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March 1, 2012

Why Liberals Like Taxing the Wealthy By Michael Barone

I have long been puzzled by the enthusiasm with which many young liberal bloggers cheer on proposals to raise tax rates on high earners. I can understand why they might favor them, but not why they seem to invest so much psychic energy in the issue.   

Some of this may just be team ball: You cheer when your side puts up numbers on the scoreboard. So Democratic cheerleaders are rah-rahing what they insist on calling repeal of the Bush tax cuts (which have been in effect now longer than the Clinton tax increases they rolled back).   

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March 1, 2012

Romney's Sigh of Relief By Larry Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley

Phew! The sound you hear is the loud sigh of relief from the Romney campaign. A great deal was on the line for Mitt Romney in the oddest of places -- the state of his birth, the state where his dad served as governor, the state he won against John McCain four years ago. A few months ago, no one could have imagined Mitt Romney being hard-pressed in Michigan, and yet it happened.

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February 29, 2012

Prohibition By John Stossel

Unlike Bill Clinton, President Obama admits he inhaled!. "Frequently," he said. "That was the point."

People laugh when politicians talk about their drug use. The audience laughed during a 2003 CNN Democratic presidential primary debate when John Kerry, John Edwards and Howard Dean admitted smoking weed. 

Yet those same politicians oversee a cruel system that now stages SWAT raids on people's homes more than 100 times a day. People die in these raids -- some weren't even the intended targets of the police.

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February 28, 2012

Racial Preferences in College Admissions: Time to Go By Froma Harrop

Nothing the Supreme Court deals with is not political. But a case over affirmative action in college admissions has arrived at an especially political time. This is an election year. Working-class whites are considered swing voters, and the president running for re-election is both African-American and a beneficiary of the finest higher education our country offers. Come early fall, the Supreme Court will probably hear a case in which a white student, Abigail Fisher, claims that a race-conscious policy for admissions to the University of Texas violated her constitutional rights.

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February 27, 2012

Romney, Santorum Represent Different White Americas By Michael Barone

If you were listening reasonably carefully to last Wednesday's Republican presidential candidate debate, you heard Rick Santorum say, "Charles Murray just wrote a book about this."

The question was about Santorum's remarks on contraception, but his answer addressed the broader issue of "the increasing number of children being born out of wedlock in America." That is indeed one of the subjects -- but only one -- of Murray's new book "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960 to 2010."

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February 24, 2012

I Tried to Open a Lemonade Stand By John Stossel

Want to open a business in America? It isn't easy.

In Midway, Ga., a 14-year-old girl and her 10-year-old sister sold lemonade from their front yard. Two police officers bought some. But the next day, different officers ordered them to close their stand.

February 24, 2012

Trickle Down Environmentalism Has Little Public Support By Scott Rasmussen

As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama declared his support for green energy development. "For the sake of our economy, our security and the future of our planet," he said, "we must end the age of oil in our time."

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February 23, 2012

Santorum's Loose Lips Can Turn Convictions to Controversy By Michael Barone

A candidate's strengths can also be his weaknesses. Take the case of Rick Santorum.

One of his strengths is perseverance. For more than a year, he made hundreds of appearances in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, with no visible result in the polls.

He persevered and ended up finishing first in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3. Then, after poor showings in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and Nevada, he finished first in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado on Feb. 7.

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February 23, 2012

The Santorum Surge And Its Larger Meaning By Larry J Sabato

Real votes make clear what polls cannot fully pick up. The Republican election season has been shaped by two forces, other than the obvious one to oust President Obama. First, the strongest potential candidates did not enter the fray, and the remaining contenders do not satisfy most GOP voters.

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February 22, 2012

Politicians Fiddle While Fiscal Crisis Looms By John Stossel

Imagine this family budget:

Last year, you earned $24,700. But you spent $37,900, incurring $13,300 in debt, and you were already $153,500 in debt.

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February 21, 2012

Liberal Elite to Blame for Working-class Woes??? By Froma Harrop

The white working class is in big trouble, and the liberal elite is largely to blame. So says Charles Murray in his latest book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010." As a scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, and this being an election year, wouldn't he just.

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February 20, 2012

Prudence Is Key to Reversing Obama's 'Soft Despotism' By Michael Barone

Many Republican House members, and the bloggers and tea partiers who cheered their victory in gaining a majority in November 2010, seem to be seething with discontent and eager for confrontation.

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February 17, 2012

Missiles Aimed at Social Security and Medicare By Froma Harrop

Missiles are pointed at Social Security and Medicare, the broad-based programs for older Americans. Some are stealth missiles. Some are misguided missiles. But both parties are pointing them.

February 17, 2012

Numbers Suggest Santorum Could Be Romney's Worst Nightmare

In a campaign defined by Republican reluctance to embrace Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum has emerged as the latest not-Romney candidate to surge ahead. While it's impossible to predict what will happen in this volatile election season, the data suggests that Santorum might be more of a challenge for Romney than earlier flavors of the month.

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February 16, 2012

Will Catholic Bishops and the Religious Right Save Obama? By Joe Conason

What is most striking about the showdown over contraceptive freedom is not the political victory that President Obama earned by standing up for women's reproductive rights, although his Republican adversaries are certainly helping him to make the most of it. Those adversaries don't seem to realize they have fallen into a trap, whether the White House set them up intentionally or not.

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February 16, 2012

A Failure of Imagination Put Metro on Wrong Track By Michael Barone

Believers in central planning should take a look at Washington's Metro rail transit system. While they will find many things to like, they will also see examples of how central planners -- and especially rail transit planners -- can get things disastrously and expensively wrong.

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February 15, 2012

Never Trust Government Numbers By John Stossel

President Obama said in his State of the Union speech, "We've already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings."

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February 14, 2012

French Model for American Parents By Froma Harrop

One item in the annals of American exceptionalism is how exceptionally badly behaved American children are. We who hang around international airports often marvel at how European toddlers wait calmly while their American cohorts run down the halls or lie sprawled on the floor in a screaming tantrum.

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February 13, 2012

Romney Appeals to White Collars, Santorum to Blue By Michael Barone

Rick Santorum won big victories in three small contests in the Republican presidential race last Tuesday. In doing so, he reshaped the oft-reshaped nomination battle once again. But he has not installed himself as the favorite, and neither he nor Mitt Romney has established himself as the candidate who can do best in the general election.

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February 11, 2012

White Nationalists Share Spotlight With GOP at CPAC By Joe Conason

If the Conservative Political Action Conference can be expected to accomplish anything more than angry bellowing, it is to reliably embarrass every decent and sane conservative in America. Sometimes the problem is a conspiratorial extremist co-sponsor, like the John Birch Society; sometimes the problem is a certifiable kook giving the keynote address, like Glenn Beck; and sometimes the problem is just vicious bullying of gay conservatives, who have been officially expelled from the conference.

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