James Taranto, Wall Street Journal
Democracy is in peril: That is an emerging theme of the liberal left's response to the Obama scandals. The argument misses the point, no doubt deliberately. What we are witnessing now is not a crisis of democracy but a crisis of authority. The administrative state, in thrall to a decadent cultural elite, has lost the consent of the governed."After a week of scandal obsession during which the nation's capital and the media virtually ignored the problems most voters care about–jobs, incomes, growth, opportunity, education–it's worth asking if there is something especially…
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two senior White House aides knew weeks ago that a probe of the Internal Revenue Service had found that the U.S. tax agency had inappropriately targeted conservative groups, but did not tell President Barack Obama, a White House spokesman said on Monday.
The president appeared at many rallies on behalf of additional gun control laws with parents of children murdered at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
I have a question for those who agree with the president's use of these suffering souls.
How would you react if a pro-death penalty president travelled across the country with parents of murdered children — on behalf of capital punishment? After all, outside of strongly liberal locales, the great majority of parents whose children have been murdered support the death penalty for murder. And more than a few of these parents…
E.J. Dionne, Washington Post
WASHINGTON — We know American politics are dysfunctional. But after a week of scandal obsession during which the nation's capital and the media virtually ignored the problems most voters care about — jobs, incomes, growth, opportunity, education — it's worth asking if there is something especially flawed about our democracy.Our circumstances certainly have their own particular disabilities: a radicalization of conservative politics, over-the-top mistrust of President Obama on the right, high-tech gerrymandering in the House, and a Senate snarled by non-constitutional…
ATLANTA (Reuters) – President Barack Obama, under fire for security lapses at a U.S. mission in Libya, will in a speech on Thursday lay out his wide-ranging counter-terrorism policy, from the controversial use of drones to efforts to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
If current survey trends continue, Obama will finish with less than 50 percent in the polls. Even discounting the Nader vote (some people never learn), the undecided voters could tip the race either way. How will they break?
Since there is no incumbent, they cannot automatically be assigned to the challenger; and since turnout is likely to be huge, the current undecided voters will probably make their way to the polls and cast their ballots.
But for whom?
At the beginning of this contest, Obama effectively made the case that the election was a referendum on Bush’s performance in office. Painting a vote for McCain as a desire for “four more years of the same failed…
