Is Newt Gingrich really the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney? That’s what many in the punditocracy have proclaimed as the former speaker of the House is now surging in the polls. Yet a look at his record reveals that Newt is hardly the “anti-Mitt.” He’s Mitt Romney with more baggage.
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On Friday, citing “longstanding and important executive branch confidentiality interests,” White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler refused a House panel’s demand for “all communications among White House staff and officials” relating to Solyndra.Solyndra is one of the administration’s pet green energy firms. It received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy before its top executives took the Fifth before Congress.
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William A. Niskanen, former acting head of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers and the longtime chairman of the Cato Institute, passed away last week at the age of 78.The New York Times obituary summed Niskanen up as a “blunt libertarian economist,” and he was all three. But he was also vastly more interesting and admirable than that dismissive description can convey.Bill Niskanen had the kind of character that’s vanishingly rare in Washington, D.C. He was a man who put principle above partisanship and personal gain.
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An ominous report came from Bloomberg News last week: “Beltway earnings make U.S. capital richer than Silicon Valley.” According to the latest census figures, Washington, D.C., is now the wealthiest metropolitan area in the United States.
That’s good news for local property values, but I can’t say it fills me with hometown pride. Silicon Valley’s wealth was earned — justified rewards voluntarily given for producing innovations that dramatically improved our lives. In contrast, D.C.’s prosperity reflects a parasitic economy that battens on wealth created by others.
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In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner last week, President Barack Obama announced that he’ll be deploying 100 combat-ready U.S. soldiers, mostly special forces operators, to Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Congo.
The soldiers’ mission is to help Ugandan forces round up the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army, a group that few Americans had heard of before last week.
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Memo to the Rick Perry campaign: If your guy can’t win an exchange with Mitt Romney over who’s stuck to principle more consistently, his debating skills need serious work. That’s what happened at the Sept. 22 Republican debate in Orlando, Fla. After deflating Perry with a “nice try,” Romney brazenly proclaimed, “One reason to elect me is that I know what I stand for, I’ve written it down. Words have meaning.”
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Two years ago this month, the federal government broke ground on what was supposed to be a massive new headquarters for the Department of Homeland Security. Situated on the St.
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It never fails. Every time a president’s popularity tanks, you get a new cycle of media hand-wringing about an enfeebled, “shrunken” presidency. Politico provided the latest installment in this timeworn genre with its recent cover story on “The Incredible Shrinking President.” Noting President Barack Obama’s recent political setbacks, the authors declare that, “a once-muscular presidency is undergoing a dramatic downsizing in terms of its power, popularity, prestige and ambition.”
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Mission accomplished! As Libyan rebels took Tripoli last week, liberals practically draped that banner across the nation’s op-ed pages. Now was the time for all good men to come together and praise a famous victory. In Newsweek, liberal columnist Michael Tomasky what we did in Libya “completely the right thing to do,” and President Barack Obama was on his way to becoming “a great foreign policy president.”
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Last week, Ezra Klein, star liberal blogger for the Washington Post, enthused that “Rick Perry’s book is good. Really.”
Unlike most campaign books, Klein reported, “Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington” is “a book about Rick Perry’s ideas.
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Remember TARP, “Too big to fail,” “Government Motors” and “pay czar” — the buzzwords of the Bush-Obama era? They reflected a disturbing trend toward presidential interference in economic life.
Forty years ago this week, President Richard M. Nixon showed us just how dangerous unchecked executive power can be to the free-enterprise system.
On Aug.
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Alas, so far, the GOP field for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination resembles a “Hollywood for the Ugly” version of the mid-2000s VH1 reality show “The Surreal Life,” which brought together “a select group of past-their-prime celebrities,” such as Corey Feldman and Vanilla Ice, and made them jockey for attention.The show’s slogan was: “When the stars fall from sight ... this is where they crash.” Just yesterday, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich insisted he was a serious contender because he had way more Twitter followers than his rivals.
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I’m warming to the idea of a pundit’s Brady Bill. Some political commentators could use a (voluntary) “cooling off” period before they start using mass murder to score partisan points.
That could have saved Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post’s neoconservative blogger, some embarrassment over the weekend.
On Friday, before much was known about the horrific car bombing and mass shooting in Norway, she used the tragedy to argue against modest cuts to the Pentagon’s budget.
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Last week brought the unsurprising news that the Transportation Security Administration had terrorized yet another 6-year-old with a humiliating pat-down. Dog bites man, federal agent gropes child — we’re becoming all too accustomed to this sort of thing in post-9/11 America. Meanwhile, even the Obama administration’s top terror warriors are starting to admit al-Qaida is a spent force. Two weeks ago, in his first public comments after moving from the CIA to the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said al-Qaida’s defeat is “within reach.”
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Friday marked the space shuttle program’s swan song, as Atlantis lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center for the program’s 135th and final flight.
It was President George W.
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