over. A lot of pleasure is dying in the Gulf of Mexico — but ... 05/10/2010 Who Are You Calling Racist? Many Tea Party critics accuse the movement of racist tendencies. Their evidence includes its obsession over illegal immigration and nasty epithets hurled during Tea Party rallies. But those who would point fingers at all possible displays of ... 05/03/2010 Latino Giant to Change U.S. Politics SAN ANTONIO — It was over frozen lattes three blocks from the Alamo that Lydia Camarillo and I discussed the wave of Latino voters expected to change politics in Texas — and America. Camarillo is vice president of the Southwest Voter ... 04/29/2010 Is the Sunbelt Ready for Urbanity? HOUSTON — Houston faces a crossroads, or to be more precise, a five-level stack interchange. Is it going to nurture compact walkable neighborhoods? Or is it going to do what it has always done — stand back and watch developers build ... 04/28/2010 Is the Sunbelt Ready for Urbanity? HOUSTON — Houston faces a crossroads, or to be more precise, a five-level stack interchange. Is it going to nurture compact walkable neighborhoods? Or is it going to do what it has always done — stand back and watch developers build ... 04/27/2010 Arizona May Prod Feds to Finally Act President Obama is right that Arizona's tough immigration law is "misguided." And Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is right that her state has been "more than patient waiting for Washington to act." The two are not unrelated. ... 04/26/2010 Arizona May Prod Feds to Finally Act ... 04/22/2010 Bad Service Dressed as Good Service More service is not necessarily good service. And bad service dressed as good service is even worse. Here are examples: Restaurants. A waiter breaks into a lively conversation to ask, "How is the meal?" Being courteous people,... 04/21/2010 Bad Service Dressed as Good Service More service is not necessarily good service. And bad service dressed as good service is even worse. Here are examples: Restaurants. A waiter breaks into a lively conversation to ask, "How is the meal?" Being courteous ... 04/20/2010 Too Much Medicine Isn't Good Medicine In the land of "too much ain't enough," the idea that less medicine could be better medicine is a hard sell. This was impossible to discuss during the fracas over health care reform, when any talk of fewer tests and less surgery was ... 04/15/2010 Politicians Honoring Their Kind Fly from Atlanta to Houston, and you may start at an airport named after two mayors and land at one named for a president. While in the air, you pass over hundreds of bridges, roadways and public buildings — all honoring politicians, alive or ... 04/14/2010 Politicians Honoring Their Kind Fly from Atlanta to Houston, and you may start at an airport named after two mayors and land at one named for a president. While in the air, you pass over hundreds of bridges, roadways and public buildings — all honoring politicians, alive or ... 04/13/2010 Where Third Party Candidates Are Almost Routine They make less of a ruckus than the tea party people, but independents in New England are brewing their own revolution. Third-party governors may have been elected elsewhere — Walter Hickel in Alaska (1990) and Jesse Ventura in Minnesota (1998) &... 04/08/2010 The Five Commandments of Tax Reform The tax code needs fixing to be fairer and less complex. But let's set some rules for this debate. Here are the Five Commandments of Tax Reform: Thou shall simplify with care: Rep. Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, proposes a much ... 04/06/2010 'Doing Better' Than One's Parents If the new federal program to help homeowners pay their mortgage bugs you, read a Wall Street Journal article titled, "Bank of Mom and Dad Shuts Amid White-Collar Struggle." It will make you even madder. The piece reports on six-... 04/01/2010 Reading in Black and White Such is our gadget obsession that the launch of a new electronic reader has set off a death match between two new-media gorillas, Apple and Amazon.com. Apple's iPad seeks to end the Amazon Kindle's domination of the market for devices that let you ... 03/30/2010 Down With Political Prognostications Political sages turn today's polling and past voter behavior into confident predictions about upcoming elections. That's their job. But fortune-tellers may do nearly as well, especially when the vote takes place months in the future. Public ... 03/25/2010 Take Student-Loan Companies Off Welfare When the government hands money to poor people, that's welfare, Republicans say. That's taking money from productive taxpayers and encouraging dependency, they assert. But when corporations get taxpayer handouts, that's not welfare in the GOP ... 03/23/2010 This Time, a Real Immigration Fix What part of "immigration reform" don't you understand — or, rather, don't want to understand? The send-'em-home crowd doesn't "get it" that a new enforcement regime must be paired with an amnesty for millions, even though ... 03/18/2010 Will Snowe Fall in Maine? Go visit potato country at the tippy-top of Maine. There, struggling farmers can look across the St. John River at equally hard-pressed potato growers in New Brunswick, Canada. The big difference between them is that if one of the Mainers falls ... 03/16/2010 Jihad Jane: Terror by Reason of Insanity Consider the case of "Jihad Jane." Divorced twice (first marriage at 16), Colleen LaRose was arrested for drunkenness in Texas. She ended up living with a boyfriend in a Philadelphia suburb and taking care of his elderly father. Let's say ... 03/11/2010 Coming Between You and Your Doctor The lights must dim around Google's data-storage centers every time someone does a search for "government bureaucrat coming between you and your doctor." Foes of the Democrats' health-reform proposals have been chanting this on the hour for ... 03/09/2010 The Volcker Rule: Beware Gremlins in Guccis A big chunk of rock went missing from Mount Rushmore when Paul Volcker broke away in 2008 to stand stony-faced behind candidate Barack Obama. The former Federal Reserve chairman served as a reassuring presence from an older, more orderly financial era ... 03/04/2010 Obama Not Gutless After All The right accuses Barack Obama of dragging the country way left, and the left calls him gutless. The president is proving both of them wrong. From under that mild-mannered exterior has recently emerged a man of steel — though his ... 03/02/2010 The Terrified American Shopper Americans who shopped till they dropped have stopped. Per capita consumption is down for two straight years, according to Booz & Company's new study of U.S. spending behavior. That hasn't happened since the Great Depression. The consulting ... 02/25/2010 Americans Can Speak for Themselves on Health Care Have you voted on any of the Democratic health care reform plans? Me neither. No such vote was ever taken. But with coordination that the Rockettes would envy, Republicans insist that "the American people have spoken" on the matter, ... 02/23/2010 Why Evan Bayh Should Not Jump Ship In an essay titled, "Why I'm Leaving the Senate," Evan Bayh brilliantly explains what's wrong with the Senate and how to fix it. If only the headline had read, "Why I'm Not Leaving the Senate" — or better, "Things I Will ... 02/18/2010 Republican Talk of the 'Sensible Middle' Makes No Sense We keep hearing that "Obama should move to the center." A variation on this theme is that the president should find the "sensible middle" on policy. But what the heck is the middle, given America's screwball partisan ... 02/16/2010 The Coolness of Old Florida LAKE WORTH, Fla. — California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent dig that Florida is "for the old people" cut locals here to the quick. "Florida's not cool to a 20-year-old, and it has to be," retail executive Larry ... 02/11/2010 Slobs and the American Civilization Had George Washington joined me outside a Chili's at Chicago's O'Hare Airport recently, he would have shuddered at the sight. There, a nation of slobs paraded through the crossroads of America. Frayed denim hems swept the filthy floor. Cleavage poured ... 02/09/2010 Age Discrimination for the Young The age of adulthood — and the rights and responsibilities that come with it — is largely a matter of opinion. Age 18 traditionally separates minors from adults. But one can't legally buy a drink in America until age 21. Meanwhile, many ... 02/04/2010 The Urban Future Isn't All About Population Booms Sunbelt-and-sprawl advocate Joel Kotkin wrote two years ago that the future of American urbanism wasn't in the "elite cities," such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco, but in "younger, more affordable and less self-... 02/02/2010 Off in the New Age Money, spirituality and something else combined last October to set off a ghastly tragedy near Sedona, Ariz. Participants in a "Sweat Lodge" ceremony, run by New Age impresario James Arthur Ray, were overcome with heat. Three died, and 18 ... 01/28/2010 Dems Must Swing for the Fences or Lose Is there a patriot in the house? Is there anyone in Washington who regards governing as a means to accomplish anything other than win the sterile game of Democrat versus Republican? Every day, American soldiers risk their lives for their country, but ... 01/26/2010 Criticism of 'Avatar' More Interesting Than Film Somewhere between "Avatar's" first billion-dollar gross and its subsequent $841 million take lie my 10 bucks. "Avatar" is about blue-skinned beings who confront Earthlings actively strip mining their natural paradise on the moon ... 01/21/2010 The Real Miracle Happened Four Years Ago The miracle in Massachusetts was made possible through a bigger miracle four years ago. That's when the commonwealth became the first and so far only state to guarantee near-universal coverage. The Republican winner of the Senate seat long held by Ted ... 01/19/2010 Taxing Bankers Is Only a Start Tax the bankers' profits, tax their bonuses, tax their golf scores. I mean it. Take their windfall, and give it to the taxpayers who bailed them out. Britain and France plan a 50 percent tax on banker bonuses — coordinated lest their financial ... 01/14/2010 Google's Heroism (Sort of), Self-Interest and Parasitism So Google wants to play human-rights superhero. Five years ago, it compromised its standing as the global avatar of cyber-freedom by blocking certain searches on its Chinese website at the behest of the government in Beijing. Now it's threatening to ... 01/12/2010 Why Profiling Can't Ensure Airline Security Fifty years ago this month, a lawyer living in a posh New York suburb with his former model wife was being investigated for embezzlement. Julian Andrew Frank of Westport, Conn., took out nearly $900,000 in life insurance and then, investigators ... 01/07/2010 An Unchained Dodd Rides Into Finance Reform With polls showing that Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd would probably lose to most everyone running against him, the Democrat's decision not to seek re-election is a relief to all but his Republican opponents. A Senate seat from true-blue Connecticut isn'... 01/05/2010 Dems Should Stay Cool About Midterms The midterm elections this November have spawned midyear panic, largely by Democrats. With their majorities in the Senate and House, Democrats have the most to lose. And historically, the president's party sheds congressional seats at this point in ... 12/31/2009 Let House Prices Do What They Must To paraphrase Yogi Berra, the bubble's not over till the last drop splatters. That is certainly the case with the housing bubble. Home prices that seemed to be strengthening over the summer have again slipped, according to the S&P Case-Shiller ... 12/29/2009 We'd Be Happy to Do This 'Strip Tease' U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz proudly championed a measure last spring that bans whole-body imaging as a primary screening technique at airports. "You don't have to look at my wife and 8-year-old daughter naked to secure an airplane," the Utah ... 12/24/2009 The Future of Paper All through the long winter night, my digital gadgets lay snug in their recharging docks as Enya crooned on the iPod. It was on such a wintertide eve last December that I resolved to figure out all the things these wonderful devices could do — ... 12/22/2009 About the So-Called Republican Moderates ... Many have bemoaned the near-extinction of the political species known as the moderate Republican. Once thriving in cold habitats, particularly New England, socially liberal but fiscally conservative Republicans were gradually displaced by Democrats. ... 12/17/2009 Joe Lieberman's Big Picture When Joe Lieberman said he would probably support the health care legislation — now that the public option and Medicare buy-in are being stripped out — the Democrat-turned-independent should have rightfully faded from the headlines. But ... 12/15/2009 Sin Taxes Are a Shame Sly industry-sponsored ads in which ordinary Americans worry about some scheme in Congress generally irritate me. A grunt greeted the TV spot you've no doubt seen: A woman unloading groceries frets over a proposed "tax on juice, milk and soda&... 12/10/2009 "Socialized Medicine"? Whatever So it's come down to this. Republicans and some Democrats wouldn't vote for a government-run health plan that competed with private insurers — though it would enjoy no special taxpayer subsidies. That's socialism. But as a compromise, ... 12/08/2009 America's Clean-Energy Defeatists The United States used to be the can-do country. A respect for science married to the entrepreneurial spirit propelled America to the forefront of global progress and made it rich. But a late-20th century malaise had crept in, fueled by a conservative ... 12/03/2009 The Politization of Crime It's over for Mike Huckabee. His presidential hopes will not survive revelations that as governor of Arkansas he had commuted the long prison term of the now-dead Maurice Clemmons, suspected of gruesomely murdering four police officers in Lakewood, ... 12/01/2009 Working on Apps Not Abs This is a nation of goose-necked children hunched over their electronics in front of a TV. They will turn into goose-necked adults with vitamin D deficiencies, the result of spending their sunny hours downloading songs in darkened rooms. Obesity will ... 11/26/2009 Whom Can You Trust on Climate Change? When President Obama attends the United Nations meeting on climate in Copenhagen, you can be sure that the deniers of global warming will go on a romp. They'll dredge up weather forecasters, scientists hungry for attention and various grudge-holders ... 11/24/2009 Insane Debate Over Wasted Medical Spending Doctors would jab sharp instruments into King Henry VIII's arm and drain blood out of his body. The best medical minds of the 16th century prescribed bloodletting as a means to "rebalance the body's humors," the spring equinox being the ... 11/19/2009 The Civic Price of Courting Corporations Amtrak riders passing through New London, Conn., can catch an odd sight in an otherwise picturesque New England setting: a fancy corporate center standing next to a street grid emptied of nearly all its buildings. This used to be the Fort Trumbull ... 11/17/2009 The Party of Fiscal Babies Nearly every Republican these days calls for tax cuts and lower deficits, and in the same sentence. Point out that these goals clash — that taxes pay for government and not paying for government causes deficits, and the Republican counters, &... 11/12/2009 Casinos Take Money From States In Las Vegas, house prices have dropped 55 percent since peaking in August 2006, and the foreclosure rate is seven times the national average. Gigantic new condo towers sit nearly empty (real-estate pros call them "see-through buildings"), ... 11/10/2009 Two Dots Don't Make a Political Map It is the duty of every pundit to be all-knowing on what the recent elections mean for the future of American politics. They may have only three dots to connect — and two dots may have been state-level contests mostly about local issues — ... 11/05/2009 The Tea-Baggers Were Carpetbaggers The Tea Party wing of the Republican Party had the perfect strategy for upstate New York's 23rd congressional district: 1. Support a candidate who doesn't live in the district — in this case, Conservative Douglas Hoffman. Savage the local ... 11/03/2009 The Population Boomerang in Iran Iranian students are engaging this week in Round Two of their street-level struggle for reform. Round One took place last June, when young people protested the fixed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. About 30 people died in those ... 10/29/2009 What Does the FHA Think It Is Doing? Exactly who made Bernadine Shimon think that she could buy a new house shortly after declaring bankruptcy and losing another home to foreclosure? The American taxpayer, that's who. Without a Federal Housing Administration willing to guarantee a ... 10/27/2009 The Phantom of the Option The public option, we hear, is about to take earthly form. While congressional leaders working to combine five health care reform bills will determine its final shape, a government-run health plan to compete with the private offerings will almost ... 10/22/2009 'America's Best Idea' Meets One of the Worst The Ken Burns series "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" got me thinking about one of America's worst ideas, the war on drugs. Particularly ill-conceived is the crusade against marijuana. That bad idea is now threatening the ... 10/20/2009 Social Security: Every Politician's Toy? Social Security is a glossy piece of paper on which nearly every politician wants to finger-paint an agenda. But Social Security has no need of ornament. It is a very grown-up program. Put some other toy into the political playpen. Come January,... 10/20/2009 Social Security: Every Politician's Toy? Social Security is a glossy piece of paper on which nearly every politician wants to finger-paint an agenda. But Social Security has no need of ornament. It is a very grown-up program. Put some other toy into the political playpen. Come January,... 10/15/2009 Science and the Female Brain The recent award of Nobel Prizes in biology and chemistry to three women dredges up Larry Summers' suggestion in 2005 that differences in the female brain may account for the dearth of top women scientists. Now President Obama's economic adviser, ... 10/13/2009 Weary of Culinary Spectacle, Spending and Sport I must be the only "foodie" who didn't love "Julie & Julia," the movie about Julia Child and the office worker she inspired, Julie Powell. Am I allowed? And even though I grow heirloom beans and patronize local cheese ... 10/08/2009 Health Care Reform Helps Every Generation In terms of health coverage, one date separates the most secure Americans from the least secure: a person's 65th birthday. Age 65 is when one qualifies for Medicare, the government insurance program for the elderly and disabled. It's become a source ... 10/06/2009 The Terrorist Within What you need to know about Michael C. Finton is that he parked a van in front of a federal building in Springfield, Ill., believing it was loaded with explosives. He then twice made cell phone calls that he thought would detonate the bombs. ... 10/06/2009 We learned that in 1995, when native son Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City, extinguishing 168 lives. THE YEAR "1986" HAS BEEN CHANGED TO "1995." THE FOLLOWING IS THE CORRECTED COLUMN IN ITS ENTIRETY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION. — CREATORS SYNDICATE FROMA HARROP RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2009, ... 10/01/2009 Fix Health Care Now, Remove Warts Later "Rome was not built in a day," Montana Democrat Max Baucus said with resignation after the Senate committee he heads voted to reject a "public option." A government-run health plan that would compete with private insurers' ... 09/29/2009 Liberals -- Choose Your Friends Wisely Nearly as unappetizing as the video of ACORN workers explaining how to run a prostitution business, cheat on taxes and import underage streetwalkers from Central America is the presence of Michael Moore's mug on TV screens everywhere. Having ... 09/24/2009 Lindsay Lohan and the Crash of Fashion Every time the economy swoons and the racks groan with the weight of unsold women's clothing, purveyors of fashion talk up "investment dressing." Investment dressing entails buying a few well-constructed garments that will endure both ... 09/22/2009 Canada and France Also Have Health Care Debates The debate over what kind of health care system we should have often includes the kinds others have. The programs in Canada and France have received special attention, and so those countries' efforts to fix their own programs should be of interest.... 09/17/2009 What Americans Really Want Is Health Care Reform "Obama's Speech Doesn't Turn the Tide," reads an ABC News headline about new poll results on public reaction to the president's address on health care reform. An interesting take, given that the tide doesn't need turning. The ABC/... 09/15/2009 'Heads I Win, Tails I'm Bailed Out' President Obama was on Wall Street, calling for a new regulatory regime to prevent a financial panic like the one set off a year ago. "We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess that was at the heart of this crisis,&... 09/10/2009 Health Reform and Illegal Immigration: The Truth In their tireless efforts to kill health care reform, right-wingers have fanned fears that it would attract illegal aliens. This sideshow is rather twisted because, actually, the reforms would do the opposite. They would help curb illegal immigration.<... 09/08/2009 Holder Should Do Some Remembering America will soon mark the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The replays of burning buildings and piercing screams will bring back jagged memories of that horrific day. This would be a useful time for U.S. Attorney ... 09/03/2009 Cracked Justice Enabled Girl Rape Case Many astounding details surround the story of the California rapist who kidnapped an 11-year-old and kept her captive for 18 years. None shocks more than the raw fact that Phillip Garrido was not locked up, the key lost. In 1976, Garrido ... 09/01/2009 Biggest Danger to Democrats Flip the calendar pages — as they do in the old movies to show passage of time — and stop at Nov. 2, 2010. That will be Election Day. How Congress handles health care reform will influence which party gets to party that night. ... 08/26/2009 The Liberal Lion, With Asterisks They called him "The Liberal Lion." Ted Kennedy deserved that title, though with some asterisks added. There's no reconciling Kennedy worshippers with the Kennedy haters. But those who can deal with shades of gray will pay tribute to the ... 08/25/2009 Children Should Not Be Props on Reality TV In the beginning, "Jon & Kate Plus 8" had a sweet charm. The little ones would scamper and shout toddler things, as their harried parents tried to keep order. This was Americana for the 21st century. Fertility treatments let Jon ... 08/20/2009 Democrats Must Fix Health Care Alone Early on as New York mayor, Ed Koch went to battle against entrenched interests that were bankrupting the city. The yelling and screaming was such that reporters asked him whether he was interested in having a second term. Koch responded that he didn'... 08/18/2009 Free-Market Death Panels "Death panels"? I'll tell you about death panels. My husband faced one some years ago, and it didn't involve any government bureaucrat. It was run by our private insurer, the sort of corporate entity that foes of health care reform say will ... 08/13/2009 Health Reformers Need Not Fear Mob Scenes Craig Anthony Miller earned brief fame by screaming something about the Constitution in the face of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter. A woman followed with the same scripted rant. The subject of the meeting in Lebanon, Pa., was to be health care, and ... 08/11/2009 Greedy Geezers Are Not Nice People Let's talk about greedy geezers. The term displeases me because I find the vast majority of older people to be wonderfully generous and concerned for others. But there's a noisy minority of elders who spend all day obsessing over what they're owed and ... 08/06/2009 No, Red States Are Not Better Than Blue States In an entertaining but silly political game, partisans score points by comparing statistics of so-called red states and blue states. Conservative Ross Douthat does that in a recent column, "Blue-State Blues." Aroused, liberals came back with ... 08/04/2009 Cash for Clunkers Means 'Ca-Ching' for Detroit This is what I told my friend Frank: Under the "cash for clunkers" program, you could get more money for your '93 Mercury Grand Marquis than it was worth — up to $4,500 if you used it to buy a new vehicle with much better gas mileage. 07/30/2009 Republicans Looking Crazy on Health Care Some attacks on health care reform are so ludicrous that you don't think they need answering. A recent example invokes an evil plot to save money by knocking off the elderly. Though nuts, the charges have gotten so much attention that someone has to ... 07/28/2009 Pot Could Be Gold for California The popular TV series "Weeds" is about a widowed suburban mother who deals pot to preserve her family's cushy California dream. Not a few Californians would like to see the theme writ large for their state. California has legalized medical ... 07/23/2009 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Health Reform It's high noon on health care reform. Time to identify the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Let's start with the Bad: Obama's passive leadership. The president didn't want to come down from the mount with stone tablets detailing what reform would ... 07/21/2009 The Logic of a Locavore "Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008," read the headline in Mother Jones magazine. You can imagine the snark that followed. It takes no special aim to make fun of culinary obsessions over artisan goat cheeses and organic baby ... 07/16/2009 Mature Women Want Their Stories on Screen Back when the boomers were babes, the girls would strut and preen around a stylish health food restaurant in Manhattan. No one took much note of a 70ish woman in comfy shoes who would sit quietly along the wall at lunch. She was Greta Garbo. ... 07/14/2009 Immigration Reform Is Quietly Here One of America's toughest problems is being solved right before our unseeing eyes. As Mark Sanford strayed, Michael Jackson departed and Sarah Palin quit, the Obama administration was quietly putting law, order and the national interest back into our ... 07/09/2009 Are Latinos Ethnics or a Racial Minority? Some years ago, I shared cocktails along San Antonio's River Walk with Richard Estrada, the legendary columnist for The Dallas Morning News. Estrada would trace the nuances of the Mexican-American experience while framing it in the long sweep of ... 07/07/2009 Cities Are Back -- but for How Long? Why are cities growing faster than the rest of the country? That's happening and reverses a decade-long trend, according to new U.S. Census figures. Gainers in 2008 included such diverse locations as Chicago, Los Angeles, Columbus, Ohio, and Lincoln, ... 07/02/2009 A Health-Care Greeting: Welcome to Wal-Mart Americans agree on health care. Ask them, "Who should pay for it," and they all answer, "Not me." But follow up with, "Who, then?" and you have a fight on your hands. Wal-Mart has greatly improved the quality of ... 06/30/2009 For Straying Pols, It's the Hurt That Matters An open-minded individual, I am willing to support an adulterer for elective office. But my ability to look past marital infidelity depends on how much humiliation was heaped on the wife. The details matter. And measuring their importance is ... 06/25/2009 Helping Borrowers Save Themselves An 11th Commandment could read: Thou shalt not cheat the meek. Morality is reason alone for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency to shield the little guys from the lending barracudas — as well as from their own bad decisions (some of them, ... 06/23/2009 Act Fast on Health Care, Obama President Obama has a green light and open eight-lane highway for health-care reform. But somehow the guy can't put his foot on the gas. He hedges in neutral while some fellow Democrats muck up policy and Republicans demagogue them into mush. A ... 06/18/2009 Timid Obama Succumbs to Old Politics This has been a tough week for the hopeful ones who believed President Obama's vow to break with the old politics. Every day, it seems, the president caved in to another Democratic interest group working against the public weal. Let's start ... 06/16/2009 Deficit Worry Is the Greenest Shoot Never mind firmer retail sales, rising stock prices and moderating job losses. The greenest shoot is Americans' changing economic fixation. There's less panic over collapsing banks, home foreclosures and the prospect of another Great Depression. ... 06/11/2009 Sotomayor, the New Yorker While walking recently on a crowded Manhattan sidewalk, I suddenly saw a wall of water crash down from somewhere over our heads. The source was a truck from which a fat hose was pouring water on the flower baskets hanging from posts. The baskets were ... 06/09/2009 A Texas-Size Medical Lesson McAllen, Texas, spends more per person on health care than any other metropolitan area in America, except for Miami. Why would this poor border town spend $15,000 a year per Medicare enrollee? Rochester, Minn., home to the famed Mayo Clinic, only ... 06/04/2009 Motown Wonders: Where Did Our Love Go? The alternative to a government rescue of General Motors is the collapse of the industrial Midwest. Nonetheless, there's been a surprisingly large amount of dumping on the Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan. The government-sponsored deal seems to have stirred ... 06/02/2009 Toad Hall Madness Fades, but Sadness Lingers 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 ... 05/28/2009 Sotomayor and Condescending Identity Politics 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 ... 05/26/2009 Obama's Halfway Change on Stem Cell Research 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. On economics, Obama speaks of the false choice between &... 05/21/2009 Cars: What We Need vs. What We Want The new fuel-efficiency and emission standards may lead to smaller cars with lighter engines. This is not what consumers prefer, auto analysts tell us. They may be right that Americans want big, cheap cars. They also want free gasoline, clean ... 05/19/2009 New Standards for Credit-Card Decency By the time you read this, the Senate may have passed a bill to put a leash on the nastiest credit-card company tactics. Lenders warn that changing the rules would make it harder for people to get credit. And a good thing that would be. Rest ... 05/14/2009 Illegal Immigration in Tough Times While the recession has rattled every rung of economic ladder, it has ravaged the bottom bars. Unemployment stands at just over 4 percent for college graduates but at nearly 15 percent for those lacking high-school diplomas. In poor black ... 05/12/2009 Oversharing, Exhibitionism, Loneliness It pains me to take Elizabeth Edwards to task for anything. She is suffering from terminal cancer and from assertions that her cheating husband fathered a child with a party girl. So my first instinct is to totally lay off. The only rap against her, ... 05/07/2009 Health Care: Will Democrats Ride Camel or Horse? A camel, the old saying goes, is a horse made by committee. We don't want camel health reform. We don't want Washington lawmakers debating whether it should have one hump or two. We want a horse — a sleek machine that performs with efficiency. 05/05/2009 Better Service in Bad Times? As tornadoes, thunder and lightning rampaged across the Heartland last week, the crowds piled up at Chicago's O'Hare Airport. Every bar stool had someone on it, and restaurant lines stretched down the corridors. This was a bizarro world, where ... 04/30/2009 Man and His Self-Interest In a Q&A last year with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, former Pennsylvania Rep. Pat Toomey was asked what book he wanted Barack Obama to read. The Republican quickly recommended the work of Adam Smith, the 18th century economist and philosopher ... 04/28/2009 Throwing Out Utah Stereotypes SALT LAKE CITY — American flags and lush spring grass lined the long drive of a Mormon meetinghouse here in the desert capital of Utah. Television trucks parking outside. Utahans were gathering last week for the funeral of Bill Orton, a Democrat ... 04/23/2009 Hounded and Stressed, but Not by Technology Consider Cary Grant in "North by Northwest." Sinister forces may be chasing him for reasons he can't comprehend, but this is 1959, and neither the BlackBerry nor the Global Positioning System chip that goes inside it has been invented. And ... 04/21/2009 Bottom Line for the Already Insured The hardest group to sell on national health reform is those who don't desperately need it. That would include Americans who already have coverage through a workplace, about 160 million in all, and are reasonably happy with their deal. The ... 04/16/2009 A State-ly March Toward Gay Marriage This has been a month of forward leaps in the campaign for gay-marriage — or so it is said. The Iowa Supreme Court struck down a ban on same-sex marriage, providing a toehold in the heartland. And the Vermont Legislature legalized gay marriage, ... 04/14/2009 Economic Anxiety: Like Rats in a Cage One day last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shot up 246 points. On CNBC, Jim Cramer punched the Sousa March button. NPR's "Marketplace" boomed, "We're in the Money." Yeah! Happy days are here again. Right? And just ... 04/09/2009 Let's End Energy Policy Whipsaw Seems a lifetime ago that the price of crude approached $150 a barrel, but it was only last summer. Remember how people went nuts? Santa Barbara County voted for oil drilling off California's spectacular coast. Santa Barbara of all places, epicenter ... 04/07/2009 A Nation of Unwed Drudgery A neighbor in her 30s, a very fine woman, recently had a child with her boyfriend. They live together. The boyfriend's mother and father enjoy being grandparents. The boyfriend gets to have a son, as well as live-in female companionship. How ... 04/02/2009 Centrist Dems: Dogged If They Do, Dogged If They Don't There's trouble around the Democratic campfire. The party has the White House and solid congressional majorities. But what it doesn't have is everyone on the same page, strumming the same chords, singing the same tune. Liberals who kept the ... 03/31/2009 Socialism for Any Occasion 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 ... 03/26/2009 Springtime for New England Republicans? 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 ... 03/24/2009 Economy and Health Care Are Married The Duke basketball coach and most other Americans believe that President Obama is unwisely diverting his attention from the sick economy. In the case of Coach Mike Krzyzewski, the unhappiness is part personal. Obama recently took time out of ... 03/19/2009 'Then It's Securities Fraud' 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 ... 03/17/2009 GOP's Sliding Scale for Self-Discipline In his essay "Why the GOP Can't Win With Minorities," conservative scholar Shelby Steele almost nails the half-question in the title. An African-American, Steele contrasts the "moral activism" of liberals with conservative calls ... 03/12/2009 Obama Takes a Dive on Earmarks President Obama has vowed to curb the number of earmarks, also known as pork, in future spending bills. A commendable promise, had his number been zero. Unfortunately, the president wants to deal with an unsavory dish by cutting the portion size. <... 03/10/2009 Don't Surrender to Recession Stress Do recessions make people sicker? Some studies say yes, some say no. The better question might be, "How is this recession affecting health?" Not in a good way, comes the answer. This recession — depression? — seems ... 03/05/2009 Rich Shouldn't Get Overwrought Amid pleas to spare the rich, the right is accusing the Obama administration of waging vile class warfare. They envision wooden carts carrying the wealthiest 2 percent to the guillotine. Are the critics right? Only in the tumbrels of their mind. <... 03/03/2009 Canada Profits From Bizarre U.S. Bans When a pizzeria closes, the pizzeria down the block usually sees a surge in business. That principle applies to commerce in the larger North American neighborhood. Whenever the United States locks the gate on a plausible economic activity, Canadians ... 02/26/2009 GOP Keeps Avoiding Its Fiscal 'Principles' How big should government be? The answer is: As big as it has to be — and for small-government types, no bigger than it has to be. The whole debate about the proper size of government is a blind alley leading into a dead end. Government ... 02/24/2009 Let Bankruptcy Courts Change Mortgages Let bankruptcy courts modify the terms of home mortgages, says President Obama and legislation now before Congress. Banks don't like the idea, but it's a good one, possibly even for them. We are talking about Chapter 13 bankruptcies, in which ... 02/19/2009 Latino-American Dream on Hold Open most any urban newspaper to the foreclosure notices, and you'll find the list heavy with Hispanic names. Times are tough for Americans of every demographic, but for Latinos they are grimmer still. Is this the end of the Latino-American ... 02/17/2009 Will Obama Cross the 'Reefer Rubicon'? The War on Drugs is ridiculous, behold the storm over Michael Phelps' partaking of marijuana, an illegal substance that at least two presidents have used. It is tragic, witness the raging gang violence along the Mexican border. Whether the Obama ... 02/12/2009 The Old Folks Are Doing OK "Round up everybody that can ride a horse or pull a trigger," John Wayne says in "Chisum." "Let's break out some Winchesters." That's how I feel every time someone calls for "saving" Social Security. ... 02/10/2009 GOP on Stimulus: First, Do Harm Barack Obama never guaranteed he would end partisan rancor in Washington. He said he'd try. The assumption was that Republicans might want to work with Democrats to reach shared goals. Passing a stimulus plan to stop the economic freefall would ... 02/05/2009 Raining Scams in the Sunbelt PALM BEACH, Fla. — Oh, it's another sun-blessed, balmy day in Palm Beach County. Were it not for the foreclosures, collapse in tourism and Madoff scandal, all would seem perfect. Did I mention retailing? Dior on Worth Avenue vanished the day ... 02/03/2009 Daschle Is Too Compromised for the Job Where did Tom Daschle get the idea that he didn't have to pay his taxes? The question sets off wild mood swings about the man President Obama has picked to remake the American health-care system — his apology notwithstanding. On one hand, ... 02/03/2009 Daschle Was Too Compromised for the Job Tom Daschle's withdrawal from consideration as future secretary of Health and Human Services had to happen. So seemingly strong on health-care policy but weak on ethics, the man President Obama had picked to remake the American health-care system had ... 01/29/2009 Sports Man Therapy for Tough Times I envy Sports Man. He can rise above his own problems by focusing on the triumphs or setbacks of The Team. Last October, the stock market was tanking and so was Sports Man's beloved Red Sox. Did Sports Man worry that his dreams of easy living ... 01/27/2009 Getting Off the Dog Track I know a lot of greyhounds. A greyhound track operates near my house, and many of its retirees end up in the neighborhood. Something you notice about these dogs: Greyhounds are built for speed, but once they move into a comfy home, they're in no hurry ... 01/22/2009 Gilded Age for Institutions Also Over Mark Twain was thinking big in 1874 when he moved into his new 19-room mansion in Hartford, Conn. The Missouri-born writer was not one to economize. Following the success of "Tom Sawyer" in 1881, he hired none other than Louis Comfort ... 01/20/2009 Why Health Reform May Happen Let the name-calling begin. A national health plan is again proposed, and its foes are trying to deal it death by unflattering labels. The old favorites include "socialized medicine" and "government takeover of health care." ... 01/15/2009 In Speech, Obama Won't Do an FDR Even in this awful economy, the voters seem content to toggle between the two main political parties. If Republicans aren't doing the job, then let Democrats try. Barack Obama? He seems competent. There's little agitation for a radical third-party ... 01/13/2009 Taxes Will Have to Be Raised, Eventually During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama portrayed his tax plan as a way to help "spread the wealth around." That was an unfortunate choice of words, though not as silly as the "conservative" formulation that raising taxes &... 01/08/2009 Onus Now on Dems for Ethical Government There are those who regard politics as sport and those who see it as an adjunct to government. They frame things very differently. When New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson exited as commerce secretary nominee, the sports fans saw a dropped ball by ... 01/06/2009 The Mortgage Thieves Return First come the shady operators, then comes the collapse, then comes the bailout, then come the shady operators. That, too often, is the sad history of financial meltdowns and their cleanups. The closing days of the Bush administration offer the ... 01/01/2009 Offshoring Is One Sure Thing Barack Obama's pick for commerce secretary, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, vows to create millions of technology jobs that can't be outsourced. Sounds good, particularly in this melting economy. On the other hand, Richardson supports ... 12/30/2008 What Israel Still Must Do Everyone knows what must be done if there is to be a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel's forceful response to rocket attacks from Gaza does not change that. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently spelled out what his ... 12/25/2008 Bubble Bourgeoisie Learns to 'Do-It-Yourself' "Doing it yourself these days?" asks the Depression-era ad for bleach. It shows pampered hands wading in a tub full of laundry. There's more doing-it-yourself in this Great Recession, as well. The economic downturn has stripped the ... 12/23/2008 Welcome to 'Nepotism Nation' Suppose in 2002 the Kennedys (or another "political dynasty") had a son or daughter or cousin they wanted to slip into Illinois' contested U.S. Senate seat. You know the arguments: powerful family, name recognition, can raise bags of money. ... 12/18/2008 No Con Hurts Like an Affinity Con Losing money doesn't feel very good. Losing it as victim of a con feels even worse. And being conned by a trusted friend multiplies the hurt. But there's a special department of psychic pain for having experienced all of the above while ... 12/16/2008 America Must Take the Cure Al goes to the doctor. Al: "I'm still short of breath. I know you told me to quit smoking, and honestly, I've tried. But kicking the habit is really stressful. Doc, can you help me?" Doctor: "I understand. Let me find a ... 12/11/2008 A Senate Seat Is Not a Kennedy Heirloom Have New York Democrats lost all self-respect? Their excited talk of whether Caroline Kennedy is "interested" in Hillary Clinton's Senate seat makes you wonder. The late John F. Kennedy's daughter has made at least one feeler phone call to ... 12/09/2008 Democrats Must Break With Rangel Company gives $100,000 to congressman's pet cause. Congressman protects company tax loophole worth tens of millions. Bam! Company gives pet cause another $100,000 check. Sounds like old times in the Republican Congress of former House Majority ... 12/04/2008 Booze or Drugs, Prohibition Makes No Sense WASHINGTON, D.C. — 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 ... 12/02/2008 Big Three Auto Firms Will Need Music, Too 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, ... 11/27/2008 Health Care Reform Must Start Now This would seem a heckuva time to unfurl a national health plan. Washington has big fires to put out in the financial markets. Taxpayers, meanwhile, face a zillion-dollar bill for economic stabilization on top of already soaring deficits. Can we ... 11/25/2008 Giving Thanks for the Leftovers 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. And you marvel ... 11/20/2008 Keeping Cool Over Joe Lieberman You don't have to venture too far left in the Democratic Party to find people who dislike Joe Lieberman. But wander yonder into the liberal blogosphere, and the feeling more approximates detestation. The left wanted the Connecticut senator's scalp &... 11/18/2008 Palin's Next Career Move Sarah Palin should have run up the white flag of surrender and kept the clothes. They were gorgeous, and there really was no reason to give up the $150,000 wardrobe unless she planned to run again under the Wal-Mart Mom persona. Surely she knows that'... 11/13/2008 America Doesn't Need 'Rebranding' I'm delighted that Barack Obama has been elected president and that foreigners are delighted, too. But I never viewed eliciting delight from non-Americans a reason for choosing a president, including one of color. No other people so fervently ... 11/11/2008 Unions' Creepy Push Against Secret Ballot The first campaign promise Barack Obama should break is to push through the Employee Free Choice Act. That harmless sounding piece of legislation would let union organizers do an end run around secret-ballot elections: Companies would have to ... 11/06/2008 The Landslide That Doesn't Feel All Liberal The young and minority voters who swept Democrats to triumph call this the start of a new day. The many not-young whites who also backed Barack Obama might frame it a bit differently. To them, it's a hopeful return to an older day. Do not dismiss ... 11/04/2008 Helping the Right 'Homeowners' The Treasury Department is working on a $40 billion, $50 billion — who's counting anymore? — plan to guarantee perhaps 3 million "at-risk" mortgages. Now that the Wall Street players have been taken care of, the time has ... 10/30/2008 Newspaper Endorsements Still Count Do newspaper endorsements influence voters? I refer to the candidate picks printed on the biodegradable news products that digital and cable commentators dismiss as "old media" but talk about nothing but. They do, according to Brown ... 10/28/2008 Greenspan Should Have Stuck With the Clarinet The 1949 movie of Ayn Rand's novel "The Fountainhead" ends with Patricia Neal elevating to the top of a new skyscraper to greet its godlike architect, Gary Cooper. He is the archetypal Rand hero, an individualist who triumphs over the ... 10/23/2008 Palin Drove Stake Into Centrist Hearts John McCain's top adviser complains that the media apply a double standard when they cover his candidate. "They think they're on the level with McCain, that he's not the old McCain," Mark Salter tells The Atlantic, "but he is the old ... 10/21/2008 This Year's Hanging Chad Once again in Ohio, the presidential polls are tied and its 20 electoral votes up for grabs. Such scenarios generally don't lend themselves to gentle politics. Ohio Republicans have been raging at what they claim is a raft of phony voter ... 10/16/2008 Katrina for the Rest of Us For a while, I had expected to emerge mostly unscathed from the eight years of George W. Bush. I managed not to be in New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina awaiting rescue by a blundering federal agency. I had held on to my medical coverage ... 10/14/2008 The Price of Extinction What price would you place on the beautiful, musical and probably extinct ivory-billed woodpecker? Of course, all the world's gold couldn't bring the bird back. But suppose you could time travel back 60 years to the shrinking Southern swamps, where ... 10/09/2008 McCain Economics Still Bush League Take a great nation with a fabulous work ethic and inventive people. Turn its $236 billion budget surplus into an estimated $482 billion deficit, and nearly double the national debt to $10 trillion. In the meantime, fuel economic growth with a ... 10/07/2008 Why Independents Care So Much About Health Care Political independents now rank health care second among the issues they most want the presidential candidates to discuss, according to a Kaiser Health Tracking Poll for September. The No. 1 issue for independents, as well as for Democrats and ... 10/02/2008 Law for Poor Didn't Cause Meltdown Accomplished Googlers can probably find the original talking points off which dozens of conservatives made essentially the same case: The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 caused the financial crisis. For example, a Wall Street Journal editorial ... 09/30/2008 Newman Embraced Ordinariness WESTPORT, Conn. — With his global fame, devastating blue eyes and career of playing lovable anti-heroes, Paul Newman could have gotten away with anything. He could have been a jerk. But he wasn't. That may sound like a backhanded ... 09/25/2008 Louisiana Politics: Undone by the Wind BATON ROUGE, La. — I assume that someone has removed the crushed blue Hyundai from the parking lot of Jimmy Swaggart Ministries. Two days after Hurricane Ike, the car was there with a tree trunk still embedded in its roof. And Ike was a pussycat ... 09/23/2008 Wall Street Did What Came Naturally Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the Wall Street executives you see hanging their heads have been called many things, chief among them "greedy." But in deciding their guilt, you must consider mitigating circumstances. Compare these two sets ... 09/18/2008 McCain and the Meltdown "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," John McCain said as Wall Street went into white-knuckle panic over diving investor confidence. Does he believe that? It doesn't really matter, because the Republican has outsourced his economic ... 09/16/2008 Golfing Gets Stuck in the Sand Golf is a contemplative game. It is a sail through a quiet afternoon — mild exercise in the fresh air. The National Golf Foundation reports that 17 million fewer rounds were played in 2006 than in 2000. The big reasons: Golf costs too much money ... 09/11/2008 GOP Back On The Polarization Trail "We grow good people all across America, with honesty, sincerity and dignity." No, Sarah Palin didn't say that. She said, "We grow good people in our small towns" and listed the above virtues. Her speechwriter's strategy is ... 09/09/2008 Immigrants and the Safety Net The conservative economist Milton Friedman famously said, "You can't have free immigration and a welfare state." He was right. You can't flood our labor markets with illegal workers paying little in taxes — and provide good government ... 09/04/2008 Don't They Have Birth Control up in Alaska? I had dinner last night with a Republican-leaning independent who was despondent over John McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. She had been looking forward to supporting McCain as a fiscal conservative with a deep ... 09/02/2008 Blue Dogs Have Their Day Hmmm, suppose there were a liberal Democrat as president but a more conservative Democratic majority in Congress. That could happen. As Democrats scoop up seats in traditionally Republican districts, they add members quite unlike their old-time ... 08/28/2008 Hillary Can't Fix What Her Party Broke DENVER — Hillary Clinton just gave the last major speech of her 2008 campaign. Or perhaps was it the first of her 2012 campaign. She said vote-for-Barack enough times and at enough volume to protect her from accusations of trying to sabotage ... 08/26/2008 Parties Afraid to Face Population Explosion DENVER — There's a burning concern in the American West — almost an obsession — that Democrats will not touch in their convention here. Nor will Republicans in St. Paul. It is the U.S. population explosion. The West is feeling the ... 08/21/2008 Even Health Care Can Be Outsourced Is "medical tourism" — Americans' going abroad for cheaper treatments — good or bad? The answer is "yes." It's both. But one thing is for sure: Medical tourism is here to stay. A new study by the Deloitte consulting ... 08/19/2008 It's No Longer Just About Hillary After hearing her name placed in nomination at the Democrats' convention next week, Hillary Clinton will no doubt urge her followers to support Barack Obama. What good that gesture will do for the Obama candidacy remains to be seen. Clinton has ... 08/14/2008 Dry Eyes Follow Edwards' Downfall It's hard to recall a political burial as fast and cold as that of John Edwards. After all, the former North Carolina senator had been a serious contender for president until a few months ago and possibly for VP until last week. Had his cheesy affair ... 08/12/2008 Sex, etc. and the City I'm not a big fan of the nanny society's limits on freedom, except when I am. That's the dilemma for me, and for everyone. Reason magazine recently ranked "the worst nanny cities in America" by assessing their laws regulating sex, tobacco, ... 08/07/2008 A Nation of Whiners? Perhaps You won't hear me straining to defend Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican whose penchant for grating commentary sunk his 1996 bid for the presidency before the New Hampshire primary. It was really just a matter of time before the former senator, serving ... 08/05/2008 Offshore Drilling: Candidates Concur on Bad Idea In a rare burst of bipartisan consensus, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama have agreed on a dreadful proposal: Open more of America's fragile coastlines to offshore oil drilling. How is it awful? Let me count the ways. 1. It will do ... 07/31/2008 Could a VP Romney Be Health-Care Tsar? We who obsess over universal health coverage may soon confront a startling development: The only candidate on a major-party presidential ticket to have proposed and implemented a universal plan could well be a Republican. I speak of former ... 07/29/2008 Live Man Dying Fascination with Heath Ledger no doubt swells the mobs going to see "The Dark Knight," the new Batman movie. Ledger's brilliance as the psycho Joker has spawned speculation that the actor's own descent in drug madness had fueled his demonic ... 07/24/2008 Memories of the McCain That Was Too bad there's no time-traveling on Election Day. The more moderate John McCain of eight years ago would make a very attractive candidate, and Barack Obama eight years from now could offer an impressive track record. Of course, we can time-... 07/22/2008 Tomatoes and Their Bad Rap "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?" former Labor Secretary Ray Donovan famously asked after being indicted for mob-related larceny and fraud, and then acquitted of the charges. Vegetables can have the same problem &... 07/17/2008 The High Cost of Healthy People 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 ... 07/15/2008 Mortgage Scandal a Bipartisan Affair 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. Since Ronald ... 07/10/2008 Obama's Liberal Shiver 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." Theater critic Addison DeWitt takes great offense when a manipulative ... 07/08/2008 What Americans Want in Immigration 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. But the failure to control the process has created a tiger that ... 07/03/2008 The Politics of Foreclosure 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 ... 07/01/2008 Dominators Decline With Dollar Paris was hardly empty of U.S. visitors last week. But there were far fewer American voices than in past years, and the ones you heard were saying things like, "It's so ex-PEN-sive!" The U.S. dollar — which once carried the ... 06/26/2008 Who Is Cutting Women's Lives Short? 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 ... 06/24/2008 The Real Beef in Korean Trade Talks The high-class explanation for the South Korean riots against U.S. beef is protectionism. The low-class explanation is anti-Americanism. But a third view — that South Koreans are justified in slamming the safety of American beef — ... 06/19/2008 McCain Has Given Enough "Dear Greg, I've been dating a guy since I was 23. I'm 28 now. We started talking about marriage two years ago, and he said he wasn't 'ready.' So we moved in together to help him get 'ready.' ... Does he need more time, or is he just not that ... 06/17/2008 Vacation Shortage in Land of Plenty As we watch the economy slip into second-rateness, another depressing thought rises. All the toil and stress we've put into making America great never translated into the Dolce Vita (sweet life) for ordinary folks. This may be the land of ... 06/12/2008 On Issues, Obama Poetry Won't Rhyme Barack Obama is such a stand-up guy that he'll stand up twice — once for each side of an issue. The poetry reading on change and hope is over. Now that he has to talk about real policy, there's little rhyme in the rhythm. Take James ... 06/10/2008 Pro-Choice Democrats and John McCain Hillary Clinton's blessing notwithstanding, many of the New York senator's supporters will resist the handover to Barack Obama. The sexism that permeated the recent campaign still rankles, and John McCain is far from the standard-issue Republican they ... 06/05/2008 Health Care: the Democrats' Lost Opportunity A remarkable thing just happened in the people's party. Democrats have chosen a candidate, in the year 2008, who does not have a plan for universal health coverage. Barack Obama caresses the words "universal coverage" almost hourly, but his ... 06/03/2008 White Women Take the Gloves Off The woman who shouted "McCain in '08" at the Democratic rules committee was speaking for a multitude. After mounting for months, female anger over the choreographed dumping on Hillary Clinton and her supporters has exploded — and party ... 05/29/2008 Teens Belong in Summer Jobs Put disadvantaged teens into summer jobs. Hook them into the world of work. They'll come home with new skills, discipline, contacts and, yes, money. Seems pretty obvious — but apparently not in Washington, which in 2000 gutted the Summer ... 05/27/2008 Bad News for GOP Can Be Good News for McCain The recent loss of formerly deep-red congressional districts to Democrats is supposed to be awful news for John McCain. Actually, the opposite could be true. We keep hearing that if Republicans can't hold onto voters in northeastern Mississippi ... 05/22/2008 Democrats Should Be More Democratic There was unfortunate symbolism in Barack Obama's choice of Des Moines as the place to celebrate his delegate milestone on the day of the Kentucky and Oregon primaries. The Iowa caucuses were the first contest of the nominating process, and Obama's ... 05/20/2008 The Marriage Debate We Ought to Have The new California court decision advancing gay marriage will reignite "the debate," the headlines read. What impact will the issue have on the presidential campaigns? My guess is very little. The more time passes since Massachusetts ... 05/15/2008 In Rehab: Sweet Things About Slowdown The morning after overdoing it, some of us take pleasure in the cleansing process. The carrot juice goes down smoothly, and a simple walk feels virtuous. One vows to exert more self-control and give yoga another try. The current economic ... 05/13/2008 Obamicans Pile on Clinton at Own Peril Many in the Obama camp, having outfoxed the apparently not-so-formidable Clinton machine, can't seem to get the hang of winning gracefully. They feel a need to drive a stake in Hillary Clinton's reputation, then dance. If they were smart, they'd heap ... 05/13/2008 Obamites Pile on Clinton at Own Peril Many in the Obama camp, having outfoxed the apparently not-so-formidable Clinton machine, can't seem to get the hang of winning gracefully. They feel a need to drive a stake in Hillary Clinton's reputation, then dance. If they were smart, they'd heap ... 05/08/2008 A Perfect Calm for John McCain John McCain has used these weeks of Republican calm to dive into the Democratic lunch pail. This strategy clearly assumes a Barack Obama candidacy. If demographics are destiny — as the political sages keep telling us — Democratic ... 05/06/2008 Cosby Is the Real Prophet, Not Wright Jeremiah, you're no Jeremiah. Although Barack Obama's controversial former pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright puts himself at the center of a prophetic tradition of the Afro-American church, he's not much of a prophet. The prophet in the Biblical mode ... 05/01/2008 The Change That Can't Be Changed The Serenity Prayer, written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, hangs on countless American walls. I grew up with it. Whatever the reader's religious belief, or lack thereof, the prayer packs a world of comfort in a few simple lines. The most popular ... 04/29/2008 Codependent Addicts: States and Casinos Loath to tax the citizenry based on income, many states have increasingly turned to cigarette smokers and gamblers for revenues. Gamblers are often smokers, and both groups tend to be of modest or low income. So after taxing the daylights out ... 04/24/2008 Osama Crashes the Democratic Party What was so shocking, terrible and unfair about flashing Osama bin Laden's ugly mug on a political advertisement? Hillary Clinton's TV spot was the first Democratic ad to make pictorial reference to the al-Qaida terrorist. It was about time. ... 04/22/2008 Long Hot Summer in Minnesota ST. PAUL, Minn. — This city will be hosting the Republican National Convention starting Labor Day. In the interests of showing Republicans a good time, the Minnesota state legislature voted to let bars here and in Minneapolis stay open until 4 a.... 04/17/2008 McCain's Economics: Pass the Dramamine John McCain admits that economics are not his passion, and that's fine. His past instincts were mostly good. He voted against tax cuts not paid for by savings elsewhere. He fought earmarks, earning the wrath of big-spenders in his own Republican Party.... 04/15/2008 The Young and the Departed In South Korea, companies sell mock funerals for college students. The young people write their wills, put on the traditional Korean burial clothes and have themselves nailed into a coffin — temporarily, of course. The point is to have them ... 04/10/2008 Score One for Consumers To anyone who has felt trapped in a circle of bad service: If you haven't heard the story of Mona Shaw, pull up a chair. The 75-year-old Virginian had ordered a much-advertised package of services from Comcast, her cable company. The installers ... 04/08/2008 How Green Was NAFTA? About 17 years ago, a New England business reporter answered the phone and found a friendly Texan on the other end. She had recently written about how local manufacturers were coping with Environmental Protection Agency rules that sharply curbed what ... 04/03/2008 Obama and the Skeptic-Free Campaign Big-time political writers are busy people. With all the blogging, the parties and appearances on TV, skeptical examination of widely accepted beliefs seems a waste of time. The Obama campaign has done many a time-starved commentator a great service. ... 04/01/2008 Dems Can Go the Nine Innings If the Democratic contest lasts until the convention in late August, so what? That leaves two months for Democrats to "coalesce" around their candidate and fight the Republican. And even that shorter time frame will seem a month too long for ... 03/27/2008 Social Security Remains Star in the Gloom The stock market hasn't been this nasty since the 1970s. House prices continue their dive, and consumer confidence has gone splat. The rocketing federal budget deficit will probably orbit Mars by the time the government finishes cleaning up the mess ... 03/25/2008 Bailouts -- Be Very Particular If we're going to bail out Wall Street, shouldn't we also rescue homeowners? "Yes!" the Democrats answer. And faster than Roger Federer returns a tennis ball, conservative voices hit back with reasons — some rather odd — for ... 03/20/2008 Divides Obama Doesn't Bridge In distancing himself from the heated remarks of his pastor, Barack Obama did as well as anyone could do in his position. The problem is his position, which is having sat in the reverend's pews for 20 years without thinking to pick up and leave. <... 03/18/2008 The Hooker Next Door The tale of the 22-year-old prostitute frequented by former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer dredges up an awkward memory. I once shared an apartment — it now amazes me to say — with a call girl who brought her johns home. Let me explain.... 03/13/2008 At Least Admire Spitzer for His Foes A few good words for Eliot Spitzer. The resigned New York governor could be brutish, vindictive and, when it comes to sexual rectitude, a grand hypocrite. But in going after the depredations of Wall Street, subprime lenders and corporate looters, he ... 03/11/2008 The Specter of McCain Democrats A significant slice of Hillary Clinton's supporters — that is, moderate Democrats — might prefer McCain over Obama, or so I speculated a few weeks back. It was a hunch based on conversations and some suggestive but hardly definitive poll ... 03/06/2008 Close Down the Caucuses One can assume that the people brawling into the late hours of a weekday night are not representative of your broad electorate, even in Texas. Compare the orderly primary vote in Ohio — where the results were known by bedtime — to the ... 03/04/2008 Few Cheers for Mortgage Bailout The woman choking up on "Lou Dobbs Tonight" is about to lose her home. Heather DiStefano said that she and her husband can't hack monthly mortgage payments that have nearly tripled in three years to $3,100 from $1,300. And with falling house ... 02/28/2008 The Mandates Are the Message The Cleveland debate ends, and presto, the MSNBC boys pop up to discuss "who won." Chris Matthews complains of "a lot of back and forth about health care, which I find almost absurd given the fact that we don't have a national health ... 02/26/2008 What About the Woman Lobbyist? Both John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman denied any romantic involvement. Mrs. McCain said she trusts her husband. And the two former McCain associates who allegedly told The New York Times that they suspected an improper relationship between the ... 02/21/2008 NAFTA Gets a Bum Rap "NAFTA bad" has become Democratic shorthand to explain the misery spreading through America's industrial heartland. Barack Obama threw this punch at Hillary Clinton: "She says, well, speeches don't put food on the table. Well, ... 02/19/2008 Vaporous Obama Turns Off Many Centrists Despite the hard contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, party leaders keep telling Democratic-leaning voters that they have two good candidates. They are right, but one of them may well be a Republican. Far from the pumped-up Obama ... 02/14/2008 Schemes We Have Seen During the push to privatize Social Security, the idea's foes were accused of not trusting the American people to manage their own money. The naysayers prevailed, and aren't we glad. How interesting that the buildup to the mortgage meltdown ... 02/12/2008 Treating Nature-Deficit Disorder Attendance has been falling at America's National Parks since 1987. Blame videophilia, says a Nature Conservancy report. Videophilia is the love of electronic media. Those screens may be showing Internet, video games, movies or just plain TV. ... 02/07/2008 Between 'Inspiration' and Health Care Why so many Americans want their president to be a personal motivator and religious guide vexes me. You do want a leader with dignity and self-control, but attending to the economy, national defense, foreign affairs, the environment and other aspects ... 02/05/2008 "I Call You My Base" President Bush's new budget will top $3 trillion. It envisions massive deficits for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 — nearly matching the record in 2004, when the federal budget went $412 billion into the hole. The average American might ... 01/31/2008 Media Swallow Kennedys' Arrogant Presumption Are we done worshipping the Kennedys yet? And what do you mean by "we"? That was quite a spectacle — the commentariat gushing superlatives over the alleged power of Ted and Caroline to deliver liberals to Barack Obama. Half the ... 01/29/2008 Single Women Vote Early: Will They Vote Often? Single women were supposed to be the Democrats' guest of honor on Election Day. Excuse me, unmarried women. The party has studied unmarried women so much it knows they don't like to be called single women. But something wild is ... 01/24/2008 The Mortgage Mogul and His Victims As banks, money markets and stock exchanges convulse over a sinking American economy, we see the folks sprawled at the bottom of the smoking rubble — debt-crushed American consumers. It is they whose reckless or trusting natures enriched so many,... 01/22/2008 Blue Dogs Sniff at Fiscal Stimulus WASHINGTON, D.C. — You've seen the hound who sits out front and emits a low growl when people walk by. He's saying, "You can pass, but don't try any funny stuff." The Blue Dog Democrats are making similar noises toward proposals ... 01/17/2008 Sarkozy the Mad Modelizer The French have long tolerated adulterers, liars and hypocrites in their politics. A simpleton is another matter, and President Nicolas Sarkozy's public frolic with a former model and singer of heavy-breathing songs does not speak of emotional ... 01/15/2008 Resort at the Top of the World There was another Hillary in the news last week. It was Edmund Hillary, the mountaineer who in 1953 became the first human to reach the top of Mount Everest — alongside his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay. The New Zealander had died at 88. A ... 01/10/2008 N.H. Women Had Enough Insults You could feel the swell of female angst. It wasn't even about Hillary Clinton. It was about what she was put through. It was about running while female. The Democratic race for president was supposed to herald a new era for blacks and women in ... 01/08/2008 The Wisdom of Crowds "Crowding out" sounds like a bad thing. The Bush administration uses that fearsome term in denying recent requests by Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma and no doubt other states to expand Medicaid to families not considered poor. Bush argues that ... 01/03/2008 The Jamie Lynn Business Model The world knows that Jamie Lynn Spears has turned up 16 and pregnant. What makes this newsworthy is that she starred as the nice girl on "Zoey 101," a Nickelodeon show aimed at "tweens" ages 9 to 14. Jamie Lynn was supposed to be ... 01/01/2008 Huckabee's Perilous Perception Of Souls In 1996, then-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee reportedly pressured a parole board to release a sexual predator from jail. Wayne DuMond had 25 years left on his long sentence for the 1984 rape of a teenager. His claim to have found God apparently helped ... 12/27/2007 Will Arizona's Immigration Law Work? What would happen if the United States seriously enforced the ban on hiring undocumented workers? We may find out starting Jan. 1, when Arizona promises to do it locally. The Arizona law is tough. Companies that knowingly employ illegal workers ... 12/25/2007 Only Suckers Pay Bills Wouldn't it be fun to do a money-dance around town, throwing borrowed hundred dollar bills to passersby, while arranging to have others pay for the adventure? That in essence has been the Republicans' two-step: Spend money you don't have, and ... 12/20/2007 The Wizardry of Department Store Windows A minor mystery of American culture has been the public's enduring fascination with department store windows, especially at holiday time. Though computer-generated images can whoosh us to exotic vistas from the comfort of our laptops, we still line up ... 12/18/2007 Henry Potter or Alan Greenspan? Nowadays, it's impossible to watch the 1946 holiday movie "It's a Wonderful Life" and not feel a twinge of respect for Henry F. Potter, the villainous banker played by Lionel Barrymore. Potter was not above drawing the last drop of blood, ... 12/13/2007 Obama: The Audacity of Hype Barack Obama stands on stage with Oprah Winfrey and says he's in the race because of what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the fierce urgency of now." Does the Illinois senator's candidacy really mark a major advance for civil rights? ... 12/11/2007 New Media, Old-Fashioned Greed Paying bloggers is "not our financial model," The Huffington Post's co-founder Ken Lerer told USA Today. What a profitable business that must be. The Huffington Post is a popular liberal blog site named for Arianna Huffington, a ... 12/06/2007 Be Leery of Mortgage-Meltdown Fixes There will be few winners in the mortgage meltdown. Democrats may be an exception, but they can blow it by trying too hard to fix what pains so many homeowners facing foreclosure. On the campaign trail, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton calls for a ... 12/04/2007 Lazy Big Media Misses Edwards What about John Edwards? The big-media portrays the Democratic race as a death-match between the Clinton machine and the Obama phenom. Edwards comes off as a plodder in the shadow of two glamour pusses. Back in the world of plain people, the ... 11/29/2007 Once Granite New Hampshire GOP Crumbles Laconia, N.H. — During the French Revolution, angry mobs were not content to just chop off a monarch's head. They attacked the royal tombs and buried the remains of long-gone kings in quicklime, lest any earthly bits of the old rulers survive. 11/27/2007 Where 'Personal Virtue,' Market Meet In June 2000, newspapers ominously noted that oil had "surged" to more than $31 a barrel and that, come summer, gas might average a lofty $1.50 a gallon. Nonetheless, the gas-guzzlers were flying off the lots. A year later, gas topped ... 11/22/2007 Obama, Drugs and Everyone Else And so Barack Obama tells high school kids in New Hampshire that he "made some bad decisions" at their age. He "experimented" with pot and cocaine. This is old news — but even if it were new news, it would be ho-hum in today'... 11/20/2007 Froma Harrop, November 20 Note to readers: FROMA HARROP IS ON VACATION. THE FOLLOWING THANKSGIVING COLUMN WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN NOVEMBER 2002. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION. -- CREATORS SYNDICATE Thanksgiving is the most American of holidays. But there is something ... 11/15/2007 Americans' Anxious Love of Flattery Not many Americans follow women's bridge — or that used to be the case. A spotlight of anger has fallen on the U.S. winners of a recent bridge tournament in Shanghai, China. Their "crime"? At an awards dinner, a team member held up a ... 11/13/2007 Pay-Go Is Good Politics Left-wing Democrats often grumble about their party's affection in recent years for fiscal discipline. Their argument goes as follows: In pursuing fiscal restraint, President Clinton didn't push very hard for many Democratic programs. He left a ... 11/08/2007 Nurturing Businessmen, Not Business They say bad things come in threes. That includes economic milestones that most Americans would prefer not to pass. One is the prospect of $100-a-barrel oil. Another is an exchange rate of 1.50 U.S. dollars to one euro, a serious loss of face to the ... 11/06/2007 Dems Must Get Serious About Illegals Hillary Clinton — and the other Democrats running for president — couldn't possibly have assumed that they would forever skate around the issue of illegal immigration. That notion came to an end in the most recent debate, when the New York ... 11/01/2007 Pols All Twisted Over Tax Reform Let us bend our yoga-trained bodies into the Salute to the Sun pose. We are praising Charlie Rangel's tax reform proposal. The New York Democrat wants to get rid of the alternative minimum tax, modestly cut taxes for most people and modestly raise ... 10/30/2007 Girls and "The Pill" Thirteen-year-olds come to school very pregnant. What do you do? Do you lock up their "lovers" — and their parents, too, if you can find them — and send the eighth-graders to a home for wayward girls? Or do you start prescribing ... 10/25/2007 Fire and Science It has long been sage policy to ignore the crank denials around global warming. But now and then you have a weather-related disaster like the fires devouring big chunks of Southern California — and you wonder about the extent to which the ... 10/23/2007 Will Bill Lure White Males to Hill? There's a strange fork in presidential politics where generally liberal white women say that they like Hillary Clinton, but wondered why she stayed with the man — and somewhat conservative white men say they like her because she ... 10/18/2007 There's No Pleasing the Fringes The only openly gay congressman, Barney Frank, has long been subject to homophobic attacks. Happily, the Massachusetts liberal is master of the precision-guided comeback, which he unleashes with devastating results. No one has earned more ... 10/16/2007 Our Health 'System' Isn't 'Conservative' Whether Graeme Frost has an affluent father or lives in a $400,000 house with granite counters is of no consequence to me. But such details have led a right-wing attack on the Democrats' poster family for expanding the State Children's Health ... 10/11/2007 The Joys of Pick-and-Choose Reagan The Republicans debating in Dearborn, Mich., predictably donned the cloak of the sainted Ronald Reagan. The presidential candidate most convincing in his Reagan-ness, however, was not there. He is, of all people, John Edwards, the former North ... 10/09/2007 Larry Craig May Never Go Go away, Larry Craig. Republicans badly want their senior senator from Idaho out of the headlines and punch lines. But the man won't go. Many of us thought that he had gone away. Caught soliciting sex in a men's room at the Minneapolis airport, ... 10/04/2007 Bringing Them Back to the Great Plains HOLDREGE, Neb. — Betty Sayers and her sister Nancy Herhahn left this rural area the moment they could. "Nancy and I were told that if you want to be successful, you leave your small town," Sayers recalls. Other young ... 10/02/2007 Children's Health Care in the Age of Bush KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Let's design a children's health plan that President George W. Bush might like. The State Children's Health Insurance Program serves working families not poor enough to qualify for Medicare. Bush is dead set against ... 09/27/2007 Why Suits Are Suitable Are you following the fall fashions? For women, it's suits, suits, suits. Fashion writers talk about a "chic revival" and a look that's "polished," "clean," tailored. The color this season is gray, coordinated with brown, ... 09/25/2007 Democrats the Party of 'Normal Americans' DAVENPORT, Iowa — One of Newt Gingrich's favorite verbal firebombs was calling Democrats "the enemies of normal Americans." We will ignore the nasty code contained in the former GOP House speaker's remark. But suffice it to say, ... 09/20/2007 American Dream Goes Nuts I had an adjustable-rate mortgage, once. I fully understood that after two years, my low come-on interest rate would be reset at a more realistic level. But when the two years passed — Powee! It was still something of a shock. ... 09/18/2007 The High Price of Low Prices China's factories are pretty soulless affairs. Into one end are fed sweatshop workers and the world's raw materials. Through their stacks pour smog and greenhouse gases. The local environment is hideous, and the industrial pollution is so thick that ... 09/13/2007 Democrats Need to Think Purple Democrats need their "Sister Souljah moment" with the outer left, and they need it now. The MoveOn.org ad — "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" — was simply unacceptable. Not only was it dumb, but it created a ... 09/11/2007 Green Not Always the Color of Money The new numbers on consumer confidence are out. They show American consumers very confident that the economy is going down the tubes. Over in Asia and Europe, stocks plunged on fears that Americans may no longer be able to find the second jobs ... 09/06/2007 Public Tires of 9-11 Tributes How to remember Sept. 11 has set off a hard debate. Many who lost loved ones in the terrorist attacks are demanding that the mass grieving and reading of names remain a national ritual. Others, however, want to lower the volume and make the ... 09/04/2007 A Sad Coda to Kennedy Career Once upon a time, Ted Kennedy could count on his daily dose of veneration. The right wing hated the Massachusetts Democrat, but progressives honored him as a defender of old-school liberalism. In a remarkable turnaround, liberals are now ... 08/30/2007 Tough Trying to Be Perfect Larry Craig did wrong, but what did the Idaho Republican really do wrong? A penchant to focus on the part of sex scandals that don't have to do with sex has long been my curse. According to the police report, the senator was in a bathroom at ... 08/28/2007 Big Coal's Unregulated Plunder It's awfully hard to make coal pretty. When you dig deep for it, you risk the lives of miners, as seen in the tragedy at Utah's Crandall Canyon Mine. If you mine it by lopping off the tops of mountains — as is done in Appalachia — ... 08/23/2007 The CIA, al-Qaida and Real ID We don't want to be writing reports in 2008 or 2009 about what we could have done in August 2007 to avoid another terrorist attack, do we? Let the Central Intelligence Agency summary of its failings before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks be a ... 08/21/2007 Mitt and the Chickenhawk Problem Mitt Romney has five strapping sons, and not one of them has ever served in the military. When asked about this in Bettendorf, Iowa, the Republican presidential hopeful said that "one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is ... 08/16/2007 The Campaign: Long but Boring Are you thoroughly bored yet by the presidential campaign? Your civic score will lose no points if you say "yes" to the question and "no" to the growing tedium of Decision 2008. The most overrated recent event has to be the ... 08/14/2007 New Yorkers Need This Unreality Check CONEY ISLAND, N.Y. — Weird and downtrodden, but prime Brooklyn oceanfront, Coney Island as we know it may soon vanish. A developer wants to replace the people's carnival with hotels, retail and time-share units. You might as well try to turn ... 08/09/2007 The Creepy Debate on SCHIP One of the less pleasant debates in Washington has been over SCHIP. The State Children's Health Insurance Program covers children whose families make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford their own coverage. In other words, ... 08/07/2007 Rich Suburbs Move to Democrats GREENWICH, Conn. — You know you're in a different kind of town when the signs against drunk driving show a line drawn through a Martini glass to which the artist thoughtfully added a stirrer. Greenwich, Conn., is one such town. Greenwich ... 08/02/2007 The Chaos, Distress of Caring for the Old An 88-year-old man with dementia is sent to the emergency room with vague symptoms. He's poorly cared for, not because the doctors and nurses are bad, but because he is a low priority. A frail grandmother suffers a heart attack at home, and an ... 07/31/2007 Taxpayers and the Mortgage Meltdown Line up the suckers. The mortgage meltdown has produced many victims. The most sympathetic are the low-income folk who are losing their homes to foreclosure. Some Democrats want to help many of these unfortunate souls by having government ... 07/26/2007 Courage About Population Needed "Population Explosion" was a call to arms for American environmentalists 40 years ago, amid fears that baby boomers would have big families. That didn't happen, but hyper-population-growth is occurring now due to large-scale immigration. ... 07/24/2007 Lady Bird's Beauty Treatment Jackie Kennedy made herself a beautiful woman, but Lady Bird Johnson did her one better. She made a beautiful America — or at least tried. The 1965 Highway Beautification Act, which her husband, Lyndon Johnson, pushed through Congress at ... 07/19/2007 In Face of Terror, We Press on Six years after 9-11, we're not safer from terrorist attack, the intelligence agencies tell us. But we're back on airplanes and filling sports stadiums. Are we braver? Or just complacent? Over the past 12 months, I've been in crammed New York ... 07/17/2007 No Way to Fight an Addiction There's a bill floating around that would let our government sue OPEC members for driving up the price of oil. Surprise, surprise, it passed both houses of Congress. President Bush has vowed to quash the brilliantly named "NOPEC" (the No Oil ... 07/12/2007 Keep Blue Dogs Barking "Go ahead!" the gremlins hiss into Democratic ears. "Spend and borrow. The Republicans did it. Don't be a goody-two-shoes about this 'pay-as-you-go' stuff." The gremlins are hard at work trying to throw a wrench into the ... 07/10/2007 Anxiety in the Empire Now and then, a conservative columnist wonders why Americans have grown so sour about the country's future. After all, unemployment is low and stocks are rising. Sure, there's anger over the Iraq war and immigration, but things can't be that bad with ... 07/05/2007 Death to House Sparrows A friend has been after me to condemn house sparrows in a column. "Are you out of your ever-loving ..." was my thought, but I said, "What would I have against those cute little critters splashing in my birdbath?" Plenty, my ... 06/30/2007 The War of Independence Was Hell In the popular mind, the American Revolution was mostly about liberty and the pursuit of happiness — and the war that followed the Declaration of Independence wasn't much of a war. We imagine toy soldiers in red coats chasing picturesque rebels.<... 06/28/2007 Democrats Who Do Billionaires' Bidding One of the less appetizing sights in politics today is Democrats defending laws that tax high-finance buccaneers at lower rates than the police who guard their Aston Martins. While many Democrats are trying to close these loopholes, some are trying ... 06/26/2007 The Madness of Plan Colombia How to make enemies, squander billions and accomplish nothing: That's a U.S. program called Plan Colombia. Its central idea is to slow the flow of cocaine into the nostrils of American night-clubbers by poisoning crops in the Andes. Five ... 06/21/2007 Bloomberg Hero to the Fed Up So he's not running for president. That's what New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is saying now, even as his aides fan across America studying the possibility. Whatever Bloomberg ultimately decides to do, his departure from the Republican ... 06/19/2007 A Bad Breed of Brazen Republicans Republicans hardly have a lock on corruption in Washington, but they do seem to hold the patent on an especially brazen breed of dodgy politician. This is the official who combines devious dealing with abusive behavior. Alaska Rep. Don Young seems to ... 06/14/2007 Bush Clout on Immigration 'All Used Up' Immigration reform was to be George W. Bush's legacy. It's now clear that he won't have a legacy to stand on. The president's visit to the Capitol was supposed to restart the immigration "grand bargain," currently in a mid-air stall. ... 06/12/2007 The Lightning Wasn't for Rudy About that bolt of lightning that missed Rudy Giuliani last week: Frankly, Rudy would not have been my first choice for divine retribution on that Republican stage. Was the crackle — which stopped the former New York mayor from fully responding ... 06/07/2007 The Vile Business Of Preying On the Poor The working poor make great victims. They are often trusting and financially unsophisticated, and with wages stagnant, they're desperate for cash. These folks hold jobs, so they have a money stream and possibly equity in their homes — all ripe ... 06/05/2007 Choosing Sides on Immigration "Which Side Are You On?" was the great labor song of the 1930s. The question in its title remains relevant in today's immigration debate. Back then, the two sides — the union or thugs from the mining company — made for an easy ... 05/31/2007 Hillary Needs Classier Friends Sometimes I forget why the Clintons disturb me. Then they offer a reminder. Case in point are reports that one of Hillary Clinton's most pampered donors made big bucks off scams against the elderly. Vinod Gupta heads infoUSA, a "list ... 05/26/2007 Two Mommies Can Be Better Than One Samuel David Cheney has two mommies, and isn't that nice, says a stay-at-home mother I'll call Joanna. A conventional housewife, Joanna is happy that her two young sons and baby girl have a daddy, but she says, "Boy, wouldn't it be great to let ... 05/24/2007 Unprincipled at Princeton "It is plain what the nation needs as its affairs grow more and more complex and its interests begin to touch the ends of the earth," Woodrow Wilson said upon becoming president of Princeton University in 1902. "It needs efficient and ... 05/22/2007 The Working Class Is Not Stupid About Immigration The American working class has few friends, and that sad situation is never more apparent than when the issue is immigration. The fat cats want unlimited supplies of cheap labor. It makes sense. That a giant union purportedly serving low-skilled ... 05/17/2007 Preachers Playing to the Press Jerry Falwell seemed "a grandfather figure," Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said on PBS, "not someone who looked like Elmer Gantry." Many in the media have compared Falwell, who just died, to the huckster preacher in ... 05/15/2007 Wyden Health Plan Looks Really Good The health-care issue is back and about to beat its hairy chest in the coming presidential campaign. A new CNN polls shows 43 percent of adults rating health care as "extremely important. But Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden doesn't want to wait ... 05/10/2007 Computing to the X-Treme Computers have become the new cars. The American lust for speed, power and performance has been transferred from the Corvette to the Athlon 64 FX-60 microprocessor. Computers, like cars, are all about cutting-edge technology, and whoever can get under ... 05/08/2007 The French Election and the American Way France's next president wants his compatriots to be more like us — us, as in U.S. That's what Nicolas Sarkozy's Socialist rival charged during the recent campaign. The French left labels much of what it abhors as "American," not unlike ... 05/03/2007 How Green Was My Palace? Can one be big and green? Environmentalists have long pondered whether you can stick solar panels on a battleship of a house and still claim to be the planet's friend. Revelations that Al Gore's manse in Nashville, Tenn., uses 10 times the ... 05/01/2007 Road Most Dangerous Place for Teens The day I received my driver's license, I jumped in my mother's car and motored off into teenage freedom. I remember that first solo drive well, because five minutes into it, I braked on a pile of wet leaves and skidded clear across the road. ... 04/26/2007 If Young Americans Voted They like Rudy and Barack. They worry most about Iraq, and over half think the country's on the wrong track. They are liberal, but not always. We speak of 18- to 24-year-olds, a group that's worn many labels. Some call them "Generation Y&... 04/24/2007 Feeding Students to the Lenders Al Lord is a rich man. As head of SLM Corp., he made $255 million in five years. He's now building his own private golf course in a Washington, D.C., suburb. And to think he did it off a federal program that's supposed to help low-income students ... 04/19/2007 The Right to Bear Arms and Be Crazy This is about mass murder and the U.S. Constitution. The massacre at Virginia Tech may prompt an attitude adjustment toward two parts of this great document — not only the Second Amendment covering the right to bear arms, but the First Amendment ... 04/17/2007 Skilled Jobs Also in Danger The master plan, it seems, is to move perhaps 40 million high-skill American jobs to other countries. U.S. workers have not been consulted. Princeton economist Alan Blinder predicts that these choice jobs could be lost in a mere decade or two. ... 04/12/2007 Imus in the Mourning At first, I thought Don Imus would emerge from his racist comment little scarred. The radio/cable "shock jock" would take his two-week suspension, during which he might cut deals with African-American ministers now demanding his head. He ... 04/10/2007 What's Sick About "The Secret" Karl Rove has been accused of many things. Writing the bestseller "The Secret" is not among them. But it would have been a masterstroke had Bush's political brain done it. "The Secret" is a splendid strategy for neutralizing ... 04/05/2007 Not That I Couldn't The Supreme Court has ordered the Bush administration to grow up on global warming. The justices peeled away all the excuses and ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency may indeed regulate tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases. "We ... 04/03/2007 Women's Vote No Sure Thing for Clinton This may be the smallest sampling in the history of political polling, but I recently asked three liberal women friends whom they preferred among the Democratic hopefuls. Their answers were Obama, Obama and Obama. "Not Hillary?" was ... 03/29/2007 Politics and Disease Nearly everything that happens has a political dimension. Even cancer. Tony Snow's announcement that his colon cancer has returned and spread weighs most of us with sadness. President Bush's press secretary, Snow has always been a class guy.... 03/27/2007 More Ways to Avoid Honest Labor March goes in like a lion and out like a lamb, they say. As for March Madness, many employers would like it to just go out. The NCAA men's basketball tournament could cost them up to $1.2 billion in lost productivity, according to a survey by ... 03/22/2007 Anger in an Immigrants' Town Iowa Republicans are peppering their presidential hopefuls with pointed questions about illegal immigration. Media reports tend to characterize these discussions as a Republican-base thing, but the reality is otherwise — as careful positioning ... 03/20/2007 Peccadilloes No Stranger to Rudy. I'm hardly the first to note that the Republican Party — alleged keeper of family values — has as its two presidential favorites men with checkered marital careers. Indeed, the leader in the polls, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, ... 03/15/2007 Stopping the Creepy Creditors "I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves," Ronald Reagan said. I do. And my position seems the more attractive one these days. As congressional reformers turn the spotlight on widespread and abusive ... 03/13/2007 Last Hurrah of Ward Politics The urban parades honoring St. Patrick reflect a long-ago America when ethnics filled the older cities, and the Irish ruled the ethnics. The chief power rivalry in the early 20th century was between the Irish and the WASP establishment, with ... 03/08/2007 My Own Private Starbucks I was dreaming the other day about the perfect coffee bar. I start with a Starbucks. It's got Metro style down, for sure. Leather seating, soft lighting, tables looking onto whatever street life there is. But I go in and, alas, every ... 03/06/2007 CAN NORTHEAST REPUBLICANS GET THEIR GROOVE BACK? How do you cheer up a New England Republican? Perhaps you can reminisce about the early 20th century — when the GOP had the six-state region locked up. Quick quiz: In Franklin Roosevelt's 1936 electoral triumph, only two states went to ... 03/01/2007 TXU Deal an Environmental Milestone There's an awesome development in the fight against global warming. Wall Street has decided that ignoring it is bad for business. To be specific, two private equity companies are close to signing a deal to buy TXU Corp., an environmentally challenged ... 02/27/2007 Don't Use Canada for Health-Care Model If you want to sell Americans on universal health coverage, it's not helpful to use a model that makes patients wait five weeks to see a cancer doctor. That's Canada. There is much to admire in the Canadian system. It covers everyone, while ... 02/22/2007 Enemies of 'Real ID' Are Deeply Mistaken Airport security lets us onto an airplane based on our state-issued driver's license. So it made sense for the 9-11 commission to recommend creating federal standards to ensure that the people flashing their driver's licenses are who they say they are.... 02/20/2007 Chafee Extends No Pity to War-Voting Democrats From where Lincoln Chafee sits, the spectacle of Democrats writhing under questions about their Iraq war vote is ... interesting. The Rhode Islander was the only Senate Republican to oppose giving President Bush authority to invade. Chafee's refusal ... 02/15/2007 Anna Nicole Unto Eternity One did not expect flags to be flown half-mast for Anna Nicole Smith — or candlelight vigils or a nationwide minute of silence. Still, it was a bit unsettling to see how seamlessly the celebrity moved from life to the great beyond. The media ... 02/13/2007 Edwards Gets Blogged Down Some of John Edwards' helpers have been busy, busy, busy insulting about 44 percent of the American electorate. The Democratic presidential candidate should have fired the two bloggers who trashed Christian conservatives in general and Catholics in ... 02/13/2007 Edwards Gets Blogged Down Some of John Edwards' helpers have been busy, busy, busy insulting about 44 percent of the American electorate. The Democratic presidential candidate should have fired the two bloggers who trashed Christian conservatives in general and Catholics in ... 02/08/2007 Slaving for Pin Money One thing about this minimum-wage debate truly fries me. It's the idea that the minimum does not have to be raised because the people who get it don't need the money. "Many, maybe most, of the gainers from a higher minimum wage are not ... 02/06/2007 That's Italian! That's American! It's a Fellini-meets-Seinfeld moment. Veronica Berlusconi sends a letter to La Repubblica, the big Rome daily, charging her 70-year-old husband, the former Italian prime minister, with indecent flirting. He "indulged in comments that were ... 02/01/2007 Put Biden in the Front Row Joe Biden jokes that he's the 800th candidate for president. The senator from Delaware is used to being called a "dark horse" or "second-tier contender." That's when he's not a "long-shot aspirant" or "minor ... 01/25/2007 ... But Keep the Tax Breaks for Mansions The president has finally found a tax increase he likes — on workers' "gold-plated" health benefits. The new-found tax revenues would supposedly offset the cost of helping Americans buy their own coverage. This weird plan won't go ... 01/23/2007 PBS's Puff Piece on Milton Friedman Milton Friedman said some pretty wild things, but don't expect to hear them in a PBS documentary about him airing Jan. 29. "The Power of Choice" is more a sales job for a conservative, anti-government ideology than an honest look at the ... 01/18/2007 Medicare Drug: "Step Toward Sobriety" Seniors are happy with the Medicare drug benefit, so why change it? That's the line we keep hearing from Republicans opposed to letting the government negotiate Medicare drug prices. "Of course seniors are happy," says Alan Sager, a ... 01/16/2007 Backdating Out of a Jobs Steve Jobs was in geek-genius mode as he strode across the dramatically lit San Francisco stage. Wearing his faded jeans and black turtleneck, Jobs gave a giant-screen tour of the iPhone, Apple's gorgeous new super-phone. He had the Macworld audience ... 01/11/2007 Romney's Mountain of Dilemmas Mitt Romney is not going to be president. He's not going to even be the Republican nominee. It all boils down to — may we use a French word? — finesse. Finesse is defined as "skillful, subtle handling of a situation; ... 01/09/2007 In Praise of Rich Liberals Some Republicans are making detailed lists of Nancy Pelosi's assets — the resort property, the vineyard, the South Sea Tahitian pearls — to note that she is a "rich liberal." Rich liberals, according to the rap, are "out of ... 01/04/2007 John Edwards and the Non-Southern Strategy At 6 p.m. on New Year's Eve in Times Square, the police are herding revelers into crowd-control pens, and I'm thinking, "These guys are stuck here, and the damned ball isn't coming down for another six hours." That's how I feel about ... 12/30/2006 James Brown's Long Life 'A Miracle' There were many wondrous things about James Brown, who just died at 73. One is that he died at 73, and not at 55 or 37 or some age more appropriate for someone who drank, took drugs and amassed wives. Nothing in the Godfather of Soul's bio suggests ... 12/28/2006 Jerry Ford Played it Straight In a 1978 speech, Newt Gingrich trashed Gerald Ford for all the reasons that he was good. Ford was "incredibly dumb" to suggest a tax hike before an election, Gingrich told College Republicans in Atlanta. "In the second place, he ... 12/26/2006 Obama Scores as Exotic Who Says Nothing To fully grasp the allure of Barack Obama — Democrat from Illinois and media sensation — it helps to start with his two fellow senators from neighboring Indiana. In 1996, Richard Lugar ran for president as a brainy, issue-oriented ... 12/21/2006 Illegal Immigration: A Rich American's Game There's a popular game in America that goes, I'll cut your wages, but you don't cut mine. And the outsourcing of your factory job to China is a good thing, because it makes my paycheck go further at Wal-Mart. We hear this theme a lot in the debate ... 12/19/2006 Will Americans Sacrifice for Posterity? Americans can adapt, one supposes, to an Alaska without polar bears, a New Hampshire without fall colors and a Florida without its bottom third. But most would probably like to save these things for their descendants. A recent Time/ABC poll found that ... 12/31/1969 Taxpayers and Housing Need a Divorce Even though Las Vegas is full of never-sold and foreclosed-upon houses, a rumble of new home building has begun there. Similar trends are seen in other housing meltdown meccas: Phoenix, Florida and inland California. Awesome. Vegas has almost ... |
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