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Barack Obama Is John Boehner's New Best Friend
Tweet Share on Facebook September 21, 2010 Comment (1)When did David Axelrod pick up John Boehner as a client, and doesn’t this present a conflict of interest with his role as President Obama’s senior political adviser? For some bizarre reason--perhaps the stress of skydiving poll numbers is inducing panic and madness--the White House political strategists have decided to elevate Boehner, the House minority leader, to national prominence in order to attack him. Thanks to the White House, he has been given a voice that he could never have achieved on his own. As one Boehner aide told me: “Obama has become our new best friend.”
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If California Favors Pot Legalization, the DOJ Should Sue
Tweet Share on Facebook September 14, 2010 Comment (28)Things are tough in California. An unrestrained state legislature has spent so irresponsibly that the state is continuously begging the rest of us to bail it out with federal tax dollars. Its credit rating literally makes it a riskier bet than Kazakhstan. It has placed so many burdensome regulations on businesses in the state that they are fleeing as quickly as they can to shutter their doors. Jobs are going with them, of course. Meanwhile, California is also leading the nation in legalized pot shops and stoned citizens.
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Koran Burning Hands Terrorists a Potent Propaganda Tool
Tweet Share on Facebook September 9, 2010 Comment (18)When I’m listening to two guys with guns--one a four-star general leading our troops in Afghanistan and the other a holster-packing freak who thinks he’s Abraham ready to sacrifice his own--I think I’ll go with the general.
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Obama, Democrats Should Stop Trying to 'Help' the Economy
Tweet Share on Facebook September 7, 2010 Comment (19)I was told to get the hell out Washington, D.C., that it was no longer safe to be here. I was told that I couldn’t survive, that nobody could survive, that we are all doomed. I was told to run--run from here, run anywhere ... but that it didn’t matter. Nowhere is safe, we are all doomed.
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'The Tea Party' Is a Media Driven Frankenstein's Monster
Tweet Share on Facebook August 26, 2010 Comment (20)The Tea Party is dead. Long live the Tea Party.
The media—both the mainstream and blogosphere variations—have indulged a nearly hysterical and at times schizophrenic debate about whether the Tea Party's influence is dominating elections this year or is in gasping death rattles.
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Pelosi Tells America to Shut Up on Ground Zero Mosque
Tweet Share on Facebook August 19, 2010 Comment (87)Nancy Pelosi had some choice words for the American public yesterday: Shut up.
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Democrats Are Politicizing Homeland Security for the Fall Elections
Tweet Share on Facebook August 17, 2010 Comment (8)Back in 2006, before George W. Bush’s approval ratings dropped through the basement into somewhere around the fourth circle of hell, it made political sense for the Democrats to attack the Republican administration on cargo security. They were fighting to regain control of Congress and had to show that they, too, were capable of protecting the American people from another terrorist attack. They found themselves an effective--if inaccurate--sound bite in accusing the administration of screening a mere 5 percent of cargo coming into the country.
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Imagining the Democrats' 2010 Election Strategy Meetings
Tweet Share on Facebook August 10, 2010 Comment (5)With Friday’s announcement that unemployment continues to stick at 9.5 percent, Democrats lurch toward the November elections under the weight of an ever-ballooning debt and a massive expansion of government--but few jobs. They’ve passed an unpopular overhaul of the healthcare system, they’ve engaged in the quasi-nationalization of the American auto industry, and they’ve passed a behemoth economic stimulus plan that has stimulated the spending fantasies of Congress more than the economy. Yet, despite a domestic mobilization on a scale of the Iraq war, jobs are still as elusive as weapons of mass destruction.
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Anthony Weiner Rant Can't Hide Shameful Political Games
Tweet Share on Facebook August 3, 2010 Comment (18)While driving to work Friday morning, I was caught in the snarl created by Washington D.C.’s sadistic transportation managers who decided morning rush hour was the perfect time for construction on most routes into the city. As the line of cars started inching forward again, I was jolted from my daze by a god-awful psychic disturbance on the radio: a screeching and wheezing with the tone and pitch of mating fruit bats being ground into a garbage disposal. It was awful, the stuff of nightmares.
I pulled over to the side of the road and wept, certain that the end of days was nigh. It should’ve occurred to me then that this was not the sound and fury of the apocalypse but of bickering congressmen in their natural habitat--cable news.
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Congress Passed an Arizona-Like Immigration Law in 1996
Tweet Share on Facebook July 30, 2010 Comment (49)Congress is always looking to get tough on something. It plays well on the campaign trail. Get tough on crime. Get tough on corporate ethics. Get tough on fanny packs and man purses. Just this year Congress got tough on Ford Motor Company by giving the administration millions of dollars to subsidize General Motors. [See which industries give the most to members of Congress.]
Back in 1996 (when fanny packs were still cool, in some circles) it was time to get tough on immigration, and an interesting little law was passed. Congress deemed it appropriate for state and local law enforcement to enforce immigration law. In the inscrutable manners of Washington (where all legislation seems to be named with insufferably cute acronyms or indecipherable legislative codes that read like security passwords), this law came to be known as 287g.
