"President George W. Bush kept us safe from further terrorist attacks." Few presidential claims have been less persuasive to the public than that. Yet after Sept. 11, most Americans thought, "It's not a question of whether, but when." We would have been grateful if we had known at the time that there would be no further attacks while Bush was president.
Since 1999, when he was placed under California parole supervision for a 1976 rape in Nevada, Phillip Garrido, 58, was subject to drug testing, required to wear a GPS device and subject to twice-monthly visits by his state parole officer.
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.
Edward Kennedy was buried Saturday, the last son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, the longest-serving member of the only royal political family our democratic republic has ever produced.
When he served as deputy attorney general, now Attorney General Eric Holder gave a "neutral leaning positive" recommendation that led to President Bill Clinton's pardoning of gazillionaire fugitive Marc Rich, who was on the lam in Switzerland hiding from federal charges of fraud, evading more than $48 million in taxes, racketeering and trading oil with Iran in violation of a U.S. embargo.
Earlier this month, three federal judges -- Stephen Reinhardt, Lawrence Karlton and Thelton Henderson -- ordered the release of more than 40,000 of California's 160,000 inmates. No lie: They claimed that releasing one-quarter of state inmates would not have "a meaningful adverse impact on public safety."
Predictably as always, the Republicans in Congress and in the conservative media are berating Attorney General Eric Holder for deciding to investigate the CIA's use of abusive interrogation methods on terror suspects.
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 legendary Massachusetts senator who championed landmark legislation through bipartisan cooperation -- but whose sense of family privilege didn't always serve the interests of democracy.
As it becomes clear that a large percentage of Americans are rebelling against the prospect of a larger, more intrusive government, including many whom Democratic politicians assume would see themselves as beneficiaries of government spending and activity, debate among supporters of the Democratic agenda has focused on tactics.
He was not a natural. He did not have the gift that Bill Clinton had, that Barack Obama has, the gift of making whatever he said sound smart and moving.
On May 27, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson had telephone conversations about Vietnam with McGeorge Bundy, his national security adviser, and Sen. Richard Russell, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. First, to Bundy, he said: "It just worries the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of there. ... I don't think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and ever get anywhere. ... I don't think it's worth fighting for, and I don't think we can get out. It's just the biggest damn mess I ever saw. ... What the hell is Vietnam worth to me? ... What is it worth to this country?"
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.
When convicted Pan Am Flight 103 killer Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi landed to a hero's welcome in Libya last week, there was no question about it: Our Betters in Europe got rolled.
Colorado, where the Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountains, has some claim to be on the leading edge of American politics. It produced antiwar, pro-environment Democrats like Sen. Gary Hart in the 1970s, Reaganite Republicans like Sen. Bill Armstrong even before Ronald Reagan won in 1980, Clintonesque Democrats like Gov. Roy Romer in the 1980s, and National Review's favorite Republican governor, Bill Owens, in the 1990s.
How do you run for California's top political offices when you often have failed to vote yourself and have no political experience?
He might have won the Nobel Prize before I was born. Back in 1940, when he was a researcher at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston (as in, "call Uncle Al at the BI"), he was studying the effects of infection on the heart and circulatory system.
"I am a pessimist by nature, which is why I have spent my life as a journalist instead of trying to be a leader, which requires optimism."
At a recent Colorado town hall, University of Colorado at Boulder student Zach Lahn asked President Obama how private insurers could be expected to compete with a public health care plan.
If the Democrats fail to pass real changes in the health care system this year -- rather than a sham that mimics and mocks reform -- they will have nobody to blame but themselves.
Early on as New York mayor, Ed Koch went to battle against entrenched interests that were bankrupting the city.
