Every summer, millions of Americans enjoy baseball, summer camps and vacation plans. But for the nation's political junkies, every fourth summer is filled with guessing games about the vice presidential nomination.
With summer's arrival comes a journalistic convention that seems more and more dated. It is the "summer reading list" of books, often beside a graphic showing a bathing suit and sunglasses.
What's up with the white working class vote? For years, the horny-handed blue-collar worker was the star of the New Deal Democratic coalition. It was for him, and his wife and family, that Democrats taxed the rich, invented Social Security and supported militant labor unions.
It's presidential season, so again pundits are indignant that money is spent on politics. Spent by corporations! And rich people! Because the Supreme Court allowed that, "2012 will be a miserable year," says The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne.
In helping young illegal immigrants stay in the country, President Obama did the right thing for the wrong reason and in a strange context. Obama decreed that illegal immigrants who came here as children could stay without fear of deportation, if the following conditions are met: They've been in the country for at least five years. They're in school or high-school graduates, or have served in the military. They are under 30 and have committed no crimes. More than 1 million people may qualify.
There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth as, in the spring, it appeared that forces supporting Mitt Romney would be able to raise about as much money as those supporting Barack Obama. There's even more now that it seems likely that the pro-Romney side will raise and spend more money than the pro-Obama side.
When Mitt Romney was a college freshman, he told fellow residents of his Stanford University dormitory that he sometimes disguised himself as a police officer -- a crime in many states, including Michigan and California, where he then lived. And he had the uniform on display as proof.
The new Federal Reserve report showing that household net worth collapsed between 2007 and 2010 quickly became campaign fodder for both sides.
America is not going the way of Greece, and North Dakota has shown us why. Residents were given the opportunity Tuesday to vote their property taxes out of existence, and they chose not to take it.
Who does Barack Obama listen to?
Not Republican politicians. Evidently weeks go by between his conversations with Speaker John Boehner, who determines what legislation comes to the House floor.
Not Democratic politicians. We have it on good authority that he seldom talks to Democratic members of Congress. Lyndon Johnson used to be on the phone constantly, cajoling and inveigling but also on the alert for shifts in opinion.
Any day now, the U.S. Supreme will rule on whether the Obamacare insurance mandate is constitutional. Seems like a no-brainer to me. How can forcing me to engage in commerce be constitutional?
For now, let's drop the talk about wanting a liberal America or a conservative America. What we truly need is a modern America. No country can be modern spending twice what its rich competitors do on health care while leaving millions without any coverage.
We pundits have been busy crunching the results in last Tuesday's Wisconsin recall election and have noted that the public-employee unions sustained a huge defeat.
If the Wisconsin recall is truly second in importance only to the presidential race, as many media outlets have trumpeted lately, then why have those same outlets so badly neglected one of that election's most salient aspects?
Mayor Michael Bloomberg ignited a firestorm of debate with his proposal to ban super-size sugary drinks in New York City. Critics bashed his nanny-statism, but supporters like first lady Michelle Obama hailed his courage.
My right-wing friend, ginned up (literally) from his team's impending "victory" in Wisconsin, called me on Tuesday night. I took some of his glow off by noting that I, too, would have been hard-pressed to remove a governor who had committed no crime. Opposition to the recall did not necessarily signal affection for Gov. Scott Walker. Furthermore, I expressed my satisfaction in the electoral reforms being tried in California, changes that would weaken the partisan clubhouse in which my friend found political and social refuge.
The results are in, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has beaten Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in the recall election. That's in line with pre-election polling, though not the Election Day exit poll. Even before the results came in, we knew one thing, and that is that the Democrats and the public employee unions had already lost the battle of ideas over the issue that sparked the recall, Walker's legislation to restrict the bargaining powers of public employee unions.
President Obama would do us all a big favor if he'd ask himself this: "Would I start or expand a business without knowing what regulations or taxes government will impose next year?"
The now storied Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle to Miami has opened debate on unruly children in crowded airplanes. It seems a 3-year-old, having had his iPad removed in preparation for takeoff, threw a tantrum. Sitting with his father, Mark Yanchuk, little Daniel would not be calmed and refused to properly wear a seat belt. His mother, grandmother and a 1-year-old sibling had escaped to first class.
Demographic forecasts generally take the form of predicting more of the same. Old people have been moving to Florida for the past several years, and old people will move there for the next few years. Immigrants have been streaming in from Mexico, and they will continue to do so. You get the idea.
