Columnist.
"This notion I can somehow just change the laws unilaterally is just not true. We are doing everything we can administratively, but fact of the matter is there are laws on the books that I have to enforce. And I think there's been great disservice done to the cause of getting the DREAM Act passed and getting comprehensive immigration passed by perpetrating the notion that somehow, by myself, I can go and do these things. It's just not true." -- Barack Obama, September 2011 President Obama is no longer president in the constitutional sense. He appears to have elevated himself to the role of emperor, deciding unilaterally what should be the law and what should not, bypassing Congress and placing himself in the role of Julius Caesar. First it was the revelation that he has a "hit list" from which he alone decides who lives and who dies by drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen.
Don't you find it odd that the word extremism seems to apply only to conservative Republicans? Terminology often drives political discourse and those who control the terms often determine the outcome. Establishment Republicans have too often been uncomfortable in their own skin. When they win elections, they sometimes seem unsure of what to do next. Democrats never seem to have this problem. They operate according to their core convictions and are never considered extreme. Instead, they are moderate, even normal. When Republicans stick to their convictions, they are branded with a scarlet "E." Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush raised the extremist issue last Monday in New York at a breakfast for reporters sponsored by Bloomberg View. As reported by Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times, Bush said Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, the former president, would have a "hard time" fitting in with a GOP led by the tea party movement. Bush said George H.W. Bush and Reagan would struggle with "an orthodoxy that doesn't allow for disagreement." Bush's father agreed with Democrats on raising taxes, breaking his pledge not to, and was defeated for re-election. Is this the path Jeb Bush recommends for Republicans: agree with Democrats and lose elections?
LONDON -- One of many things left out of the film "The Iron Lady" was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's warnings on the effects a single currency would have on the economies of European nations. Thatcher's premonitions place her among the great political prophets of all time. On the single currency, Peter Oborne, a columnist for the London Daily Telegraph, writes, "Mrs. Thatcher foresaw with painful clarity the devastation it was bound to cause. Her autobiography records how she warned John Major, her euro-friendly chancellor of the exchequer, that the single currency could not accommodate both industrial powerhouses such as Germany and smaller countries such as Greece." Thatcher predicted the currency would harm poorer countries because it would "devastate their inefficient economies." The idea of a European Union modeled on the United States was unlikely to succeed from the beginning because, unlike American states, European countries lack a common bond. There are different languages, different histories (Colorado, for example, never invaded Nebraska) and different religions, including for six decades, atheism imposed by communist dictators in Eastern Europe.
In his 2007 book, "The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800," historian Jay Winik writes that among Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, none "believed in political parties, which they feared would lead to 'rage,' 'dissolution,' and eventual 'ruin' of the republic..." The latest poll from the Pew Research Center, "Partisan Polarization Surges in Bush, Obama Years," seems to indicate that the American people have come around to their way of thinking. The poll, writes The New York Times, found that "the share of self-identified Republicans has declined over the last two decades to about 24 percent of the country, from about 31 percent. The share of Democrats has stayed about steady -- to 32 percent, from 33 percent -- while the share of independents has risen to 38 percent, from 29 percent."
If the polls are right, the vote today in Wisconsin on whether to recall Gov. Scott Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and four Republican state senators could amount to a redial of their original victory. Voters who first elected the conservative Walker on a promise to fix the state's dismal economy and crushing debt appear ready to reaffirm their judgment. They would be making the right decision given the results Gov. Walker appears to have produced.
There will be investigations and already there are lawsuits over the rollout of Facebook's overhyped IPO last week, but no investigation is necessary into the reason for the outrage over the stock's rapid fall. It's called human nature. It is the same characteristic that causes people to believe against staggering odds that they can win the lottery, or score big in Atlantic City or discover a fool-proof "system" for playing the stock market. It is the familiar get-rich-quick notion that somehow one can bypass hard work, sound financial planning and win The Big One, retiring to a life of ease.
Evidence of big media's bias against religion that doesn't advance the secular and liberal agenda of the Democratic Party is beyond dispute. Any faith attached to a conservative agenda is to be ridiculed, stereotyped and misrepresented. Islam is a notable exception. The media appear to bend over backward not to offend Muslims. The Washington Post on Monday, reporting from Carrollton, Ark., uncovered an event that occurred nearly 155 years ago and then sought to link it to the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney: "On Sept. 11, 1857, a wagon train from this part of Arkansas met with a gruesome fate in Utah, where most of the travelers were slaughtered by a Mormon militia in an episode known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre."
In the Aesop Fable "The Grasshopper and the Ant," there are moral, economic and political lessons for our time, or any other. As the story goes, the lazy grasshopper wiles away his summer days singing and hopping and having an all-around good time while industrious ants work and march and struggle to carry kernels of corn to their anthills, storing up for the winter to come. As you would imagine, the inevitable happens. Come winter, the ants have plenty of food to see them through the cold, fallow months. The fun-loving grasshopper has nothing. The grasshopper begs the hardworking ants to share their bounty, but they refuse.
It is one thing to talk about "fairness" when it comes to allowing gays and lesbians to marry; it is quite another to claim biblical authority for such relationships.
LYNCHBURG, Va. -- It wasn't exactly the belly of the beast Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney visited recently on a picture-perfect commencement day at "the world's largest Christian University," but his appearance was a test as to whether the conservative school, founded by the late Jerry Falwell, would embrace a devout Mormon. And Romney passed.
Former NPR and current Fox News political analyst Juan Williams made an excellent point Monday night on "The O'Reilly Factor." Williams said the major reason President Obama had not endorsed same-sex marriage is because of the strong opposition to it in the black and Hispanic communities. Who could have doubted, though, that the president favors expanding the definition of marriage to include gays and lesbians? Vice President Joe Biden brought this divisive social issue to the forefront of the presidential campaign with his comments Sunday on "Meet the Press." Biden said he is "absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties."
"Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr." is another of the Harvard professor's wonderful television series for PBS. This is "must-see TV" and a more than worthy sequel to three previous projects Gates has hosted about how some of us came to be what and who we are. In this latest 10-part series, Gates explores the genealogical and genetic history of a diverse group of people, from entertainer Harry Connick Jr. and Pastor Rick Warren to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Brown University President Ruth Simmons. There are less famous people, but the famous get you hooked for the rest.
It is something of a truism that whenever the federal government steps in, costs usually rise and efficiency declines. That is especially true when it comes to a college education, which President Obama promised during the 2008 campaign to make more affordable. "We've got to make sure every young person can afford to go to college," he said then. Instead, tuition costs keep rising, along with the debt owed by increasing numbers of graduates, who are now campaigning -- with bipartisan approval in an election year -- for Congress to stop interest rates on their subsidized Stafford loans from doubling in July.
In the 1993 movie "Dave" the faux president (played by Kevin Kline) calls in his best friend (played by Charles Grodin) and they stay up all night balancing the federal budget, not by raising taxes, but by cutting unnecessary and wasteful spending. If only it were that easy. Most presidents have talked about cutting spending, but few succeed because Congress holds the power of the purse and is reluctant to give it up.
"The war on terror is over," or so claims an unnamed senior State Department official, as reported by National Journal's Michael Hirsh in his recent article "The Post al-Qaida Era." Really? Well, if the war is over, I must have missed the peace treaty signing ceremony. I also haven't noticed a decline in incendiary rhetoric, or the disarmament -- or at least laying down of arms -- that usually accompanies the end of war. Does this mean we can do away with full-body scanners and TSA pat-downs?
After Richard Nixon lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy and the California governor's race two years later (when he uttered the immortal line to the media, "You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore") the former vice president knew he must reinvent himself to run for president again in 1968. Thus was born "the new Nixon," an attempt to transform himself from "the old Nixon" the public didn't like, into a warmer, softer, more approachable person. As it turned out, the "new Nixon" was simply the "old Nixon" with a new coat of political paint.
Dick Clark, who died Wednesday at 82, was called "America's oldest teenager." That's not only because he looked so good late into life, but also because he carried with him the teen memories of those of us who grew up watching "American Bandstand" on glorious black-and-white, small-screen television sets. Every weekday afternoon, I would arrive home from school, say hello to Mom, grab a snack and plop down in front of the TV to watch a dance show broadcast live from South Philadelphia.
In the 1962 Howard Lindsay-Russel Crouse-Irving Berlin Broadway musical, "Mr. President," one of the songs in the production is titled "The Secret Service," which begins, "the Secret Service makes me nervous..." If allegations are true that at least 11 Secret Service agents and several members of the U.S. military consorted with prostitutes prior to President Obama's arrival in Cartagena, Colombia, it should make a lot of people nervous. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has pledged that lawmakers will be "looking over the shoulder" of the inspector general as the Department of Homeland Security office investigates the allegations. The accused have been placed on administrative leave and their security clearances have been revoked.
Virtually everything said and done in a presidential election year distorts the truth, much like concave and convex mirrors in a carnival attraction alter one's true reflection. That kind of distortion occurred in the recent dustup over whether women who choose to stay at home can completely understand the economic challenges and personal struggles faced by women who choose, or need, to work outside the home while raising children. There is no question that professional women receive much more societal validation than "stay-at-home moms." Few magazine covers at the checkout line or full-page ads promoting events and awards to "successful" women, laud mothers who stay home to raise their children. There aren't a lot of television shows today like "Ozzie and Harriett," "Leave It to Beaver" or "Father Knows Best."
