When you get into discussions about the Middle East with certain people, you start hearing that the great mistake was the partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. If that had somehow just not happened, you hear, everything would be all right.
Two is a coincidence, they say, but three is a trend. Hot body shots of three Washington politicians are all over the Internet. All three are of Republicans, and all three are men. Do we have a trend here or just a creepy coincidence?
President Obama addressed an enthusiastic crowd Tuesday when he spoke in El Paso, Texas, about liberalizing federal immigration laws. Audience members exhorted the president to "tear down" the border fence and called immigration hard-liners "racist."
It was probably ironic that in at least one of the online papers I was reading, the story of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver's separation played literally back to back with the story of Newt and Callista Gingrich's ascension and how it is expected that she will turn the liability of his infidelity, which led to their marriage, into an asset.
There is a particular media conceit that, in the garb of purported impeccable disclosure, is in fact a license for news sources to market talking points.
Nice try, Republicans, running a political protection racket to push your Medicare scheme. Scrubbed of the sweet talk about saving Medicare, your offer boiled down to this: You older folks support us, and we won't touch a hair on your government health-insurance plan. Only those 55 and under get whacked.
At the end of his "60 Minutes" interview, President Obama said of Osama bin Laden's death, "Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn't deserve what he got needs to have their head examined."
Some years ago, the columnist and editor Michael Kinsley sponsored a contest to come up with the most boring headline. The winner was, "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative."
How small is the California prison population likely to become if Gov. Jerry Brown has his way? In three years, California's prison population would be 20 percent smaller.
It is always a happy moment when Americans are reminded of our country's greatness, especially when we are so often warned about its imminent decline -- and the elimination of Osama bin Laden, fanatical murderer of thousands of Christians, Jews and Muslims, was certainly such a moment.
These are very tricky times for conservatives in America. For starters, they don't really have a candidate. OK, that's familiar. More unusual: They don't really have an opponent to hate.
If the recent budget debate has taught Americans anything, it is that the power of the gavel in Congress can be as powerful as the executive pen in the White House. In the blossoming 2012 campaign, we should, therefore, focus not only on the presidential election, but also the elections for Congress.
The death of Osama bin Laden, inflicted by crack U.S. Special Forces personnel acting on the orders of President Barack Obama, is undoubtedly a triumph for the embattled commander in chief. But will it provide him tangible political help when he stands for reelection a year and a half from now?
San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey explained in The San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday Insight his opposition to Secure Communities, the federal program that automatically passes new arrestees' fingerprints to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The program applies to "everyone booked into a county jail," Hennessey complained -- "even (in) a minor matter, such as having no driver's license in one's possession in a traffic stop."
The big story was that they got him, not that he was stopped. Osama bin Laden was already stopped.
In the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden, I found myself agreeing with Charles Krauthammer that this was a global game-changer for American greatness. It was a gutsy and courageous decision by President Obama, brilliantly executed by the Navy SEALs and all the intelligence and support behind them.
Let's cheerfully and ungrudgingly give credit to Barack Obama for approving the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.
If you threw a dart at the map of the Middle East and North Africa, you almost couldn't miss hitting a spot where an historic event was unfolding.
The big news is not that Osama bin Laden is dead. I mean, that is certainly big news, but a guy in hiding who has a record price tag on his head is not exactly an effective leader of a revolutionary movement. The big news, at least by my lights, is that Americans waving flags seem to be the biggest demonstrations going on.
Nothing succeeds like success. In the years since 9/11, Americans have had to live with the fact that President George W. Bush failed to take Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" -- to use the phrase that the former president came to regret.
