Doctors would jab sharp instruments into King Henry VIII's arm and drain blood out of his body. The best medical minds of the 16th century prescribed bloodletting as a means to "rebalance the body's humors," the spring equinox being the ideal time. Henry didn't argue with his physicians. After all, Tudor England had the best health care system in the world.
Is Congress, behind on Barack Obama's deadlines on health care and cap-and-trade legislation, and flummoxed by the failure of the stimulus package to hold unemployment below 10.2 percent, prepared to address the immigration issue next year?
"I'm not scared of what (self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed) would say at trial," Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee as he defended his decision to prosecute Mohammed and four other accused 9/11 planners in a federal criminal court.
So, as it turns out, did I not need to have my breasts squeezed in the mammogram machines every year between the ages of 40 and 50? Could I have missed the two scares in there, especially the one when both of my kids were babies?
Now that we've put the 2009 races to bed, we can start to focus heavily on 2010. Since our last update in June (available here), some critical Senate contests have undergone a transformation of sorts.
A recent Gallup poll found that 55 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of the mass media. Hence, many readers may have felt little outrage when they read a few weeks ago that Scott Gerber, then communications director for California Attorney General Jerry Brown, recorded interviews with reporters -- most notably, my friend and colleague Carla Marinucci -- without notifying them.
President Obama took his declining dollar to the Asia-Pacific economic conference, and he added to it a declinist opinion of America's economy. His big message? Don't count on American consumers to lead the world from recession to recovery and beyond. His second big message? In the U.S., we must save more and spend less.
On his 10-day trip to Asia and in his 10th month in office, Barack Obama is beginning to encounter limits on his ambition to change the world. Even as he bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia last April and to the emperor of Japan last week, the world refuses to bow back.
The loudest voices on the right never tire of telling us that they are the truest patriots. They claim to be the deepest believers in our system, the strongest defenders of our Constitution, the most upbeat, bold and courageous Americans anywhere.
Amtrak riders passing through New London, Conn., can catch an odd sight in an otherwise picturesque New England setting: a fancy corporate center standing next to a street grid emptied of nearly all its buildings. This used to be the Fort Trumbull neighborhood, a working class enclave that would have been largely forgotten had it not been central to a controversial 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on eminent domain -- the government's right to take private property for public use.
In the past few days, the White House has made it clear that the president wants specific exit strategies for all his Afghan war options.
I really hate defending Sarah Palin. I mean, I don't agree with her on anything. Seeing a woman at her level saying and doing some of the things she says and does is like nails screeching against a blackboard for me. And while she ultimately helps Democrats in any partisan contest, her brand of polarizing politics and efforts to annihilate the moderate wing of the Republican Party ultimately aren't very good for her own party (not my problem) or the country (everyone's problem).
Nearly every Republican these days calls for tax cuts and lower deficits, and in the same sentence. Point out that these goals clash -- that taxes pay for government and not paying for government causes deficits, and the Republican counters, "We must shrink government, instead."
Barack Obama told the House Democratic Caucus before the roll call vote on health care on Nov. 7 that they would be better off politically if they passed the bill than if they let it fail. Bill Clinton speaking to the Senate Democrats' lunch on Nov. 10 cited his party's big losses in 1994 after Congress failed to pass his health care legislation as evidence that Democrats would suffer more from failure to pass a bill than from disaffection with a bill that was signed into law.
EDINBURGH -- Do not believe that Scotland was united behind Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's decision to grant "compassionate" release to the terminally ill convicted Pan Am 103 bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi in August.
No doubt off-year elections can be overanalyzed. They are few in number. They sometimes give evidence of conflicting trends. And their predictive value for the midterm elections to follow has been rather conclusively debunked.
As the fallout continues to settle from the 2009 elections, among the more overlooked results was a ballot issue in Boulder County, Colorado that would have extended an existing sales tax to fund the acquisition of additional “open space.”
There's an old saying that hard cases make bad law. The same rule, unfortunately, applies to presidential decisions.
Anniversaries are opportunities to reflect on the past and on what it might mean for the future. Monday saw the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, even if Barack Obama could not find time to travel once again to Berlin to attend the commemoration there. And Wednesday is the 91st anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I.
Within hours after the House of Representatives approved health care reform by a narrow margin, Republicans predicted retribution at the polls next fall. They promised to make every Democrat regret that historic vote as the first step toward the reversal of power in Washington.
