If you have followed Newt Gingrich’s bout with his critics and the House Ethics Committee you have noticed that while the issue seems a muddle of legal technicalities, the common assumption in news stories is that the speaker misused tax0exempt money to teach a partisan college course. But is that true, or is the situation possibly very different? Few people Read More ›
He wouldn’t fit in, and maybe he shouldn’t wish to. I was going to tell him that earlier, but didn’t want to seem a killjoy. If Norm Rice had ambitions to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, who was I to argue against it? But after some gossip in the White House tried to throw cold water on Read More ›
As Hawaii is blessed with beautiful weather, Seattle enjoys an abundant efflorescence of technology innovation. We hear about it every day, but few understand where it came from. Bill Gates Jr. (the prominent attorney, not his still more prominent son), knows we didn’t exactly deserve the blessings of our Silicon Forest, but he is eager that we take care to Read More ›
Memo to Canadians: We certainly did not mean to insult you, so before the story gets out on your side of the border, please accept our assurances that it was all just a mistake. And come see us soon, y’hear? Memo to U. S. border states tourist industry: No, your government is not trying to make your life more difficult; Read More ›
We have all grown up with that picture of President Harry Truman on the day after his surprise 1948 re-election gleefully displaying the early edition of the Chicago Tribune and its headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman.” The Gallup organization that year stopped polling a week before the election, imagining that Dewey would maintain his six-point lead. In fact, Dewey lost by Read More ›
His political art appears artless. He is a partisan truly loved by colleagues in the opposition party, as well as in his own. Fellow politicians appreciate his unusual habit of giving credit rather than taking it. In four elected offices over a cumulative 32 years, he remains one of the few candidates who promised a voluntary limit on the terms Read More ›
An almost evenly divided federal government is the main product of the Great Stalemate Election of 1996. Either the two parties now will pursue their aims through more fruitless confrontations or they will seek out at least a few areas where statesmanship might serve the best interests of both. The toughness legislative problems facing the country may be Medicare and Read More ›
Never have so many politicians worked so hard and spent so much to achieve so little change. With the White House still in Democratic hands, Congress still Republican and exactly the same partisan division of governors, the nation’s politics are roughly where they were a year and a half ago when history’s longest presidential campaign began. What was achieved? Altogether, Read More ›
The theory of evolution is the great white elephant of contemporary thought. It is large, almost entirely useless, and the object of superstitious awe. Richard Dawkins is widely known as the theory’s uncompromising champion. Having made his case in The Blind Watchmaker and River out of Eden, Dawkins proposes to make it yet again in Climbing Mount Improbable. He is Read More ›
The historically significant Washington State campaign on school reform is continuing to develop in curious ways. There is an old political adage, “If you can’t win an argument on an issue, argue about something else,” and that is just what opponents of the two school reform initiatives are doing. In the past week, with the election fast approaching, proponents of Read More ›