In the typical economic downturn, Americans thrown out of work make a deal with Euthenia, the Greek goddess of prosperity. They say (in their heads): We will get through this. We'll move in with family, find any part-time job. All we want is an assurance that good times will eventually return for hardworking people like us.
Alan Dershowitz isn't offended. He says it's OK for Sarah Palin to invoke one of the most anti-Semitic images of our time in attacking those who have been critical of her putting crosshairs over the name of the congresswoman who was later shot.
The deranged expression on the face of Jared Lee Loughner in the mug shot released by the police -- taken within hours after he allegedly killed six innocent people and wounded 14 more, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords -- suggests that we may never fully understand whatever illness afflicts him. The law requires us to assess his mental state and motivations, but we might do better to analyze our own craziness.
The steam seems to be going out of the move to "deftly pin this" -- the shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 13 others -- "on the tea partiers," as one unidentified senior Democratic operative put it to Politico.
This is a free country. If Sarah Palin wants to run for president in 2012, she is free to try. But she will not win the GOP nomination because Republican voters are not going to choose a middle-aged version of Britney Spears -- a figure whose most evident talent is to attract attention to herself -- to challenge Barack Obama.
Within an hour of the tragic shooting in Arizona, it had begun. The Blame Game. The effort to score political points.
In the aftermath of the tragic shooting of Congresswoman Giffords and others, it is predictable that some self-centered politicians and political commentators quickly assumed the killer must have been provoked by political comments.
How do we react to the horrific murders of Christina Green, 9; John Roll, 63; Gabe Zimmerman, 30; Dorothy Morris, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Schneck, 79; and the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and 13 others??
House Speaker John Boehner seemed truly appalled by the murderous rampage against Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and constituents at a supermarket in her Tucson, Ariz., district. But the Republican's contention that this was "an attack on all who serve" wasn't quite right.
"He possesses a deep understanding of how jobs are created and how to grow our economy." That's what Barack Obama said as he announced the appointment of his new chief of staff, William Daley, before a crowd of admiring White House staffers.
For a while there, I was worried that Barack Obama might actually be content to be a one-term president so long as he could say he accomplished what he set out to do.
"Stop the bad stuff" is what John Boehner told a bunch of us at breakfast a few weeks before the election. That's how he defined the GOP mission. Now he's speaker.
In his last remaining hours as California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger issued three sentence commutations. The most notable went to the son of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, Esteban Nunez, who is serving time for voluntary manslaughter.
Consider this immigration case from Canada: Three years ago, a Mexican sister and brother moved illegally to Toronto. Brenda Garcia, 30, filed for refugee status, claiming fear of persecution back home for being lesbian. Her brother, 18-year-old Daniel Garcia, enrolled in a Toronto high school. Both said they might be killed upon returning to Mexico City.
While the extension of Bush-era tax cuts dominated headlines during the recently-concluded lame duck session of Congress, the coming year will bring with it a renewed focus on public debt – whether policymakers like it or not.
My little neighborhood sandwich shop was invaded today by a horde of high school students from a school I'd never heard of. The students were more diverse than the neighborhood.
Curious fact, unearthed by Gerald Seib of The Wall Street Journal. The average age of Republican House members in the new Congress convening this week is 54.9, younger than the Republicans' average age in the previous Congress, 56.5. But the average age of House Democrats has risen, from 58 to 60.2.
Over the next four weeks, the Crystal Ball is going to roll out its very first look at the 2012 contests for Senate, Governor, House, and President.
The pas-de-deux between the Republican House and the Democratic president and Senate can get old pretty quickly. The Republican House passes repeal of ObamaCare. The Senate either kills it or Obama vetoes it. The Republican House passes spending cuts. The Senate ... you get the drift.
As we begin a new year, it may be useful to look back to one particular piece of advice that George Washington gave us in his farewell address. In paragraph 28, he reminded us that:
"It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who, that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?"
