Look, I'm sorry, but New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie cannot be president: He is just too fat. Maybe, if he runs for president and we get to know him, we will overlook this awkward issue because we are so impressed with the way he stands up to teachers' unions. But we shouldn't overlook it - unless he goes on a diet and shows he can stick to it. That's not a very liberal attitude.…
October 3, 2011
I want the next U.S. Supreme Court justice to share my views on the Constitution. I don't care how she looks in a bathing suit, or halfway out of one. Miss California is a different story. Her qualifications, as a general rule, should be up to the people of California.
In the state of Washington, we expect our beauty-contest winners to be able to split a log and appreciate good…
May 25, 2009
Diana Levine, a professional guitarist, "showed up at the hospital for the second time in one day complaining of 'intractable' migraines, 'terrible pain,' inability to 'bear light or sound,' sleeplessness, (and) hours-long spasms of 'retching' and 'vomiting.' " She was injected with an anti-nausea drug called Phenergan. The label on Phenergan says six times, in different ways, some…
March 14, 2009
others are saying
In the last few weeks, the Democratic Party has turned on Bill Clinton with the ferocity of 16 years of pent-up resentments. He will not be cut any more slack, and neither will his wife. Meanwhile, the Republican primaries have turned into a Ronald Reagan adoration contest. Neither ex-president deserves what he is getting. Clinton is a victim of long memories; Reagan is a beneficiary…
February 3, 2008
In a remarkable editorial last week, the New York Times endorsed Diane Farrell for Congress from a district in Connecticut. Who is Diane Farrell? I have no idea, and the Times seemed to have not a lot.
October 31, 2006
It was, I believe, Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat, who first made the excellent, bitter and terribly unfair joke about conservatives who believe in a right to life that begins at conception and ends at birth.
This joke has been adapted for use against various Republican politicians ever since. In the case of President Bush, though, it appears to be literally true.
October 2, 2006
Harold Pinter wrote a play a while back called Betrayal. (Rent the movie: It's terrific.) The plot was a fairly mundane story about an adulterous affair among affluent London literati. What gives the tale its haunting magic is that Pinter tells it in reverse: starting with the couple breaking up and ending with that first ambiguous flirtation.
September 23, 2006
Michael Kinsley
According to Forbes magazine, the world is enjoying a boom in billionaires. Twenty years ago there were 140 billionaires. Three years ago there were 476. This year there are 793.
Some people automatically associate great wealth with evil, and they deserve the ridicule they get. But the automatic association of great wealth with virtue is equally fatuous. It's probably true that…
March 27, 2006
Michael Kinsley
The case for democracy is "self-evident," as someone once put it. The case for the world's most powerful democracy to take as its mission the spreading of democracy around the world is pretty self-evident, too: What's good for us is good for others. Those others will be grateful. A world full of democracies created or protected with our help ought to be more peaceful and prosperous…
March 4, 2006
It used to be said that the moral arc of a Washington career could be divided into four parts: idealism, pragmatism, ambition and corruption. You arrive with a passion for a cause, determined to challenge the system. Then you learn to work for your cause within the system. Then rising in the system becomes your cause. Then, finally, you exploit the system - your connections in it,…
December 5, 2005
'One might also argue," Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech Monday, "that untruthful charges against the commander-in-chief have an insidious effect on the war effort."That would certainly be an ugly and demagogic argument, were one to make it. After all, if untruthful charges against the president hurt the war effort (by undermining public support and soldiers'morale),…
November 26, 2005
In a 1986 case called Bowers vs. Hardwick, the Supreme Court ruled that state laws against homosexual sodomy do not violate the Constitution. In a 2003 case called Lawrence vs. Texas, the court ruled that, on second thought, anti-sodomy laws do violate the Constitution. Liberal politicians cheered this rare and unexpected admission of error by the court. They did not express any…
November 20, 2005
So you're standing at the edge of a cliff, chained by the ankle to someone else. You'll be released, and one of you will get a large prize, as soon as the other gives in. How do you persuade the other guy to give in, when the only method at your disposal - threatening to push him off the cliff - would doom you both?
October 14, 2005
As a good American, you no doubt have been worried sick for years about the levees around New Orleans. Or you've been worried at least since you read that official report in August 2001 - the one that ranked a biblical flood of the Big Easy as one of our top three potential national emergencies.
No? You didn't read that report in 2001? You just read about it in the newspapers last…
September 13, 2005
