The economy continues to lurch along, gaining a little bit of steam, then falling back again. Unemployment stays stubbornly around 9%, homes are still being foreclosed at a ferocious rate, and  the housing industry remains in a deep funk, Meanwhile, official Washington is consumed with the debate over the debt ceiling. Will someone please explain [...]

The Republicans sure love drama, don’t they. First they threatened to shut the government down unless their demands were met. Now they’re swearing they won’t agree to raise the debt ceiling unless they get the deep cuts they want. Shutting down the government would have caused some pain, but no permanent damage. Failure to raise [...]

Unless there’s a surprise agreement, the government will shut down at the end of the day tomorrow, largely because of the intransigence of the Tea Party members of the House, who apparently see compromise of any kind as a betrayal of their core principles. This, of course, is no way to run a government. Compromise [...]

I couldn’t resist this one. In the Arab world and wherever else there’s a popular revolt against autocratic rule, it’s the dictator who ultimately flees. Not so in this country, evidently. In Wisconsin, where Republican Governor Scott Walker has proposed outrageously punitive restrictions of collective bargaining rights for select public unions, sparking massive demonstrations, it’s [...]

As you would expect at a time of crisis, liberals and conservatives have banded together in a rare show of unity to deflect blame and take no absolutely personal responsibility for what happened in Tucson. Liberals (myself included) were quick to point the finger at the heated anti-governement rhetoric of conservatives, and conservatives were just [...]

End of life counseling is back as a political issue after the president decided to add it to Obamacare by executive fiat. If you remember, this was one of the things that led to Sarah Palin’s infamous “death panel” fiction that caused such a furor over the summer. What is proposed, in the real world, [...]

Well, Obama was right after all. He kept reaching out to Republicans, no matter how intransigent and belligerent they were, in the belief that eventually Democrats and Republicans would find it in their best interests to come to an agreement. And finally, they did.

Yesterday’s midterm election was nothing short of a catastrophe for the Democratic party. The combination of the worst economy since the Great Depression, a  jobless rate stuck at 10%, a president and a majority party unable to make a coherent case for their agenda or to articulate their vision, and the surprising uprising of the [...]

I’m as perplexed as anyone by the lack of focus among Democrats running for office this election. It starts at the top, with a White House that has been unable to produce a coherent election message. It ought to be easy, especially for as gifted an orator as Obama, but he’s been bizarrely unable to [...]

Do the Democrats actually stand for anything? Republicans seem to have no problem sticking to their guns on core issues (as deranged as some of them may be). The latest absurdity for the party in power is the new campaign finance reform bill, which, in order to gain the votes of conservative Democrats in the [...]