For GOP, Ends Justify Means
Forty-seven Republican Senators sending a letter to the Iranian leadership urging that they ignore President Obama provides another vivid example of the distance today’s Republican Party has traveled...
View ArticleGOP: Two Separate Parties
Just days after the 2014 mid-term election while most of the pundit class was focused on the coming confrontation between President Obama and the new Republican Congress E.J. Dionne was alone in...
View ArticleBibi's US Ambassador Blindsides Barack
Israel's GOP-trained Ambassador to the United States ignited an international incident when he conspired with Republican leaders to arrange an appearance by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...
View ArticleSelfishness, Self-government Don't Mix
In a way, religious conservatives are right when they say the separation of church and state is a "myth." In religion, as in liberal democracy, the aim is the same: the triumph of the self over selfish...
View ArticleHear No Evil, See No Evil
The firestorm President Obama provoked among religious conservatives who found his unifying speech at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5th to be "divisive," is just another example of the...
View ArticleTo Each According to Their Needs...
Once upon a time humans lived alone along the frontier or in isolated, self-sufficient settlements where inhabitants made and consumed nearly everything they needed for their daily survival. Life back...
View ArticlePete Carroll Needn't be Sleepless in Seattle
Thanks to this year's Super Bowl we now have another example of how conventional wisdom is frequently wrong. Two days after the New England Patriots defeated the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX,...
View ArticleBernie Sanders: Modern Day Moses?
Watching Bernie Sanders's tussled white forelocks flying in the air as he rails against the predations of oligarchs and plutocrats who've reduced America's once secure middle class to a state of...
View ArticleGovernor Baker Charting New Course in Bay State
Massachusetts' new Republican governor is off to a good start. The vision of his new administration that Charlie Baker unveiled in his inaugural address earlier this month was a serious, intelligent,...
View ArticleThe Long Lost "Conservative Disposition"
You get the impression reading Peter Wehner's New York Times op-ed ("Conservatives in Name Only") that his model for a new and improved American conservatism is the stuffy but sensible Lord Grantham of...
View ArticleCan Democrats Capitalize on GOP Extremism?
Political parties are not just collections of like-minded folk or the embodiment of the issue platforms they purportedly stand on. They are also, in the final analysis, a business. And like any...
View ArticleRacism Nonexistent Say "Color Blind" Conservatives
Racism no longer exists. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a racist. That, incredibly, is the developing Republican storyline as conservatives endeavor to explain their disposition in a range of recent...
View ArticleNew Year's Resolution: More Light, Less Heat in 2015
Some conservatives I know wish I would be more respectfully open-minded and tolerant of their heart-felt belief that President Obama is a degenerate job-killing monster, anti-business and anti-American...
View ArticleForced to be "Free"
There are times, wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his revolution-making work, The Social Contract, when men must be "forced to be free." To James L. Buckley, brother of the late William F. and former...
View ArticleTime is Ripe for Elizabeth Warren's Economic Populism
What's the matter with Kansas? Nothing that a little get-tough-on-Wall Street economic populism wouldn't cure if we listen to Democratic strategists wondering what to make of the sudden popularity of...
View ArticleObama Plays Race Card -- And Wins
Like Jacob Marley's ghost whose chains were forged in life, link by link and yard by yard, could there be a better metaphor for the shackles Republicans have fashioned for themselves than their...
View ArticleLand of the Free?
I have a modest proposal for members of the St. Louis Police Officers Association who think a professional football game is no place to make a political statement and so were highly offended when five...
View ArticleObama: Glass Half Empty or Full?
Whenever someone starts off with a flattering portion of over-the-top encomiums, it's a sure sign the other shoe is about to drop with a "thud." And so it is with What's the Matter with Kansas? author...
View ArticleEntitled to Their Own Facts
One of these days, and soon, we are going to have to retire Daniel Patrick Moynihan's famous quip about everyone being entitled to their own opinion, because the truth is most people think they are...
View ArticleNew Third Party in the Bay State?
The ink wasn't even dry on Governor-elect Charlie Baker's acceptance speech before the Massachusetts Republican was getting political death threats from his party's unreconciled right wing warning of a...
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