Political Commentary

Most Recent Releases

February 5, 2013'Baby Bust' Baloney By Froma Harrop
America's alleged "baby bust" is pushing the country over "a demographic cliff." So argues Jonathan V. Last in The Wall Street Journal. Stacking one highly debatable claim on the next, Last builds a palace of hooey, in the basement of which sits a conservative agenda that's not very conservative.
Here are the agreed-on facts: America's fertility rate -- the number of children born by the average woman -- has dipped below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. Were it not for immigrants' having more children, it would be lower still. All arrows point to it going down further, as the Latino fertility rate plummets. (In Mexico, it's at the replacement level.)
February 4, 2013Fewer Dollars and Babies Threaten Social Programs By Michael Barone
Our major public policies are based on the assumption that America will continue to enjoy growth. Economic growth and population growth.
Through most of our history, this assumption has proved to be correct. These days, not so much.
Last week, the Commerce Department announced that the gross domestic product shrunk by 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012. And the Census Bureau reported that the U.S. birth rate in 2011 was 63.2 per 1,000 women age 15 to 44, the lowest ever recorded.
February 1, 2013Not All Smiles on Immigration Reform? By Froma Harrop
Such a happy scene: Republican senators grinning next to Democratic senators as though the debt-ceiling crisis, ObamaCare and Sarah Palin never happened. The unifying event is a bipartisan plan to reform the immigration laws, which definitely need fixing.    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                
                
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                            February 1, 2013Real Border Control Has to Come First in Any Immigration Deal By Scott Rasmussen
A bipartisan group of eight U.S. senators has proposed an immigration reform plan that appears to broadly reflect what voters would like to see. But there's a catch.
January 31, 2013Better Tools for Immigration Reform Than in 1986 By Michael Barone
Yesterday, as Barack Obama called for a bipartisan immigration bill in Las Vegas and Sen. Marco Rubio called for one on Rush Limbaugh's program, the chances for passage look surprisingly good.
January 31, 2013Benghazi Hearings: Capitol Hill's Angry Little Men Keep Making Hillary Bigger By Joe Conason
Anyone truly concerned about the safety of U.S. diplomatic personnel abroad -- and that should include every American -- has fresh reason for fury over last September's disaster in Benghazi and its aftermath. But the target of public anger should not be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose conduct has been exemplary ever since the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three of his brave colleagues lost their lives last September. Far more deserving of scorn are the likes of Republican Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and all the other grandstanding, conspiracy-mongering, ill-informed politicians who questioned her Wednesday on Capitol Hill.
Four months after the tragedy occurred, Republicans on both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee still seem to be obsessed with the talking points provided to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice before she appeared on television to discuss the incident.
January 30, 2013Obama Is Not King By John Stossel
Watching President Obama's inaugural, I was confused. It looked like a new king was being crowned. Thousands cheered, like subjects worshipping nobility. At a time when America faces unsustainable debt and terrible economic troubles, why such pomp?
Maybe it's because so many people tell themselves presidents can solve any problem, like fairy-tale kings -- or gods.
Before America's first inauguration, John Adams suggested George Washington be called "His Most Benign Highness." Fortunately, Congress insisted on the more modest title, "President."
January 29, 2013Let's Stop Arguing About Birth Control By Froma Harrop
I'm looking forward to the year 2040, because that is when we won't be debating anymore whether birth control belongs in a basic health plan.    
January 28, 2013Republican Annihilation Is Not Likely by Michael Barone
These days, our political parties are defined by their presidents. Their policies and their programs tend to become their respective parties' orthodoxies.
January 25, 2013The Thinking Gets Better, the Second Term Around : A Commentary by Froma Harrop
The Obama administration initially billed France about $18 million to cover U.S. military support for its mission in Mali, while Canada offered similar services at no cost.
January 25, 2013Echoes of FDR: Obama's Inspiring Address Links Freedom With Security and Dignity By Joe Conason
So much for the "Grand Bargain" -- or at least for the not-so-grand gutting of Social Security and Medicare that the "very serious" thought-leaders of Washington political and media circles have always found so appealing. Whatever President Obama may have contemplated up until now, his second inaugural address, delivered yesterday on the steps of the Capitol, bluntly repudiated Republican arguments against the social safety net -- and forcefully identified those popular programs with the most sacred American values.
"We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity," said Obama -- not only because it is the responsibility we have to each other as human beings, but because security and dignity, for every man, woman, and child, are the existential foundations of freedom.
January 25, 2013Obama Inaugural: Full of Audacity, but Little Hope By Michael Barone
Commentators both left and right agree that Barack Obama's second inaugural speech Monday was highly partisan, with shoutouts to his constituencies on the left and defiance of his critics on the right.   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                
                
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                            January 25, 2013Politicians Need to Catch Up When It Comes to the People's Money By Scott Rasmussen
President Obama in his inaugural address made it clear he intends to protect the nation's entitlement programs. In the world of Washington politics, this amounts to a pledge that the president will make sure that no changes will be made to programs like Social Security and Medicare.
January 23, 2013Shopping Around for a Better Life By John Stossel
Thanks, California! Thanks for your monstrous spending and absurd regulatory overreach! America needs you. We need Connecticut and Illinois, too! We need you the way we needed the Soviet Union, as models of failure, to warn us what happens if we believe those who say, "Government can."
Moving to California was once the dream for many Americans. Its population grew at almost triple the national average -- until 1990. Then big government, in the form of endless regulation and taxes, killed much of the dream. In the last decade, 2 million people left California.
January 22, 2013More Thoughts on Aaron Swartz By Froma Harrop
Open-access people, meet the copyright laws. Much has been written about Aaron Swartz, the computer genius who killed himself after being charged with a variety of cybercrimes. Some ardent friends accuse the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of having cruelly called in the police to deal with him.
By then, MIT had foiled multiple attempts to illegally download academic journals and realized that someone had broken in to a wire closet to achieve the same end. MIT security analysts had also detected activity from China on the netbook being used, making them extra wary.
January 21, 2013GOP Puts Spotlight on Feckless Senate Democrats By Michael Barone
Have the House Republicans come up with a winning strategy on the debt ceiling and spending cuts? Or just a viable one? Maybe so.
They certainly need one that is at least the latter, if not the former. Barack Obama is up in the polls since the election, as most re-elected presidents have been. The most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows him with 52 percent approval and 44 percent disapproval. Other public polls have similar results.
In contrast, the NBC/WSJ poll reports that only 26 percent have positive feelings about the Republican Party and 51 negative feelings. Toward Speaker John Boehner only 18 percent have positive feelings and 37 percent negative feelings.
January 18, 2013Aaron Swartz Was Accused of Real Crimes By Froma Harrop
Aaron Swartz: Robin Hood or John Dillinger? He was not as virtuous as Robin and hardly as bad as John. Call the computer genius saint or sinner, few will argue with labeling his suicide at age 26 a "tragic loss."
His friends in the "free culture movement" now accuse federal authorities of having driven Swartz to kill himself over "baseless" charges. But he did break into a computer-wiring closet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and download academic papers for free distribution to the world. Had he been a street kid ripping off copper pipes, as opposed to tech star "liberating" information, would there have been much outcry over a prosecutor's threat of jail time?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                
                
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                            January 18, 2013Searching for Answers After Newtown By Scott Rasmussen
Following the school shooting horror in Newtown, Conn., our nation shares a heartfelt belief that something must be done. Polls instantly showed an increase in support for stricter gun control laws. Fifty-one percent of American adults expressed that view in Rasmussen Reports polling.
January 17, 2013Before Default, Let Republicans Bump Up Hard Against The Debt Ceiling By Joe Conason
A prolonged confrontation over the nation's debt ceiling -- unlike the "fiscal cliff," which provoked many scary headlines -- could truly be grave for both America and the world. While press coverage often mentions the possibility of lowered credit ratings for the U.S. Treasury (again), that might only be the mildest consequence if Republicans in Congress actually refuse to authorize borrowing and avoid default.
January 17, 2013Ivory-tower Obama Can't Abide Views He Doesn't Share By Michael Barone
To judge from his surly demeanor and defiant words at his press conference on Monday, Barack Obama begins his second term with a strategy to defeat and humiliate Republicans rather than a strategy to govern.
His point blank refusal to negotiate over the debt ceiling was clearly designed to make the House Republicans look bad.
But Obama knows very well that negotiations usually accompany legislation to increase the government's debt limit. As Gordon Gray of the conservative American Action Network points out, most of the 17 increases in the debt ceiling over the last 20 years have been part of broader measures.