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Michele Bachmann Rises as Sarah Palin Falls
Tweet Share on Facebook January 31, 2011 Comment (17)January brought—or wrought—a new narrative for the radical right: let's call it the Rise of Michele Bachmann and the Fall of Sarah Palin. And I'm not sayin' that's a bad or good thing—but a thing I feel in my winter bones.
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To Succeed, Obama's State of the Union Needs Optimism
Tweet Share on Facebook January 25, 2011 Comment (5)To be magisterial, President Obama must speak from his head and his heart tonight in the Capitol as he addresses Congress and the nation in the annual State of the Union speech.
To give a great soaring speech, he must blend poetry into the prose.
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Joe Lieberman Is No Jack Kennedy
Tweet Share on Facebook January 24, 2011 Comment (8)On a wistful bleak wintry week when John F. Kennedy's inaugural 50 years ago was celebrated with ceremonies and concerts of remembrance and Sargent Shriver's death was greeted with a genuine outpouring of grief and love, a third man seemed to suggest he belonged in that august company.
No, Joe, I don't think so.
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Tucson Violence Too Reminiscent of The '60s
Tweet Share on Facebook January 18, 2011 Comment (5)Writing for the op-ed page of The Washington Post yesterday, Robert J. Samuelson quoted Charles Dickens and sought to capture the temper of the "wrenching" times in which we live. I met Samuelson, a distinguished denizen of this town, just the other day at a Wilson Quarterly party. If he had asked me then about growing up in the 1960s, I wouldn't be writing this now. He seemed like a fine fellow with gravitas, don't get me wrong, but he got something wrong in his op-ed essay in the Post, which is like the village crier. It is presumed our town's truth-teller.
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Right Wing Media Vitriol Haunts Us In Arizona Shooting
Tweet Share on Facebook January 11, 2011 Comment (33)We all had a finger on the trigger—I.F. Stone wrote those words about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the cruel fall of 1963.
Now we come to the bleak winter of 2011, and how much has changed? Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords lay near dying in her own blood after a shooting rampage in Arizona left six dead, from a federal judge to a girl of nine, and 14 others injured. It all happened in the most American of places: a strip mall parking lot on a Saturday morning. That's what the country's come to now. It's no coincidence it was a Democratic member of Congress who was gunned down—this is no random act of violence. The suspected assassin said so.
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Congress In for a Blood Bath Over Healthcare, Debt Ceiling
Tweet Share on Facebook January 4, 2011 Comment (6)On the first day of the new year, the Horned Frogs jumped over the Badgers in college football's glory, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. My Wisconsinite family was there, seven strong in the stands, to witness the tragical triumph for Texas Christian University. How sweet a victory it would have been for those who had to fly back to the snow, broken-hearted. Justice was for the birds.
