The most disappointed people in America this past week must be those Trump execrators who opened their Amazon package only to find that the copy of "Fire and Fury" they had ordered was subtitled "The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945." It's a well-regarded 2009 volume by University of Toronto historian Randall Hansen, who is surely grateful for the unanticipated royalties.
Democrats should end the year with more governorships than they hold now. One reasonable way to measure Democrats’ success is whether they get into the 20s — they have 16 governorships now, so that would mean a gain of four or more.
Store owner Kamal Saleh was just hit with thousands of dollars in fines.
There were two big money-and-politics stories in the first week of the new year: The Dow Jones industrial average soared 577 points, and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon ended his political career.
Informing Iran, "The U.S. is watching what you do," Amb. Nikki Haley called an emergency meeting Friday of the Security Council regarding the riots in Iran. The session left her and us looking ridiculous.
France's ambassador tutored Haley that how nations deal with internal disorders is not the council's concern. Russia's ambassador suggested the United Nations should have looked into our Occupy Wall Street clashes and how the Missouri cops handled Ferguson.
Gallup announced last week that they are discontinuing their daily presidential approval tracking poll, opting instead to provide topline numbers weekly on Monday and detailed demographics monthly.
Since 2008, the well-known firm had been tracking presidential approval as a question in their privately sponsored Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index. Rather than conducting landline- or cell phone-based interviews, more of those responses are instead being gathered by mailer.
Since the earliest rise of the modern tea party, no political pastime has been more joyous than doling out savage ultra-violence against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
You know, in “A Clockwork Orange” kind of way.
As tens of thousands marched in the streets of Tehran on Wednesday in support of the regime, the head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps assured Iranians the "sedition" had been defeated.
One of my favorite Christmastime presents is the Census Bureau's release of its annual population estimates for all of the states. Comparison of the April 1, 2010, Census Bureau enumerations and the June 30, 2017, estimates for the states shows how each state fared in the Obama years, seeing as this period includes 82 of the 96 months of the Obama administration and only five months of Donald Trump's presidency.
On Tuesday, now-former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) officially resigned from the U.S. Senate following allegations of inappropriate behavior toward women. As we discussed in our last newsletter for 2017, Franken’s resignation means that Minnesota will hold a special election for Senate this coming November, which will take place at the same time as the regular election for the state’s other Senate seat (a “double-barrel” election).
The longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history announced this week that he will finally, finally, finally, finally, finally, finally, finally retire.
What caused the FBI to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016, which evolved into the criminal investigation that is said today to imperil the Trump presidency?
President Trump is up 3 percent!
I refer to the betting odds. Gamblers (mostly in Europe because political bets are legal there) now give the president a 53 percent chance of finishing his first term.
What if Hillary Clinton had won 114,000 more votes in four key states? Or, what if she'd picked up the two to three percent of the vote she lost because Bernie Sanders' supporters sat on their hands on election day? She'd be "Clinton 2" or "Clinton 45" or "the second President Clinton" -- and the world would look very different.
016 turned out to be a year in which it was wise to take Donald Trump as a political candidate seriously but not literally, in the inspired words of syndicated columnist Salena Zito. As 2017 is on the point of vanishing, it's worth asking whether it's time to take Trump seriously, if not literally, as a maker of public policy.
Looking back on President Donald Trump’s first year in office, he has compiled a shockingly strong record and long list of accomplishments. As was also the case with his rise to the presidency, President Trump has broken several records for a first-year commander-in-chief and fulfilled many of his key campaign promises.
Asked what he did during the French Revolution, Abbe Sieyes replied, "I survived."
There are talkers and doers, sowers of dissatisfaction seeds and agents of lasting change. Much of my column work over the year is dedicated to exposing the worst crapweasels in politics, pop culture, media and the policy arena. But to ring out 2017, I'm raising a toast to some of my favorite bulldogs -- vigilant citizens, independent journalists and bloggers, and dedicated activists who work tirelessly to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
With President Trump's signing of the big tax cut bill, the Republican Party snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Suddenly, the political and economic landscapes have changed. The GOP has turned the tables on the Democrats.
