Decades of autocratic government and a lack of free elections are, of course, the main drivers of the political upheaval in Egypt. But did the sinking dollar and skyrocketing food prices trigger the massive unrest now occurring in Egypt -- or the greater Arab world for that matter?
Whatever may happen in the hours after I write this column, two things are certain: The next chapter in the magnificent and ancient civilization of the Nile will be yet to be known. And the role that America plays in Egypt's great, unfolding story remains also in doubt.
Billy the Kid was a psycho. It took the balm of time and multiple retelling of Old West sagas to turn this killing machine into a folk figure. You may recall former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's causing a fuss when he considered granting the little monster a posthumous pardon. Among the Kid's many victims were officers of the law. Richardson wisely decided to take a pass.
"We don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem." That's a Republican mantra often used to explain why the answer to Washington's deficit spending is not a tax increase, but more spending cuts.
Numbers can tell a story. Looking back on Barack Obama's second State of the Union message, and looking forward to the congressional session and the 2012 elections, they tell a story that should leave Democrats uneasy.
Four times this month, the U.S. Supreme Court has slapped down the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Four times the Big Bench unanimously reversed Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decisions. Unanimous is a big deal. It means that there's no left-right political divide in the Big Bench's findings -- just right on the law and wrong on the law.
As we know, massive popular unrest has broken out against autocratic governments in North Africa and the Arab world. Egypt is the biggest story. But to varying degrees, the people have taken to the streets in Algeria, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, and Yemen.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie expressed disappointment in President Obama’s failure to commit to aggressive budget cuts and entitlement reform in last night’s State of the Union speech.
Every year, UCLA's Higher Education Research Center does a national study of college freshmen, some 200,000 in all. This year, the big news is emotional health -- or lack thereof. Nearly half of the students surveyed -- and more than half of the young women -- ranked their emotional health as "below average," the highest numbers since the survey began 25 years ago.
A few years ago, baby boomers needed 3-D glasses to take in the gorgeous vision of their decades to come. Books and articles foresaw baby boomers skipping off into a "Second Adolescence" of self-fulfillment. No longer chained to the 9-to-5 and still healthy, the newly "retired" would follow their muse. The future was theirs, despite all that gray hair (or gray roots).
Complaints about President Obama's State of the Union address on both sides of the political divide (which was obscured but not obliterated by the evening's novel seating arrangements) seemed to miss its point and purpose
Following the 2010 House “shellacking” by the GOP, Democrats are hungry for revenge while Republicans are hungry for more. While there is an endlessly long list of unknowns as we assess the November 2012 races from our current vantage point, 22 months removed from Election Day, there are also several signposts that offer some suggestion of what the 2012 House elections may bring.
The problem with left-leaning elites trying to run the U.S. economy from the top down is simple: They think the answer to America's economic woes is to create more jobs that replicate managers just like them.
In his State of the Union message tonight, President Obama is likely to call for some kind of corporate tax reform. But don’t look for him to be a budget-cutter.
Last week, the president wrote in the Wall Street Journal an article titled "Toward a 21st-Century Regulatory System" in which he announced that he had issued an executive order to review all government regulations on a cost-benefit ratio basis. In itself, this is a good idea, although the president makes it explicit that the cost-benefit analysis must take account of -- as benefits -- intangible factors such as "equity, human dignity, fairness, and distributive impacts." Plenty of leeway there for career regulators and liberal political appointees to justify almost any oppressive regulation they may stumble over.
Over the last decade, America’s leaders chose to address the unsustainable growth of an already bloated federal government by spending unprecedented amounts of borrowed money. First there was George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism,” a wholesale abandonment of the Republican view of limited government that quickly turned surpluses into deficits – and independent voters into Democrats.
Like me, you may be wondering why 96,000 California state workers were given cell phones courtesy of the taxpayers. For, like me, you probably use a cell phone in the course of your work. And we know that if we asked our employers to pay for it, the answer would be N-O.
All the public opinion polls now confirm that President Obama has moved up sharply and significantly in popularity and job approval since he began to tack toward the center after the November election. Rasmussen and Zogby both have him over 50% job approval for the first time in almost a year. The key event was his high-minded speech in the aftermath of the Tucson shootings and his clear separation from the blame-oriented liberal commentators who tried to pin the killings on the Tea Party and Sarah Palin.
Last Thursday was the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's inaugural speech, and while the anniversary did not go unmentioned, it got less attention than I expected. I suspect that those of us who can remember that snowy day -- why do we schedule our great national outdoor ceremony for a day that is as likely as any to be the coldest of the year? -- are inclined to overestimate the hold that Kennedy has on Americans five decades after he took the oath of office.
GOP Assemblyman Chris Norby is a former Orange County supervisor with a longtime and deep aversion to California's 425 redevelopment agencies. Some redevelopment zones may eliminate blight and provide low-income housing as originally intended, he concedes, but redevelopment also allows billions of tax dollars to bankroll the building of a lot of half-empty shopping malls, as well as sweetheart deals that pad the pockets of well-connected developers.
