Midway through the month's town hall meetings on health care, it seems the shark has jumped the shark - and even Hitler must be sick of himself.
The terrible tyrant can't get a rest these days. For eight years, he was George W. Bush. Now he's Barack H. Obama. We just can't quit the monster with the fur lip.
His latest appearance is on a poster of Obama with the iconic mustache,…
August 24, 2009
Maybe it's the dog days, but three friends recently got in touch within a 24-hour period to catch up. Or more like it, to catch their breath.
One reported the onset of panic attacks. Another is seeking treatment for depression. The third began an e-mail asking for help with: "Reports of my employment have been greatly exaggerated."
The first two were women, 40-something and 50.…
August 10, 2009
Numbers come precisely from the agile mind and nimble tongue of Frank Buckles, who seems bemused to say that 4,734,991 Americans served in the military during America's involvement in the First World War and 4,734,990 are gone. He is feeling fine, thank you for asking.
May 26, 2008
The boilerplate in a candidate's speeches gets little attention because words used over and over never constitute "news." But one of John McCain's favorite lines - his declaration that "the transcendent challenge of the 21st century is radical Islamic extremists," or, as he sometimes says it, "extremism" - could define the 2008 election.
Whether McCain is right or wrong matters…
February 19, 2008
Coconut Road near Fort Myers, Fla., looks like any other concrete ribbon near housing developments, golf courses and shopping malls in that state's booming southwest. But like another fragrant slab of recent pork, the $223 million "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska, Coconut Road leads to somewhere darkly fascinating.
It runs straight into Washington's earmark culture of waste, corruption…
February 10, 2008
Legacy? What legacy? There was general amazement when (the now-muzzled) Bill Clinton did his red-faced, attack-dog, race-baiting performance in South Carolina. Friends, Democrats and longtime media sycophants were variously perplexed, repulsed, enraged, mystified and shocked that this beloved ex-president would so jeopardize his legacy by stooping so low.
February 3, 2008
Although Americans are alarmed by the credit crisis currently convulsing the economy, they are sensibly placid about one consequence of the crisis. It is the substantial investment by sovereign wealth funds - government owned and run investment funds - in financial institutions needing infusions of cash.
February 3, 2008
After months of surreality, the Iraq debate has quite abruptly acquired a relationship to reality. Following the Democratic victory last November, panicked Republican senators began rifling the thesaurus to find exactly the right phrase to express exactly the right nuance to establish exactly the right distance from the president's Iraq policy, while Murtha Democrats searched for…
August 25, 2007
The immigration bill before the Senate is a source of great agony and a fountainhead of opportunity.
Senators in both parties are deeply torn within themselves over what to do.
Take, first, the Democrats. A substantial majority of them support giving 12 million or so illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. But they find two features of the bill particularly troublesome.
May 29, 2007
Compromise is incessantly praised and has produced the proposed immigration legislation. But compromise is the mother of complexity, which, regarding immigration, virtually guarantees - as the public understands - weak enforcement and noncompliance.
May 26, 2007
As someone who lives just a few hundred paces from the Boston Marathon course, I've cheered my share of athletes. This year, it was Masazumi Soejima at the head of the pack, propelling his wheelchair across a rainy 26 miles in 1 hour, 29 minutes and 16 seconds. It took Robert Cheruiyot an extra 44 minutes and 57 seconds to come in first on foot.
May 26, 2007
As the most attractive land for would-be immigrants, America has the equivalent of the first 100 picks in the NBA draft. Yet through lax border control and sheer inertia, it allows those slots to be filled by (with apologies to Bill Buckley) the first 100 names in the San Salvador phone book.
May 25, 2007
'Let's grow up, conservatives!" Barry Goldwater's declaration at the 1960 Republican National Convention was designed to quell a rebellion against Richard Nixon, whom conservatives saw as selling out to liberals on various platform planks. Goldwater's next line was uncannily prophetic: "If we want to take this party back, and I think we can some day, let's get to work."
Forty-seven…
May 25, 2007
The liveliest pair of candidates in the large fields of Democratic and Republican long shots, Bill Richardson and Mike Huckabee, are also - not coincidentally - the likeliest to break through into the top ranks of their parties if anyone ever does.
It helps that both of them can boast extensive experience in actually running a government. Huckabee spent a decade as the Republican…
May 24, 2007
