Political sages turn today's polling and past voter behavior into confident predictions about upcoming elections. That's their job. But fortune-tellers may do nearly as well, especially when the vote takes place months in the future.
Barack Obama's decision to postpone his trip to Indonesia and Australia -- to a democracy with the world's largest Muslim population and to the only nation that has fought alongside us in all the wars of the last century -- is of a piece with his foreign policy generally: attack America's friends and kowtow to our enemies.
Former Congressman Tom Campbell swears that former eBay CEO and gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman did not squeeze him out of the GOP primary for governor and prompt him to switch to the race to unseat Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. Whitman spokesperson Sarah Pompei also denied that Whitman Inc. was involved in Campbell's decision.
Not many people noticed amid the Democrats' struggle to jam their health care bill through the House, but in recent weeks U.S. Treasury bonds have lost their status as the world's safest investment.
We are now beginning to enter the Kansas-Nebraska Act stage of the socialist crisis of the Republic.
Looking back at last Sunday’s House vote on health care reform, it is crystal clear that the party leanings of congressional districts, not just the party identification of the congressmen, influenced the final tally. Currently, there are 46 Democrats in the House who represent districts won by John McCain in 2008.
Each party in the last two decades has benefited from “big wave” elections to win control of the House of Representatives – the Republicans in 1994, the Democrats in 2006 and 2008, when they turned a distinct minority in the House into a solid majority.
If you want to know how Americans may look at Sept. 11 in another 10 years, look to Libya. In a luxury villa in Tripoli, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi -- the convicted bomber of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 that left 270 dead -- has been living in style since his "compassionate release" from a Scottish prison last August, precipitated by reports that al-Megrahi had less than three months to live. You may recall the scene at the Tripoli airport, where the Lockerbie bomber received a hero's welcome before a crowd waving Libyan flags and Scottish saltires.
Listening to right-wing talk radio on the day after Congress passed health care reform, Bill O'Reilly was stunned. To him, the hosts and the callers sounded "crazed" as they shrieked about "the end of the world, we're socialist now, we have to take the country back."
When the government hands money to poor people, that's welfare, Republicans say. That's taking money from productive taxpayers and encouraging dependency, they assert.
Lost amid the partisan sniping and procedural jousting over the passage of “Obamacare” is a fundamental, unavoidable hypocrisy - one that’s worth unmasking as Washington politicians continue to ignore the will of the American people and plunge our nation deeper into full-blown socialism.
No Republicans supported Medicare in the House of Representatives until it reached the floor. It came out of the House Ways and Means and Rules committees on strict party-line votes. On the procedural vote that brought Medicare to a vote, exactly 10 Republicans voted for the bill. Only when it was clear that Democrats had the votes did it become a "bipartisan" bill, passing with the support of 70 Republicans and 237 Democrats.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday launched the Democrats' argument for the health care bill, claiming, "This is an American proposal that honors the traditions of our country." Does that suggest that opposition is un-American? And what are the traditions that are American that this law fulfills? The Democrats argue that the bill fulfills the "right" of all Americans to government-assured health care services. The congressional Democrats claim many other things that a majority of the country believes to be inconsistent with truth and reality.
What part of "immigration reform" don't you understand -- or, rather, don't want to understand? The send-'em-home crowd doesn't "get it" that a new enforcement regime must be paired with an amnesty for millions, even though they broke the law by working here illegally. And an alliance of cheap-labor types and ethnic activists don't want to understand that real reform means the government will actually stop employers from hiring undocumented workers.
You've really got to hand it to President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Saddled with a majority of both houses and a hold on the White House, they somehow managed to pass the Senate health care bill in the House. It's practically a miracle.
As this is written, the lobbying of House Democrats on the health care bill is going on apace, and every hour brings news of another no vote converted to yes, or a yes vote switching to no.
Last week by voice vote, the Senate unanimously approved a measure to reduce the infamous 100-1 disparity in federal mandatory minimum prison sentences for possession of crack versus powder cocaine. The new, improved disparity would be 18-1.
The Democratic leadership's struggle to pass the Senate health care bill in the House looks like a great case study for political scientists. They have many examples of the leaders of a party majority trying to push controversial legislation through a balky chamber.
