On Dec. 2, as Islamic terrorists in combat gear strode into a San Bernardino Christmas party and began methodically executing Americans for their religious beliefs, the commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces started ruminating on all the political angles and consequences.
When the President of the United States asks the television networks to set aside time for him to broadcast a speech from the Oval Office, we can usually expect that he has something new to say. But President Obama's speech Sunday night was just a rehash of what he has been saying all along, trying to justify policies that have repeatedly turned out disastrously for America and our allies.
The Republican Party certainly has its problems: a chaotic presidential race; a despised congressional party; unpopularity among the rapidly growing number of non-whites.
In Sunday's first-round of regional elections in France, the clear and stunning winner was the National Front of Marine Le Pen.
Her party rolled up 30 percent of the vote, and came in first in 6 of 13 regions. Marine herself won 40 percent of her northeast district.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg promises to give 99 percent of his Facebook shares to charity -- eventually.
There are just eight-and-a-half weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses, with two of those weeks devoted to holidays during which polling is ordinarily not conducted, and the race for the Republican presidential nomination seems to be taking perceptible shape. And it continues to defy conventional wisdom.
As news of the San Bernardino jihadist shootings blared on airport TVs, I spotted a TSA monitor flashing the now ubiquitous message:
"If you SEE something, SAY something."
Republican presidential polling leader Donald Trump signed a pledge earlier this year agreeing to support the eventual GOP nominee, but that agreement is certainly not legally unenforceable. If Trump wants to run as a third-party or independent candidate, there’s nothing stopping him. Trump is aware of this: The weekend before Thanksgiving, he retreated to his pre-pledge position, saying that he needs to be “treated fairly” by the GOP in order to rule out an independent bid. Some senior Republicans naturally wonder if the only outcome Trump will regard as fair is his installation as the party nominee.
Is it now time to invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment?
Has our president officially lost his ability to discharge the powers and duties of his office?
This week my TV show is on gun control. I interviewed activist Leah Barrett, who wants stricter gun laws.
In life and leadership, accountability means consequences for bad behavior.
Sometimes you can learn something about today's world from a history book -- even a book about obscure characters in a long-ago time in a far-away corner of the planet, featuring conflicts between regimes that ceased existing at least a century ago. For me, one such book has been "Agents of Empire," by the Oxford historian Noel Malcolm, gaudily subtitled "Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World."
Storm trooper tactics by bands of college students making ideological demands across the country, and immediate preemptive surrender by college administrators -- such as at the University of Missouri recently -- bring back memories of the 1960s, for those of us old enough to remember what it was like being there, and seeing first-hand how painful events unfolded.
Sure, that sounds counterintuitive. Thanksgiving Thursday is the first day of a (for most of us) four-day weekend, a time devoted to gorging on comfort food and nonstop viewing of college and professional football games.
Many people naturally assume that since I work in political journalism, I must breathe, drink and eat politics 24/7/365 -- including on the Thanksgiving holiday.
Why, dirty Americans, do you hate people from exotic, war-torn places? Why do you despise other cultures? Why do you so hate freedom of religion?
What might have happened if a few of the 1,500 concert attendees in Paris' Bataclan theater had guns? The terrorists had time to kill, reload and kill again. The police unit didn't come for more than a half hour. If a few people in the theater were armed, might they have killed the killers?
It is amazing how many different ways the same thing can be said, creating totally different impressions. For example, when President Barack Obama says that defeating ISIS is going to take a long time, how is that different from saying that he is going to do very little, very slowly? It is saying the same thing in different words.
Each of our two political parties, ancient by world standards, seems to be facing a gathering storm.
When it comes to politics, Americans are idiots.
