Not long after 9/11, the leading figures in France's Champagne industry decided that they would hold their 2002 annual awards gala in New York rather than Paris. At no small expense, they displayed solidarity with New Yorkers -- and America -- at a time of sorrow and fury, like so many of their compatriots. It was one more instance when the French renewed the bond that has existed since this country's founding.
Lou Cannon has a nice remembrance in RealClearPolitics of Martin Anderson, the economist and adviser to Ronald Reagan who died last week at 78. He touches on all of Anderson's accomplishments, from his successful advocacy in the Nixon White House to abolish the military draft to his unearthing, with his wife Annelise Anderson and Kiron Skinner, the handwritten drafts of Ronald Reagan's radio speeches, which show the impressive breadth of Reagan's reading and depth of his thinking.
Friends of Obamacare, horrified that the Supreme Court has taken a case that could blow up the federal health insurance exchanges, should recalibrate their dread. While the health reforms were safely humming along, there was little political price for demanding their demise. Thanks to the Supreme Court, now there is.
Years of carpet-bombing assaults on Obamacare have left many Americans thinking that they don't like the Affordable Care Act. But close down the federal exchanges covering 6 million people (so far) in 36 states and they may think otherwise. With a vengeance.
Well, that didn’t last long! By that, we mean our pre-Christmas ordering of the GOP presidential field. We shouldn’t be surprised. Politics never takes a long holiday break anymore.
First prize for early maneuvering goes to Jeb Bush. His unexpected, all-but-in announcement on Dec. 16 stunned his competitors and the political community. Bush didn’t just accelerate the entire process, including forthcoming announcements by rivals, but he also gained a leg up in conventional wisdom’s positioning.
How big a problem is family fragmentation? "Immense," says Mitch Pearlstein, head of the Minnesota think tank Center of the American Experiment. "The biggest domestic problem facing this country."
California parents are refusing to vaccinate their kindergartners at twice the rate of seven years ago. So the Los Angeles Times reports. The result has been the return of measles and other serious diseases that can lead to paralysis, birth defects and death. The state is now suffering a whooping cough epidemic -- it's amazing to say -- in the year 2015.
But the real shocker in the story is this: The rise in "personal belief exemptions" -- a loophole in the law requiring parents to have their children vaccinated -- is highest in rich coastal and mountain areas. For example, an astounding 23 percent of students at the Santa Cruz Montessori obtained belief exemptions and are not vaccinated.
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One may start the day at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the way in, you'll pass through the new David H. Koch Plaza -- the result of a $65 million gift from David H. Koch.
There is a widespread assumption that President Obama has expanded the electorate and inspired booming voter turnout. One could make a case for that based on the 2008 election. But since then, not so much.
Looking back over the past 15 years, the biggest surge in voter turnout came during George W. Bush's presidency. In the Obama years, turnout actually declined in both the 2012 presidential and the 2014 congressional elections.
The unsavory story of Rep. Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican and House majority whip, should serve as a clear warning to the leaders of the Republican Party. They need to ask why their message attracts some of the most despicable elements in American society -- and why they can't effectively reject those extremists.
Despite many fervent vows of "outreach" and "inclusion" by top Republicans, they keep making the wrong choices. Both House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy have expressed their confidence in Scalise despite his "mistake." And the excuses they now offer on behalf of the man chosen for the third-highest position in their congressional caucus are rapidly eroding.
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No wonder Cuba wallows in poverty.
Last week, the New York Times reported that the Castro brothers opened a special business zone where foreign companies "would be given greater control over setting wages at factories. ... (P)roposals would be approved or rejected within 60 days."
What? If I want to give someone a raise, I have to wait up to two months for government approval! That's absurd.
Was Angelina Jolie unqualified to direct the big-budget World War II saga "Unbroken"? The movie tells the true story of Louis Zamperini, a champion runner and champion survivor -- of his bomber's crash, 47 days on an ocean raft and torture in a Japanese prison camp.
Before Christmas, Arizona finished its 2nd Congressional District recount, showing Republican Martha McSally beating incumbent Democrat Ron Barber by 167 votes. This means there will be 247 Republicans in the House in the 114th Congress -- one more than was elected to the House in the 80th Congress in 1946. It's the most Republican House since the one elected in 1928, a year when very few of today's voters were alive.
While most citizens were distracted by the holidays, the enlarged Republican majority in Congress was laying golden pavers for its magical kingdom -- a fabulous place where taxes are cut, military spending is not and budgets balance effortlessly. The coat of arms reads, "Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves."
And to think the rubble has hardly been cleared from the ruins of the most recent magical kingdom, that ruled by George W. Bush. Not only did the Bush tax cuts not pay for themselves but tax revenue as a share of the economy today isn't even close to what it was in 2000.
Too much power being grabbed by Washington -- Obamacare, environmental regulations, education standards. That's a constant complaint of conservatives not only during Barack Obama's presidency but during George W. Bush's as well.
But power is also flowing out of Washington, largely unnoticed, and back to the states and localities. You can see that if you look at transportation policy, which is following the same path as the little remembered federal revenue sharing program enacted in the Nixon years and phased out during the Reagan presidency.
This Christmas Eve, if you see a fat man in a sleigh distributing presents, tell him he is in violation of several government regulations.
The Federal Aviation Administration is upset about his secret flight path, and his gift bag violates charity tax rules.
In real life, government barely lets people give each other rides in cars. But now the Internet has given birth to exciting businesses that challenge the rules.
The total discrediting of Rolling Stone's story on rape at the University of Virginia has shined a light on one of the least palatable features of American life: the so-called epidemic of rape on campus.
They like her style. Many liberals adore Elizabeth Warren's populist passion for denouncing predatory conduct by Wall Street -- and her linking it to growing income inequality.
Though the senator from Massachusetts insists she's not running for president, her fan base has set up camp in Iowa, fueling the fires for a Warren candidacy. They want her to challenge Hillary Clinton, a likely contender viewed as more lenient toward the captains of finance.
Listen carefully to the Republican leaders and presidential hopefuls roaring with outrage over President Barack Obama's courageous decision to normalize relations with Cuba; listen very carefully, because no matter how long or how closely you listen to them, there is one thing you will surely never hear.
What is it that makes the holiday movie classic "It's a Wonderful Life" feel so ancient? It's the relationships, but which ones?
