If the recent budget debate has taught Americans anything, it is that the power of the gavel in Congress can be as powerful as the executive pen in the White House. In the blossoming 2012 campaign, we should, therefore, focus not only on the presidential election, but also the elections for Congress.
The death of Osama bin Laden, inflicted by crack U.S. Special Forces personnel acting on the orders of President Barack Obama, is undoubtedly a triumph for the embattled commander in chief. But will it provide him tangible political help when he stands for reelection a year and a half from now?
San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey explained in The San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday Insight his opposition to Secure Communities, the federal program that automatically passes new arrestees' fingerprints to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The program applies to "everyone booked into a county jail," Hennessey complained -- "even (in) a minor matter, such as having no driver's license in one's possession in a traffic stop."
The big story was that they got him, not that he was stopped. Osama bin Laden was already stopped.
In the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden, I found myself agreeing with Charles Krauthammer that this was a global game-changer for American greatness. It was a gutsy and courageous decision by President Obama, brilliantly executed by the Navy SEALs and all the intelligence and support behind them.
Let's cheerfully and ungrudgingly give credit to Barack Obama for approving the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.
If you threw a dart at the map of the Middle East and North Africa, you almost couldn't miss hitting a spot where an historic event was unfolding.
The big news is not that Osama bin Laden is dead. I mean, that is certainly big news, but a guy in hiding who has a record price tag on his head is not exactly an effective leader of a revolutionary movement. The big news, at least by my lights, is that Americans waving flags seem to be the biggest demonstrations going on.
Nothing succeeds like success. In the years since 9/11, Americans have had to live with the fact that President George W. Bush failed to take Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" -- to use the phrase that the former president came to regret.
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.
Sometimes a sympathetic and perceptive journalist paints a more devastating portrait of a public figure than even his most vitriolic detractors could. A prime example is Ryan Lizza's New Yorker article titled "The Consequentialist" and subtitled, "How the Arab Spring remade Obama's foreign policy."
On April 25, gay-rights advocates -- led by the Human Rights Campaign -- scored a victory after the HRC applied pressure on a law firm hired to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between a man and woman and denies federal benefits to same-sex partners. The firm fired its client. There are two reasons you should be outraged, no matter what your position is on DOMA.
Charlie Sheen is starting a new charity, and his new charity's first priority is to raise money for the Giants fan who was beaten up at Dodger Stadium.
The aging of the baby boom generation has not improved its reputation. Having brought immense positive change to this country, the postwar population wave is frequently castigated as a self-seeking and even selfish cohort by members of the generations that have followed, who worry that those nearing retirement will cost too much to maintain amid dimming economic prospects.
The two major parties have done their job in terms of setting the parameters for the 2012 presidential nominating process. Now, it is time for the states to fill in the blanks. And what they do in that regard over the next few months could go a long way in determining who wins next year's Republican presidential nomination.
With gas prices soaring as summer vacations near, many optimistic Republicans and nervous Democrats are left wondering about what impact those prices will have on President Obama's reelection chances. High gas prices, they point out, sank Jimmy Carter in 1980 and added to the baggage George W. Bush passed on to Republican nominee John McCain in 2008.
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. "I've been covering the Chinese economy for a long time, and I've never heard that before."
Behold the damage Donald Trump hath wrought. Every credible fact check has established that Barack Obama was born in this country. Yet on Wednesday, a reality TV show ringmaster forced the president of the United States to prove it.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's abrupt withdrawal from the race for the Republican presidential nomination -- after hiring a topnotch New Hampshire campaign manager and planning to fly around the country next week -- has naturally inspired a lot of punditry on the Republican presidential race.
Many years ago, the late and great U.S. District Court Judge Constance Baker Motley of the Southern District of New York was assigned to hear a case alleging sex discrimination by one of New York's top law firms. The plaintiffs were no doubt as pleased by the assignment as the defendants were displeased: Judge Motley had served as one of Thurgood Marshall's top deputies at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, before Marshall was appointed to the Supreme Court and Motley to the federal district court. She was widely known as a strong supporter of women's rights.
