“At some point, you have to use the word ‘crazy.”’
The right accuses Barack Obama of dragging the country way left, and the left calls him gutless. The president is proving both of them wrong.
In the space of 10 days, thanks in no small part to my own newspaper, The Washington Post, the president of the United States has been portrayed as a weakling and a chronic screw-up who is wrecking his administration despite everything that his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, can do to make things right.
Populist movement could be Republicans’ salvation — or their biggest problem
We the people. Those are, of course, the first words of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. “We the people of the United States …” It doesn’t say anything about corporations.
A summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, decided to create a new regional bloc excluding the United States and Canada, in what most international media described as an act of defiance against Washington.
Private industry and governments around the world have spent trillions of dollars in the name of saving our planet from manmade global warming. Academic institutions, think tanks and schools have altered their curricula and agenda to accommodate what was seen as the global warming “consensus.”
Have you voted on any of the Democratic health care reform plans? Me neither. No such vote was ever taken. But with coordination that the Rockettes would envy, Republicans insist that “the American people have spoken” on the matter, and they want the proposals killed.
In announcing $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for two new reactors in Georgia — the first new nuclear reactors in the U.S. in 30 years — the president is setting the stage for a nuclear power comeback. But it’s a gamble, and the stakes could be higher than just politics and economics.
Another birthday is right around the corner. They show up about every two months now.
Snow changes the world. It muffles sound, softens hard angles into graceful curves, drives people inside. Snow imposes a stillness. As they crossed this desolate new landscape, Lena’s parents had plenty of time to worry.
We keep hearing that “Obama should move to the center.” A variation on this theme is that the president should find the “sensible middle” on policy.
The Census Bureau estimates that the life cycle cost of the 2010 Census will be from $13.7 billion to $14.5 billion, making it the costliest census in the nation’s history.
It’s been 20 years since Nelson Mandela was released from prison, time to take stock of this giant man and of the changes he brought to South Africa. It was one of the most remarkable moments of the 20th century.
Recently Columbus and the Valley received some exceptionally positive news from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. For the first time ever, Early Head Start programming is coming to Columbus.
Had George Washington joined me outside a Chili’s at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport recently, he would have shuddered at the sight. There, a nation of slobs paraded through the crossroads of America. Frayed denim hems swept the filthy floor. Cleavage poured out of T-shirts bearing vulgar messages. Big bellies flowed over the waists of jeans. Mature women waddled in stained sweat suits. Some passersby stuffed their mouths with pizza as they walked.
The snows that obliterated Washington last week interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously.
We already know where this is going. For some of us, the knowledge is hateful, for others, hopeful. Yet the inevitable arc of it is clear: Maybe it will be 10 years, maybe 20, but we can now envision a day when the last legal restrictions against gay men and lesbians will be struck away.
“Do you mean he is taller than me am?” sarcastically barked Dr. Martin Rosenberg, my high school English teacher, to one of the students in our class. The student actually said, “He is taller than me,” but Rosenberg was ridiculing the student’s grammar. The subject of the elliptical (or understood) verb “am” must be in the subjective case. Thus, the correct form of the sentence is: He is taller than I.
While relief efforts involving food, water, and health services continue in Haiti, the United States is also ramping up support for “cash for work” programs designed to get Haitians involved in earthquake clean-up, put cash in pockets, and help get Haiti’s private sector moving again.
To quote Mr. Dickens, they were the best of times and the worst of times. This is Galloway writing “-30-” and a farewell to this weekly column after almost seven years and wrapping up half a century in the newspaper business.
John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, in an hour-long television documentary titled “Global Warming: The Other Side,” presents evidence that our National Climatic Data Center has been manipulating weather data just as the now disgraced and under investigation British University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit.
If he’d said it of Jews, he would still be apologizing.
Sunbelt-and-sprawl advocate Joel Kotkin wrote two years ago that the future of American urbanism wasn’t in the “elite cities,” such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco, but in “younger, more affordable and less self-regarding places.”
You may have heard of Vic Chesnutt. Or maybe not. He was a noted songwriter and performer, widely known both in this country and abroad, but you’d have to have appreciated his particular type of music to know that. My son was a devoted fan for years, which is the only reason I became aware of him.
According to a story in Newsweek magazine last week, it appears that at least some evangelicals are moving away from the political and theological right wing. Younger evangelicals seem to be shying away from the rigid ideological orthodoxy of past culture wars and are embracing a broader range of social issues.
Our way of doing democracy is full of risk and failure, but Lincoln saw it as the safeguard of free people.
Don Lewis thinks white men can’t jump.
Somewhere between “Avatar’s” first billion-dollar gross and its subsequent $841 million take lie my 10 bucks.
One can understand the absence of concern for diversity in professional sports; they are in it just for the money. But one is left flummoxed by the lack of sports diversity in college sports.
