Columnist.
National Public Radio fired its longtime news analyst Juan Williams this week for saying something that many Americans feel. Williams, who also works as a Fox News Channel contributor (as I do), told FNC host Bill O'Reilly that when he gets on an airplane and sees someone in Muslim garb, he gets "nervous."
President Obama has finally admitted that a core premise of his nearly trillion-dollar stimulus package was false. In an interview this week with The New York Times' Peter Baker, the president acknowledged that "there's no such thing as shovel-ready projects," despite the president's near-constant invocation of the term over a two-year period to explain how government spending was going to create jobs.
A new poll out from the Pew Hispanic Center suggests that even though a large majority of Hispanic voters favor the Democrats, it may not mean much come November. Hispanics are now the largest minority group in the country, making up more than 15 percent of the total population. But they constitute a smaller percentage of those actually eligible to vote -- only 9 percent -- because a larger proportion of them are under 18 years of age or are not citizens.
Members of Congress have now returned home to try to save their own jobs, never mind helping the millions of Americans who have lost theirs. "When we come back this fall, the election will be over," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the Washington Post. "I hope that it also means that Republicans will finally be able to put the American people ahead of their short-term political interests and ambitions."
Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., seems to believe that her ethnicity entitles her to keep her congressional seat this election. In a Spanish language interview on Univision, the seven-term representative from California's 47th Congressional District accused "los Vietnamese y los Republicanos" of trying to take away a seat she says belongs to the Hispanic community, and therefore her.
Washington D.C.'s mayoral race may not have attracted as much attention as some other high-profile races in Tuesday's elections, but the results could have far-reaching impact across the country. One-term mayor Adrian Fenty lost his chance for a second term in what was one of the most racially polarized elections anywhere. But this wasn't a case of a black candidate defeating a white one -- or the reverse -- or a candidate of one race losing in a city where most residents were of a different race. Nonetheless, race was an important factor that helped determine the outcome.
The president was in full campaign mode this week as he delivered a stump speech on the economy in Cleveland. But the magic is gone. He's no longer the silver-tongued orator who could make us feel good about ourselves and the prospects for our country -- which was key to his victory in 2008. Now he's just another partisan hack blaming the other party for his own failure of leadership.
The labor movement doesn't have much to celebrate this Labor Day. Congress first established the national holiday in 1894 at unions' behest. Since then, the American labor movement's fortunes rose to their zenith in 1956, when more than three-in-10 workers were union members, only to decline each year after. Today, only 12 percent of workers hold union cards. And if you discount union members who are public employees, barely 7 percent of private-sector workers are union members.
Sen. John McCain won the Arizona Republican primary against former congressman J.D. Hayworth this week, but he paid a heavy price. Never again will he be able to lead on an issue that was important to him and the Nation: reforming our broken immigration system. Not only did he flip-flop shamelessly, but it wasn't even necessary.
His supporters are genuinely puzzled at President Obama's slip in popularity. They're racking their brains to explain how a man who swept into the Oval Office on a tide of good will could have fallen so low. According to recent polls, most Americans now disapprove of the job Obama is doing. That's a dramatic change from his early months in office, when the president held a 2-to-1 advantage in his approval ratings.
Harry Reid has stuck his foot in his mouth once again, this time suggesting he doesn't know "how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican." Really? You can't be both Hispanic and Republican? I guess Marco Rubio, Susana Martinez, John Sanchez, and Brian Sandoval -- to name just the top tier of Republican Hispanics who have won their party's nomination for statewide office this year -- had either better quit the GOP or change their names. This kind of racial stereotyping is offensive. Liberals have engaged in it for years, but conservatives aren't immune either.
The call to end affirmative action gained a new proponent this week -- and from an unlikely candidate. Gregory Rodriguez, a Los Angeles Times columnist and fellow at the progressive-leaning New America Foundation, wrote this week, "We need to find new, less divisive ways to fight inequality."
Remember the Obama administration's promise to make higher education more accessible by expanding Pell grants and student loans to more students through the $787 billion stimulus? Apparently, the administration is having second thoughts -- at least when it comes to allowing students to pick their own schools. New regulations being contemplated by the Education Department would place new restrictions on loans going to students who want to use them at for-profit schools. The administration's claim is that for-profit schools exploit low-income -- often minority -- students by promising them high-paying careers, on which they can't deliver, and saddling them with debt. But is that really the issue?
