-
Of all the pictures I saw from the Iraqi elections last weekend, my favorite was on nytimes.com: an Iraqi mother holding up her son to let him stuff her ballot into the box. I loved that picture. Being able to freely cast a ballot for the candidate of your choice is still unusual for Iraqis and for that entire region. That mother seemed to be saying: When I was a child, I never got to vote. I want to live in a world where my child will always be able to.
-
President Barack Obama will star in his very own televised entertainment spectacular on Thursday — let's call it Federal Health Care Kabuki Theater.
The Republicans wanted to dance. Now they'll have to step lightly. They were foolish to get trapped in his so-called summit on national health care. Or did they actually think they could outperform the skinny fellow from Chicago?
-
The Kentucky Republican finally caved in Tuesday after relentless pressure from other senators — including Republicans — to drop what the Politico called his “one man” filibuster of a bill to extend expiring unemployment benefits.
-
In a great old episode of The West Wing, the president's chief of staff, Leo McGarry, is schmoozing up a politician the White House wants to win over. After their chat, McGarry puts the ultimate power move on the pol: he casually ushers the dazzled man into the Oval Office, where the president is waiting to greet him like a dear friend.
-
‘Victory has a hundred fathers,” John F. Kennedy said, “and defeat is an orphan.”
By that standard, George W. Bush has won the Iraq war.
Last month, Vice President Joe Biden proclaimed on CNN’s Larry King Live that the peaceful transition to democracy and the (partial) withdrawal of U.S. forces “could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”
-
Steve Phillips is the world's luckiest man. He's proven that you, too, can profit from adultery.
Fired by ESPN for hav ing sex with an unglued junior staffer who embarrassed the network, stalked his son on the Internet, and terrorized his wife, Phillips has been sentenced to, of all things, residential sex-addiction treatment. Sounds like a great way to meet horny chicks.
-
Tiger Woods doesn’t owe me an apology. Nothing that he has ever done has cost me a dime nor an hour of sleep.
This is not a plea to be “non-judgmental.” I am very judgmental about all sorts of things, including Tiger Woods’s bad behavior. But that is very different from saying that he somehow owes me an apology.
-
I'll spit this out quick, before the armies of feminism try to gag me and strap electrodes to my forehead: Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time.
-
'If you have a better idea, show it to me." That was President Barack Obama's challenge two weeks ago to House Republicans regarding health-care reform. He has since called for a bipartisan forum, not to start over on health reform but to "move forward" on the "best ideas that are out there."
-
The political retirement of Evan Bayh, at age 54, is being portrayed by various sages as a result of too much partisanship, or the Senate's dysfunction, or even the systemic breakdown of American governance. Most of this is rationalization. The real story, of which Mr. Bayh's frustration is merely the latest sign, is the failure once again of liberal governance.
-
The Democratic party's problems, crystallized in the last-ditch scramble to save Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat in a special election Tuesday, can be traced to a simple mistake: Many in the party misread voters' desire to switch parties in recent years as an ideological shift to the left.
-
The word "vigilance" is sometimes mocked as reactionary and jingoistic. As in: "We must be vigilant to protect the homeland during this duck-and-cover drill against communists under every bed because loose lips sink ships."
-
As President Obama belatedly appears at Fort Hood today, will he dare to speak the word "terror?"
He won't use the word "Islamist." If he mentions Islam at all, it'll be to sing its praises yet again.
-
Starting in the spring of 2008, key officials from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences held a series of meetings and conversations, in part about Maj. Nidal Hasan, the man accused of killing 13 people and wounding dozens of others last week during a shooting spree at Fort Hood. One of the questions they pondered: Was Hasan psychotic?
-
Obamacare Version 1.0 is dead. The 1,000-page monstrosity that emerged in various editions from Congress was done in by widespread national revulsion not just at its expense and intrusiveness but at the mendacity with which it is being sold.