SALT LAKE CITY -- American flags and lush spring grass lined the long drive of a Mormon meetinghouse here in the desert capital of Utah. Television trucks parking outside. Utahans were gathering last week for the funeral of Bill Orton, a Democrat who had represented an especially conservative congressional district in this most Republican state for three terms.
The mantra from the left during the Bush years went something like this: The world is not black and white. Sophisticated minds should seek out different, nuanced opinions.
To be relevant in politics, you need either formal power or a lot of people willing to follow your lead. The governing Republicans in the nation’s capital have lost both on their continuing path to irrelevance.
When she was a 13-year-old student at Safford Middle School in Arizona, Savana Redding was strip-searched by school officials in search of -- this is no joke -- ibuprofen. Now she is suing the district and the officials for violating her Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
It's tough trying to please people who crave vengeance almost as much as Madame Defarge, the unsparing French revolutionary in Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities."
Consider Cary Grant in "North by Northwest." Sinister forces may be chasing him for reasons he can't comprehend, but this is 1959, and neither the BlackBerry nor the Global Positioning System chip that goes inside it has been invented. And so the mysterious crop-duster has no way to pinpoint which cornstalks he's hiding under. The truck Grant steals also lacks a GPS that could help enemies foil his getaway.
Her name is Susan Boyle. If you haven't heard of her, you need to listen to her. Consider it my gift to you. Go to YouTube, along with the tens of millions of others who already have, and listen to the voice of an angel -- a plump, unemployed, 47-year-old "spinster" (as she was described by more than one British newspaper) who lives with her cat.
After 9/11, Americans wanted one thing from Washington: to prevent future terrorist attacks. President George W. Bush, the CIA and other hard-working officials delivered. For their trouble, a handful of those individuals now have reason to fear that they may be ruined.
The balance between the executive and legislative branches in writing laws has changed over the centuries. In the 19th century, Sen. Stephen Douglas wrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act, with President Franklin Pierce just an interested bystander.
Few aspects of American politics are as ridiculous and dangerous as the right-wing urge to substitute macho posturing for foreign policy. That irrepressible habit surfaces constantly now that President Obama is in the Oval Office, most recently when he shook hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, a smiling moment that provoked calls for impeachment among the most deranged conservatives.
How far will the Obama administration move to assert regulatory control over key sectors of the economy? Are we moving away from democratic capitalism and toward some sort of corporatist state-directed economy? That could be the biggest stock market and economic-growth issue facing us today.
Last week, the Obama administration declined to cite China for currency manipulation despite the fact that most experts -- including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during his confirmation testimony -- do not deny the obvious currency-rate fixing by China.
History is written by many people, but those who write government school textbooks tend to hold disproportionate sway.
Watch out. Everywhere you look, the talking heads are going to be talking about Barack Obama's first hundred days.
Republican politicians are afraid of their base. Very afraid. Press folks have categorized the April 15 TEA parties -- TEA for "Taxed Enough Already" -- as anti-President Barack Obama, anti-government and even "anti-CNN." But it is GOP leaders who are scared senseless (for want of a better word) by the protests.
The hardest group to sell on national health reform is those who don't desperately need it.
As Barack Obama finishes up his second major foreign tour, a pattern in his approach to foreign policy seems to be emerging.
Last Wednesday, conservatives held coast-to-coast "TEA parties" designed to send the message to Washington and state governments that the partiers feel "taxed enough already." The exercise struck me as more than a little out of touch with the political realities of President Barack Obama's
Listen to Texas Gov. Rick Perry. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that."
The importance of partisanship in contemporary American politics is widely recognized. Among the public as well as political leaders, party divisions run deep and it is increasingly clear that the arrival of a new President in Washington has done little to change that fundamental reality.
