Mike Pence's next battle will be to permanently ban the Fairness Doctrine, the regulation many liberals are now actively trying to revive in an effort to silence their critics.
Republicans faced a time for choosing last week, when Senate Democrats brought to the floor an ethics "reform" bill that may make it easier for Congress to dole out pork-barrel spending. In the words of GOP Sen. Tom Coburn, the bill "not only failed to drain the swamp, but gave the alligators new rights."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has decided to hold a vote this Wednesday on perhaps the most unpopular element of the Democratic agenda.
Rip Van Winkle has nothing on Jan Grzebski, a Polish railway worker who just emerged from a coma that began 19 years ago--just prior to the collapse of communism in his country. His take on how the world around him has changed beyond recognition comes at an appropriate time. It was 20 years ago tomorrow that Ronald Reagan electrified millions behind the Iron Curtain by standing in front of the Berlin Wall demanding: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
He lacks the compelling story of Rudy Giuliani during 9/11. He isn't a war hero with a 24-year record in Congress like John McCain. He doesn't have the M.B.A. smoothness and business success of Mitt Romney. But what Fred Thompson demonstrated to an enthusiastic Virginia Republican Party dinner Saturday is that he has gravitas, a presence and the ability to make people comfortable. Most importantly, many at the dinner saw him as a conservative who doesn't alienate or cause angst with any element of the GOP coalition.
It's understandable that the White House and its Senate negotiating partners want to rush through the compromise immigration bill they agreed to Thursday. Supporters acknowledge that the delicately balanced legislation could collapse if a single destructive amendment is attached to it. Its sponsors admit they want to minimize the political debate. "We all know this issue can be caught up in extracurricular politics unless we move forward as quickly as possible," says Sen. John McCain , a key architect of the bill.
A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows 6 in 10 Americans think the Democratic Congress "hasn't brought much change." Eager to change this impression, the Democrats are frantically trying to pass legislation before Memorial Day. First on the agenda is a bill restricting lobbying, which is heading for the House floor with lightning speed. The House Judiciary Committee is expected to pass it tomorrow, sending it to the full House for a final vote next Tuesday or Wednesday.
Conservative Nikolas Sarkozy's comfortable victory over Socialist Ségolène Royal in France's presidential race may that indicate Europe's slowest-growing major economy is finally ready for some change.
Campaign finance laws are increasingly becoming a tool to suppress political speech, and the courts are finally waking up to the danger. Last week a unanimous Washington state Supreme Court struck down an outrageous interpretation of a law that had been used to classify the antitax comments of two Seattle talk-radio hosts as "campaign contributions" subject to regulation — that is, suppression — by local prosecutors and officials who disagreed.
It's sad when someone you've known for decades gets in trouble and you're not surprised. After the FBI raided the home of California's Rep. John Doolittle this month in search of records from the fund-raising company run by his wife, Julie, Republican House leaders didn't wait even a day before they pressured him to step down from his seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee. Everyone knows that such a raid only occurs after a judge has issued a search warrant in response to government claims that there is probable cause a crime has been committed.
Maybe. Just maybe, the Don Imus firestorm will finally provide some clarity as to how our culture treats black women.
Nothing highlighted Congress's spending problem in last year's election more than earmarks, the special projects like Alaska's "Bridge to Nowhere" that members drop into last-minute conference reports leaving no opportunity to debate or amend them. Voters opted for change in Congress, but on earmarks it looks as if they'll only be getting more smoke and mirrors.
The media are finally catching up with Al Gore. Criticism of his anti-global-warming franchise and his personal environmental record has gone beyond ankle-biting bloggers. It's now coming from the New York Times and the Nashville Tennessean, his hometown paper that put his birth, as a senator's son, on its front page back in 1948, and where a young Al Gore Jr. worked for five years as a journalist.
WASHINGTON — This weekend's 34th annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference was the largest ever, with 6,300 people registered. But attendees also couldn't remember a time when conservatives were so unsettled about their political future.
Hollywood mogul David Geffen, a supporter of Barack Obama, knew he was setting the Democratic nomination contest ablaze when, in an interview with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, he characterized his once-close friends Bill and Hillary Clinton as liars. For good measure he added that the former president was "reckless" and can't be expected to change his behavior while the New York senator has been overprogrammed by advisers "who are covering every base."
The first 2008 presidential primary is nearly a year away, and the general election won't be for another 631 days. But to hear some pundits and politicians talk, you'd think the outcome was already settled.
The late Milton Friedman, who was the nation's foremost advocate for school choice, would be more than pleased with the news coming out of Utah. By a vote of 38-37, the Utah House last Thursday approved the first-ever statewide universal school choice plan.
Washington scandals are curious things. Sometimes special prosecutors are appointed and the media provide saturation coverage of their doings. An example would be the Valerie Plame episode, which led to this month's perjury trial of Scooter Libby, the former White House aide accused of lying about who first told him Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.
In the classic 1967 movie "The Graduate," Dustin Hoffman plays a young man with a new college degree but no clear vision of what he wants to do. A family friend insists on giving him career advice: "I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. . . . Plastics." Following the GOP loss of Congress, the Bush White house appears similarly fixated on just one phrase: "alternative energy."
