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January 17, 2013

Before Default, Let Republicans Bump Up Hard Against The Debt Ceiling By Joe Conason

A prolonged confrontation over the nation's debt ceiling -- unlike the "fiscal cliff," which provoked many scary headlines -- could truly be grave for both America and the world. While press coverage often mentions the possibility of lowered credit ratings for the U.S. Treasury (again), that might only be the mildest consequence if Republicans in Congress actually refuse to authorize borrowing and avoid default.

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January 17, 2013

Ivory-tower Obama Can't Abide Views He Doesn't Share By Michael Barone

To judge from his surly demeanor and defiant words at his press conference on Monday, Barack Obama begins his second term with a strategy to defeat and humiliate Republicans rather than a strategy to govern.

His point blank refusal to negotiate over the debt ceiling was clearly designed to make the House Republicans look bad.

But Obama knows very well that negotiations usually accompany legislation to increase the government's debt limit. As Gordon Gray of the conservative American Action Network points out, most of the 17 increases in the debt ceiling over the last 20 years have been part of broader measures.

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January 16, 2013

First, the Bad News By John Stossel

We in the media rarely lie to you.

But that leaves plenty of room to take things wildly out of context.

That's where most big scare stories come from, like recent headlines about GM foods. GM means "genetically modified," which means scientists add genes, altering the plant's DNA, in this case to make the crop resistant to pests.

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January 15, 2013

From "Downton" to Golden Globes, It's All Downhill By Froma Harrop

"When it comes to torture," Amy Poehler said Sunday night as she opened the Golden Globes award ceremony, "I trust a lady who spent three years married to James Cameron." Yuk, yuk, YUCK.

That same evening on PBS's "Downton Abbey," the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith) admonished granddaughter Lady Sybil, "Vulgarity is no substitute for wit." Now that was clever.

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January 14, 2013

History Suggests That Entitlement Era Is Winding Down By Michael Barone

It's often good fun and sometimes revealing to divide American history into distinct periods of uniform length. In working on my forthcoming book on American migrations, internal and immigrant, it occurred to me that you could do this using the American-sounding interval of 76 years, just a few years more than the Biblical lifespan of three score and 10. 

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January 11, 2013

Can Hillary Pace Herself? By Froma Harrop

The football helmet that State Department staffers presented Hillary Clinton upon her return to the office was cute, but only sort of. Same went for the "Clinton" football jersey bearing the number 112. That's how many countries she's visited since becoming secretary of state.

Clinton had been away sick for a month. She had suffered a stomach virus, which dehydrated her, which made her woozy, which led to a fall, which caused a concussion, which landed her in a hospital with a blood clot in her head.

January 11, 2013

Republican Establishment Declares War on GOP Voters By Scott Rasmussen

Official Washington hailed the deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff as a significant bipartisan accomplishment. However, voters around the country viewed the deal in very partisan terms: Seven out of 10 Democrats approved of it, while seven out of 10 Republicans disapproved.

Just a few days after reaching that agreement, an inside-the-Beltway publication reported another area of bipartisan agreement. Politico explained that while Washington Democrats have always viewed GOP voters as a problem, Washington Republicans "in many a post-election soul-searching session" have come to agree. More precisely, the article said the party's Election 2012 failures have "brought forth one principal conclusion from establishment Republicans: They have a primary problem."

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January 10, 2013

'Most Antagonistic' Toward Israel? That Would Be Ronald Reagan's Defense Secretary By Joe Conason

When Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warned on national television over the weekend that Chuck Hagel "would be the most antagonistic secretary of defense toward the state of Israel in our nation's history," either his memory served him very poorly -- or he was simply lying to smear his former Senate colleague. For whatever Hagel's perspective on Mideast policy may be, it would be absurd to compare him with the Secretary of Defense whose hardline hostility toward Israel became notorious during the Reagan administration.

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January 10, 2013

Obama Lurches Left With Pick of Hagel for Defense By Michael Barone

Barack Obama, we have been told by his admirers on the left and right, is an instinctive centrist, a moderate always ready to negotiate compromises, a politician deeply interested in the nuances of public policy.    

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January 9, 2013

A Man's Home Is His Subsidy By John Stossel

The Obama administration now proposes to spend millions more on handouts, despite ample evidence of their perverse effects.

Shaun Donovan, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says, "The single most important thing HUD does is provide rental assistance to America's most vulnerable families -- and the Obama administration is proposing bold steps to meet their needs." They always propose "bold steps."

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January 8, 2013

The Hagel Defense By Froma Harrop

A decorated Vietnam vet, Chuck Hagel combines experience in war with skepticism over turning to military solutions where diplomacy might work. Add to those qualifications a tendency to speak his mind (after using it), and the former Republican senator from Nebraska seems uniquely placed to lead the Department of Defense in 2013.

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January 7, 2013

Dodd-Frank's Problems -- and Potential Solutions By Michael Barone

Over the next year, we will probably see much controversy over the implementation of Obamacare. Health insurance is something that almost every adult has some acquaintance with, and there seem to be glitches aplenty in the legislation, much delay in issuing regulations and some possible changes resulting from litigation.

We're likely to see or hear less about the operations of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation legislation, passed four months after Obamacare. Most of us don't work at banks or financial institutions, which will have to grapple with its myriad provisions and the regulations to be issued thereunder, and we tend to toss out those disclosure forms our bank sends out.

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January 4, 2013

Left Should Know, Obama Did Good By Froma Harrop

To my friends on the left: This one's for you.

Your grumbling that President Obama again gave away the store to Republicans is unwarranted. The deal to evade the fiscal cliff was no repeat of the debt-ceiling fiasco of 2011, when Obama famously bargained with himself. This time, he suppressed the urge to publicly consider raising the Medicare eligibility age. Meanwhile, he put off the clash over entitlements for another day.

January 4, 2013

Avoiding 'Fiscal Cliff' May Be a Bad Deal for Official Washington By Scott Rasmussen

In Washington, many are celebrating the deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. Some, like The Washington Post, are hailing the "strong bipartisan votes (on) a big, contentious issue."

Outside of Washington, however, the reviews aren't nearly as strong.

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January 3, 2013

Fiscal Deal Passes as House GOP Clown Car Crashes, Again By Joe Conason

Observing the Congressional Republicans repeatedly stumble in and out of their caucus clown car, blowing loud kazoos and muttering angry threats, should be painful, embarrassing and highly instructive to any American voter with the patience to watch. When their latest performance concluded late Tuesday night with a 257 to 187 vote passing the stopgap fiscal deal negotiated by the Senate and the White House, an unavoidable question lingered: What is wrong with those people?      

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January 3, 2013

If Demography Is Destiny, Good News for Texas, D.C. By Michael Barone

Demographics buffs get a special Christmas present every year courtesy of the Census Bureau: its annual estimates of the populations of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

This gives demographers a chance to see where the nation is growing and where it is not, and to get an idea of the destination of immigrants and of the flow of people into one set of states and out of another.

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January 2, 2013

No Regulation? No Problem By John Stossel

In the short time since President Obama was re-elected, government has issued hundreds of new regulations. The bureaucrats never stop. There are now more than 170,000 pages of federal regulations.   

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January 2, 2013

The Wrong Republicans By Froma Harrop

"The damage may have already been done," starts a Wall Street Journal news story about the fiscal cliff. This is damage a fix at this point can't fix. That Washington couldn't stop big automatic spending cuts and tax increases in an orderly manner marked another hit on the psyche of American business and consumers. Feeling captive to a bizarre political game is not pleasant, and yes, the damage can already be measured in dollars.

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December 31, 2012

When Government Offers to Help, It Often Makes a Mess By Michael Barone

There's a natural human impulse to help people who need a hand. In the political world, that often translates to an impulse to have government help people who need a hand. Who wants to argue with that?

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December 28, 2012

The Politics of Threat By Froma Harrop

The people are sad. If holiday shopping is any measure of public mood, the joy vanished this year. The grade-school massacre depressed everyone, and now our rapid approach to the Fiscal Cliff has many scared and afraid to spend money.

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