The Politics Of Courage
June 27, 2011New Yorkers do not often have a chance to be proud of their politicians, but Friday’s vote to permit same-sex marriage provides a good reason for pride, gay or otherwise. Combined with yet another disappointing, me-first performance on the issue by President Obama, Friday’s vote also offers an object lesson in the politics of courage. New York’s rookie Gov. Andrew Cuomo deserves a lot of the credit for making his …
As The Yankees Go, So Goes The United States.
June 7, 2011One of the great things about being a New York Yankees fan is that their games are always on TV. I catch almost as many ballgames living in Atlanta as I did before I left New York five years ago. Watching a Yankee game the other night, I realized that I wasn’t just watching a baseball game; I was watching a microcosm of the United States. Just watch a ballgame …
Obama’s Trade Adjustment Quid Pro Quo
June 3, 2011How does a Democratic president with a business-bashing record get stalwart Republican governors like Utah’s Gary Herbert, Indiana’s Mitch Daniels and Mississippi’s Haley Barbour to support a proposal that favors organized labor? He might try to put together a truly effective program and then use charisma, logic and rhetoric, the sorts of skills one might acquire as a community organizer, to persuade the other party to support it. Or he …
Breaking The Bin Laden Story
May 3, 2011Osama bin Laden’s death is, for Americans and many others around the world, the biggest news since Sept. 11, 2001. So who broke the story? We could make the case that it was Twitter user Sohaib Athar, a self-described computer consultant who happened to be awake at 1 a.m. Sunday when U.S. military helicopters descended on the terror leader’s hideout, near Athar’s home in Abbottabad, Pakistan. He reported “a huge …
Investigation Season
April 26, 2011Springtime brings rising gasoline prices almost as surely as it brings flowers and songbirds. Rising gas prices, in turn, bring government investigations. Last week, with prices averaging around $3.84 per gallon, President Obama announced that a new Oil and Gas Working Group will look into possible cases of fraud, collusion and price manipulation in the oil and gas industry. The president said at a town hall meeting in Nevada, “We …
A Presidency In Search Of A President
April 8, 2011Barack Obama’s announcement this week that he will again seek the presidency in 2012 is welcome news, in a way, because this country sorely needs a president. What it has right now is a chairman. Granted, the incumbent’s title is President Obama, not Chairman Obama. But apart from the title and trappings of his office, the only thing presidential about Obama’s performance thus far has been, on occasion, his rhetoric. …
Obama Energy Policy Lies In Japan’s Rubble
March 15, 2011Amid the devastation of Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters lies one more victim: President Obama’s we-can-have-it-all energy policy for the United States. Less than two months ago, the president called on Congress to mandate that we draw at least 80 percent of our energy from so-called “clean” sources, including nuclear power, within 25 years. “Some folks want wind and solar,” the president said in his State of the Union …
The Open Road Beckons U.S. And Mexico
March 10, 2011Each year around $200 billion of goods from Mexico pass into the United States. Now the trucks that carry those goods, and the people who drive them, will be allowed to enter as well. A proposed agreement between Presidents Barack Obama and Felipe Calderon will end a two-decade-old policy that prohibits Mexican trucking companies from carrying goods more than 25 miles over U.S. soil. Products will no longer have to …
Making A Budget Without Making Choices
March 4, 2011For pure wishful thinking, or maybe pure silliness, it is going to be tough to top President Obama’s call this week for a federal budget “free of any party’s social and political agenda.” Oh, and the president declared at the same time that the budget should cut spending and reduce deficits “without damaging economic growth or gutting investments in education, [or] research and development that will create jobs and secure …
Defense Of Marriage Act Proves Indefensible
February 24, 2011President Obama, who is a former constitutional scholar, and his chief legal beagle had a belated but welcome epiphany yesterday: A president is not obliged to defend an indefensible law, and the Defense of Marriage Act is indefensible. In other words, just what I wrote in June 2009, after Obama and his Justice Department offered offensive justifications, including long-ago incestuous and adolescent marriages, for the federal government’s refusal to recognize …
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