Paced by California and Illinois, state governments across the country continue to mimic the unsustainable fiscal excesses of the federal government – creating crushing deficits and soaring unfunded liabilities. Moreover, any state attempting to plug these holes with tax hikes or other revenue enhancements could create an exodus of businesses and taxpayers – meaning fewer jobs, lost revenue streams and diminished political clout.
Where can the new Congress start cutting spending? Here's one obvious answer: high-speed rail. The Obama administration is sending billions of stimulus dollars around the country for rail projects that make no sense and that, if they are ever built, will be a drag on taxpayers indefinitely.
Facts always matter, but never more so than when politicians deal with issues of real consequence, like health care and budget deficits.
Precisely two years from today, America will be inaugurating a president. But much sooner, the full-blown contest for the White House will begin.
I got my first threat when I was a young law professor. The campus newspaper reported that in teaching criminal law to first-year students, I was not only including rape in the curriculum (unheard of at the time), but was actually telling students of my own experience in the criminal justice system as a rape victim and how it shaped my views on the law. I thought it was a nice piece. My mother thought I was out of my mind. Both appear to be true.
Is there a new Cold War developing between China and the United States? That’s a question hovering over President Hu Jintao and his entourage as they come to Washington to discuss military, trade, and financial flash points with the Obama administration.
What should the congressional GOP's policy objectives be for the next two years regarding federal deficits and prosperity?
U.S. economic recovery continues to look better, according to the stock market and a boatload of economic stats last week. Stocks jumped 133 points on the Dow, which hit a 30-month high following its seventh straight weekly rise. Early fourth-quarter profit reports from Alcoa, Intel, and JPMorgan all beat expectations. Share prices are back to June 2008 levels, before the financial meltdown.
For the past three years, the left and Obama have been indistinguishable, joined at the hip in a marriage of ideology and, where that failed, of convenience. Now the marriage is on the rocks and some see a divorce in the offing.
In his superb speech in Tucson, Ariz., Wednesday evening, Barack Obama did great service to the nation. He put to rest the libel that political incivility is responsible for the Tucson shootings. He did so with three words that he added to the written text: "It did not."
Can Jerry Brown do it?
In the typical economic downturn, Americans thrown out of work make a deal with Euthenia, the Greek goddess of prosperity. They say (in their heads): We will get through this. We'll move in with family, find any part-time job. All we want is an assurance that good times will eventually return for hardworking people like us.
Alan Dershowitz isn't offended. He says it's OK for Sarah Palin to invoke one of the most anti-Semitic images of our time in attacking those who have been critical of her putting crosshairs over the name of the congresswoman who was later shot.
The deranged expression on the face of Jared Lee Loughner in the mug shot released by the police -- taken within hours after he allegedly killed six innocent people and wounded 14 more, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords -- suggests that we may never fully understand whatever illness afflicts him. The law requires us to assess his mental state and motivations, but we might do better to analyze our own craziness.
The steam seems to be going out of the move to "deftly pin this" -- the shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 13 others -- "on the tea partiers," as one unidentified senior Democratic operative put it to Politico.
This is a free country. If Sarah Palin wants to run for president in 2012, she is free to try. But she will not win the GOP nomination because Republican voters are not going to choose a middle-aged version of Britney Spears -- a figure whose most evident talent is to attract attention to herself -- to challenge Barack Obama.
Within an hour of the tragic shooting in Arizona, it had begun. The Blame Game. The effort to score political points.
In the aftermath of the tragic shooting of Congresswoman Giffords and others, it is predictable that some self-centered politicians and political commentators quickly assumed the killer must have been provoked by political comments.
How do we react to the horrific murders of Christina Green, 9; John Roll, 63; Gabe Zimmerman, 30; Dorothy Morris, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Schneck, 79; and the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and 13 others??
House Speaker John Boehner seemed truly appalled by the murderous rampage against Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and constituents at a supermarket in her Tucson, Ariz., district. But the Republican's contention that this was "an attack on all who serve" wasn't quite right.
