As the International Monetary Fund gets ready to choose a successor to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who resigned following his arrest on charges that he sexually assaulted and raped a hotel housekeeper, it would be a good thing to step back for a moment and ask: What should the IMF do? More specifically, can the IMF possibly morph itself into a worldwide force for economic growth instead of Bailout Nation?
After two strong congressional cycles in 2006 and 2008, the Democrats were "shellacked" by Republicans in 2010. As the 2012 cycle approaches, uncertainty prevails for both parties: Each is trying to hold or expand its majority in one chamber while attempting to weaken and maybe topple the opposition in the other.
Just as busts follow booms, booms are supposed to follow busts. But there has been no boom, not even a boomlet, to light a candle in the gloom of the housing collapse. Many economists thought that a recovery from the real-estate meltdown that started in 2007 would be well on its way by 2011.
Exit Mike Huckabee. Enter Newt Gingrich. Exit Donald Trump. It's been a busy week in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
"I didn't wish to be the girl who had a problem with a politician for the rest of my life." So said Tristane Banon, in explaining why she didn't file charges nine years ago against Socialist politician and current International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
In 2004, Maria Shriver told Vanity Fair that many people were surprised that a Kennedy clan member would marry Hollywood bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger.
This White House, like its predecessors, can take some comfort in the fact that the Middle East has been breaking the hearts of diplomats and foreign politicians for at least 2,000 years.
Before John Ensign resigned as Nevada's junior senator on May 3, the Republican faced a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into a possibly illegal cover-up that followed an affair between Ensign and Cindy Hampton, a campaign aide who was married to the senator's administrative assistant. Last week, the committee released a report on the probe -- and it is ugly.
Most every detail surrounding the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn blew right out the "Law and Order" storybook. Detectives board an Air France jet about to taxi off for Paris and pull Strauss-Kahn right out of his first-class seat.
Barack Obama's immigration speech in El Paso May 10 was an exercise in electioneering and hypocrisy. Hypocrisy because while Obama complained about "politicians" blocking comprehensive immigration bills, he was one of them himself.
As governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin "demonstrated many of the qualities we expect in our best leaders," The Atlantic's Joshua Green reports in a must-read story.
Raj Rajaratnam should be about the last person in the world that I have any sympathy for. I don't know him. I don't have a lot in common with billionaires who would cheat to save $3 million, as he was convicted of doing. I dislike insider trading, not so much because it's unfair (it's also unfair that so many people are so much better than me at investing) but because it undermines confidence in the markets, and our economy depends on that confidence.
For the longest time, a certain admirable, independent senator from Arizona disappeared from public life, replaced by an irresponsible, opportunistic and occasionally demagogic figure, who seemed to have been warped by his presidential ambitions and his disappointment in losing. But John McCain has now returned, just in time to refute the sinister attempt by his fellow Republicans to justify torture as the instrument of Osama bin Laden's demise.
Wherever possible President Barack Obama has sought to dilute or disguise the ideological war his administration has been waging against capitalism over the past twenty-seven months. As a result, his massive bureaucratic bailout became an “economic stimulus.
When you get into discussions about the Middle East with certain people, you start hearing that the great mistake was the partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. If that had somehow just not happened, you hear, everything would be all right.
Two is a coincidence, they say, but three is a trend. Hot body shots of three Washington politicians are all over the Internet. All three are of Republicans, and all three are men. Do we have a trend here or just a creepy coincidence?
President Obama addressed an enthusiastic crowd Tuesday when he spoke in El Paso, Texas, about liberalizing federal immigration laws. Audience members exhorted the president to "tear down" the border fence and called immigration hard-liners "racist."
It was probably ironic that in at least one of the online papers I was reading, the story of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver's separation played literally back to back with the story of Newt and Callista Gingrich's ascension and how it is expected that she will turn the liability of his infidelity, which led to their marriage, into an asset.
There is a particular media conceit that, in the garb of purported impeccable disclosure, is in fact a license for news sources to market talking points.
Nice try, Republicans, running a political protection racket to push your Medicare scheme. Scrubbed of the sweet talk about saving Medicare, your offer boiled down to this: You older folks support us, and we won't touch a hair on your government health-insurance plan. Only those 55 and under get whacked.
