Last week, an insurance industry report found that bans on using hand-held cell-phones while driving in California, New York, Washington, D.C. and Connecticut did not reduce the number of car crashes. To the contrary, crashes went up in Connecticut and New York, and slightly in California, after the bans took effect.
Just whom are we trying to impress?
That's a question that occurred to me when, on his second full day in the presidency, Barack Obama announced we would close the Guantanamo detainee facility within one year.
It was bad enough last month watching Washington politicians merrily flying off to the U.N. climate change Conference of Parties in Copenhagen (or COP-15 for short), ostensibly to draft a global warming treaty, when all the players knew that no meaningful pact would result and that the only sure outcome was that much energy would be squandered.
I don't get it.
Since 1993, more than 13,000 soldiers have been discharged from the military under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy. Countless others are effectively denied access to mental health and other services because they can't tell.
It all looked so easy in August 2008, when Sen. Barack Obama spoke before the Democratic National Convention in Denver. The Democrats were going to win in November, storm Washington with their reforming ways, and because they were so much smarter than everyone else, they'd know how to get the American economy cooking. There was no doubt as the enthusiastic Invesco Field throng cheered and chanted, "Yes, we can."
Barack Obama’s “Panic Week” has come and gone, but did his White House learn anything from the historic repudiation of his leftist agenda? Putting the question another way, has Obama made the necessary course corrections or is he still refusing to hear the message that America is sending him so loudly and clearly?
I’ll admit it. I love populism. In my youth I was always drawn to populist candidates. For over eight months I’ve been predicting that 2010 would be the Year of the Populist, and this prediction has come true. Populism is the only approach that makes sense in this angry, miserable time full of resentful voters. A sincere populist identifies with, and advocates for, the needs of ordinary powerless people, who believe they are being screwed by big, impersonal institutions and elites.
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 people in Congress won't even risk their jobs to pass legislation essential to the nation's economic future.
You know it’s a strange new world when Gary Langer, the director of polling at ABC, attacks a Democratic polling firm. By the way, the good folks at Public Policy Polling (PPP) took the attack in stride. The firm's Tom Jensen noted that “one of the most amusing things Langer and others in his cohort claim is that polls should not be judged by their accuracy.”
On the eve of his first State of the Union Address, Barack Obama confided that he would "rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." But his proposal to freeze domestic spending is exactly the kind of policy that could result in four years of stagnation -- rewarded by an election defeat at the hands of dispirited and disillusioned voters. If he continues to surrender his mandate, he just might become a mediocre one-term president.
For Democrats, it is officially time to worry. The party's gubernatorial losses in Virginia and New Jersey last fall could be partially explained away as the states' usual off-year swing to the "out" party.
Republican Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts' special Senate election was for Democratic leaders a moment that can be described in two words, of which I will only print the first here, which is "oh."
Stocks shrugged it off yesterday, but I’d like to commend President Obama for his three-year budget freeze plan. That's right. It gives me good old-fashioned, American patriotic State of the Union pleasure to praise the president when he does good.
CBS will air an ad during the Super Bowl in which college football star Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam Tebow, discuss her decision not to have an abortion despite doctors’ advice to do so. The news is creating precisely the stir that its sponsor, the Christian conservative group Focus on the Family, was almost certainly hoping for.
As I was preparing to write a column on the ludicrous maligning of the Tea Party movement by liberals, Democrats and the mainstream media (which I hope to write next week, instead), I started thinking about one of the key objectives of the Tea Party people -- the strict enforcement of the 10th Amendment ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people").
Political correctness is alive in the Pentagon. Witness "Protecting the Force: Lessons from Fort Hood," a Department of Defense report released last week on the Nov. 5 shootings that left 13 people dead.
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 Pandora.
What exactly did Ben Bernanke promise Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid? That’s the big question right now. Reid reluctantly endorsed Bernanke after a one-on-one meeting. Here’s what Reid said, according to the Las Vegas Sun: “I made it clear that to merit confirmation, Chairman Bernanke must redouble his efforts to ensure families can access the credit they need to buy or keep their home, send their children to college, or start a small business.”
When the New York Times columnist David Brooks first sat down with Barack Obama, they talked a lot about Burke. That's Edmund Burke, the 18th century conservative British politician and philosopher. Not Jimmy Burke, the 20th century Massachusetts pol, who said that all you had to know to serve in Congress was "Social Security and shoes."
I like Harold Ford. The former congressman and senatorial candidate from Tennessee is bright, articulate and attractive. But that doesn’t mean he should be the senator from New York.
