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[Note: This was the most interesting and fun Friday column of last year for me to research and write, so I thought it'd be a fitting end to this week of re-runs. Originally run right before Independence Day, it has a definite patriotic tilt to it. Here's wishing everyone a happy new year [...]
[Note: This time, next year, the big political news story will be the Republican primary campaign for who will take on President Obama in 2012. The first primaries and caucuses will be right around the corner (although, hopefully, they'll be in February, 2012 -- a modest improvement on how early the primary calendar has [...]
[Program Note: This was yet another one of those stories which were largely ignored by the mainstream media last year. Perhaps regional media in Appalachia covered it, but the national organizations mostly took a pass on reporting it. Which is a shame, because it seems to suggest the closing of a very [...]
[Note: Since it's Tuesday, I thought I'd run a favorite Tuesday-type article from last year. I promise, tomorrow I'll get back to being serious.]
[Originally published 3/2/10]
The title of this piece quotes the well-known philosopher Jeremy Hilary Boob, PhD. The full quote is, of course:
Ad hoc, ad loc, and quid pro quoSo little [...]
[Note: This article ran the day before Barack Obama's first year in office concluded. It also ran one day before Massachusetts' special Senate election to replace Teddy Kennedy. I thought it was appropriate to run today because the White House, over the weekend, indicated that it needed to address this very problem -- [...]
First, the bad news -- we'll be running repeat columns all week here at CW.com. I'm going to start a tradition here, I think, of running my five personal favorite columns from the past year in the last week on the calendar. This tradition may need some adjustment in the future, but the [...]
Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!
[Program Note: This column originally ran three years ago, and every so often I dust it off and run it again, to allow me to do some Christmas shopping and whatnot. What with Part 2 of our "McLaughlin Awards" running tomorrow, there just wasn't time to put together a column today. Don't forget to check back here tomorrow (or over the weekend) for the second part of our year-end roundup, and for today I hope you'll enjoy my "go to" Christmas column. Thanks again to everyone who has donated in our 2010 Holiday Pledge Drive, allowing us to exceed our fundraising goal. And hope you've all got your shopping and wrapping done, too.]
President Barack Obama gave an afternoon press conference today, and he sounded a lot more confident than he has sounded for quite a while. The reason for this is that the 111th Congress is ending with a bang, and not the expected whimper. After the Democrats' "shellacking" (to use Obama's preferred term) in the midterm elections, few inside-the-Beltway prognosticators figured much of anything would get done in the lame duck session of Congress before the newly-elected Congress is seated in January. As it turned out, this conventional wisdom was wrong. The lame duck Congress produced more weighty legislation than most lame ducks manage -- a fitting end to two years with more significant legislative victories than any Congress since Lyndon B. Johnson (or even Franklin D. Roosevelt, depending on how you score these things). Which is why President Obama had good reason to sound as confident as he did today.
I couldn't immediately come up with any phrases which have risen to the level of hair-pulling every time I hear them, although in recent weeks, "The Comeback Kid" being used about Obama has gotten pretty annoying, I have to say. Come on people, that was Bill Clinton's moniker! Have the wits to come up with an original phrase, at least, will you?