[ Posted Tuesday, January 12th, 2016 – 22:23 UTC ]
Tonight, Barack Obama gave his final State Of The Union speech, and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley gave the Republican response. Both speeches were unusual -- not in a negative way, but in a more literal "not the usual thing" sense. Obama's speech was not a laundry list of legislative agenda items, but rather a definitional moment for Obama and for the Democratic Party platform. Haley's speech was not a vitriol-filled rejection of all things Democratic while glossing over her own party's faults. The speeches, or at least the general tone of them, were actually more similar than different (again, not on policy but rather on tone).
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[ Posted Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 – 21:03 UTC ]
Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!
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[ Posted Friday, December 18th, 2015 – 19:24 UTC ]
Welcome to our year-end awards columns!
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[ Posted Tuesday, November 17th, 2015 – 17:34 UTC ]
Imagine for just a moment that, right now, there were thousands of refugees from a land over the seas who not only wanted to come to America, but were actually now physically on the North American continent, heading north towards our southern border. In this scenario, the country they're fleeing has, in the past, dumped on American shores criminals and mentally disturbed people, in a wave of migrants. Up until the very recent past, this country was also officially listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. It actually sheltered terrorists who had committed acts of terror against Americans on American soil. And now 2,000 people from this country were trying desperately to get north to the United States.
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[ Posted Friday, September 25th, 2015 – 15:03 UTC ]
Every so often, when preparing to write these weekly wrap-up columns, I wake up Friday morning and a political bombshell has happened which pretty much wipes out all the political news from the entire rest of the week. Obviously, today was one of those days, as we all learned this morning that Speaker of the House John Boehner will be a private citizen again by Hallowe'en. He'll step down not only from his speakership, but also from his House seat itself, more than a year before the end of his current term. So it looks like the Republicans are going to need a new cat-herder to (attempt to) lead them in the House.
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[ Posted Thursday, September 3rd, 2015 – 17:05 UTC ]
Senator Barbara Mikulski became the 34th Senate Democrat to indicate she'll stand with President Obama on the Iran nuclear deal, which is significant -- although, in all likelihood, also merely symbolic. The media are reporting it is significant because it assures Obama that his veto won't be overturned, but what they're mostly missing is that a Senate veto-override vote likely wouldn't even have to happen.
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[ Posted Tuesday, September 1st, 2015 – 17:24 UTC ]
President Barack Obama just had another bad August in the polls. This doesn't come as any real surprise, as summer seems to be the worst time of year for him throughout his term in office. Last month Obama posted the first positive July he ever has, but this month he reverted to form and slipped significantly in his job approval polling. Let's take a look at the new chart.
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[ Posted Tuesday, August 25th, 2015 – 17:02 UTC ]
In the midst of the current eruption of nonsense over American immigration policy from out on the campaign trail, I have a few more targeted questions to ask of all the candidates. They're really just extensions of one basic question, really, which would be: "What will your policy towards Cuba be if you become president?" However, since Republicans and Democrats have different basic viewpoints on the issue, it must be broken down into more specific queries in order to elicit useful answers. Both questions, for different reasons, will be tough for Democrats and Republicans alike.
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[ Posted Friday, August 14th, 2015 – 18:07 UTC ]
We're going to begin today with a wrapup of the week that was in the presidential campaigns, and as befitting his status as the Republican frontrunner, we're going to start with Donald Trump (if you're sick of hearing about Trump, just skip down eight or ten paragraphs and continue reading).
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[ Posted Friday, August 7th, 2015 – 17:10 UTC ]
Well, that was entertaining, wasn't it? We refer, of course, to the grand spectacle of the first Republican presidential debates, held last night on Fox News. Since this is all anyone's talking about in the political world today, we are going to follow suit and devote most of this column (with the exception of the awards) to our reactions to seeing all the Republican candidates under one roof for the first time.
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