Gene Lyons from CaglePost.com Columns by Gene Lyons from CaglePost.com http://rss.caglepost.com/columns.aspx?name=Gene+Lyons Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:00:00 GMT http://backend.userland.com/rss RSS.NET: http://rss-net.sf.net/ Finally, A Bipartisan Topic: Sex Scandals With respect to Gov. Mark Sanford, it's probably always a mistake for a Puritan to visit Latin America. A handsome cardiologist's son, he married money, went into real estate, then politics. Like many South Carolina aristocrats, he's an Episcopalian.... http://www.caglepost.com/article/8c131da9-caa6-4faf-b712-c511af303c9a.html Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:00:00 GMT Bear Witness To The Truth In Iran "First, do no harm." Contrary to popular belief, the phrase doesn't actually appear in the Hippocratic Oath taken by physicians. At times like the present, however, it's tempting to think it should be added to the presidential oath of office. With I... http://www.caglepost.com/article/ab4410d2-5725-419e-ae32-8a46b8c014d1.html Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT Sickly Talk About Fixing Health Care President Obama was elected with perhaps the best chance in a generation to reform America's unjust and grotesquely inefficient health care system. To do so, however, he'll have to conquer not only special entrenched interests like the insurance and ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/fe20ce02-83a8-4f8e-ba37-282e49df5f8a.html Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT Death as Infotainment Is Wrong Period Since when do imprisoned terrorists get to hold press conferences? I speak of Scott Roeder, the accused assassin of Dr. George Tiller. Roeder's alleged crime was also a sacrilege: He gunned the physician down during Sunday worship services at Reform... http://www.caglepost.com/article/7b7eb806-f13a-4ae6-913b-d71d124b30da.html Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT Sotomayor A 'Racist'? Really? If there's anything I agree with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas about, it's ethnic groupthink. During his 1991 confirmation hearings, Thomas' resentment at people who treated a black conservative as a sellout was almost palpable. So was his b... http://www.caglepost.com/article/eb48ae84-8537-420c-b82a-950c21461dfd.html Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT Housing Market Falls Down, Goes Boom, Again... And Again... Maybe the most important lesson I learned as a journalist came from a story I never wrote. During the 1980s, I was under contract to a monthly magazine. Owing editors a feature article, I was assigned to write about how sky-high prices and inflation ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/4618d1f2-5b7d-493d-9da1-f9a6d2f18e43.html Wed, 27 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT Is It Time For Some Pelosi Fun? It took them a while, but Republican thinkers and their media enablers appear to think they've found a way to turn the torture issue against Democrats. Enough tiresome rhetoric about the rule of law and America's lost moral compass. Let's take the di... http://www.caglepost.com/article/090631aa-39e1-4fb6-99ee-e47484858ae9.html Wed, 20 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT It's His War Now After inheriting two bungled wars, the Obama administration has gotten a pass from citizens troubled by more immediate economic fears. The president even ventured a mild joke during a "60 Minutes" interview. "If you had said to us a year ago that the... http://www.caglepost.com/article/75fc3c13-680a-4cb6-9f66-6ef5ad0e775c.html Wed, 13 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT The More The Knotheads Whine, The Better Obama Looks A funny thing happened on the way to the Tea Party. The more furiously the party out of power denounces President Obama, the more confident Americans appear to be that voters made a wise decision last November. That would be the Republican Party. Rem... http://www.caglepost.com/article/7694e90b-8db5-4c26-8a1b-4d132193d93a.html Wed, 06 May 2009 07:00:00 GMT Cheney's Painful War For Torture Having stampeded his ill-informed predecessor into a series of catastrophic blunders, it appears that Dick Cheney has declared open bureaucratic war -- the only kind he's ever known how to fight -- upon President Barack Obama. After decades bullying ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/37bd40db-ba5b-4ef5-bd5d-b267d5515fc1.html Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT Bybee Shames America Anybody with an active conscience can understand why President Barack Obama ordered the Bush administration's "terror memos" released, overruling his own CIA director. No intelligence secrets were revealed. Much of the information in the documents ha... http://www.caglepost.com/article/c3beb210-3771-4142-bc46-c441d0a3c937.html Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT The Once And Future Newspaper "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1787, "I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." Think of it. Only newspapers, no governme... http://www.caglepost.com/article/de6e571b-e84c-40f3-a56d-32fe793cc882.html Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT You Knotheads! Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who fancies himself something of a futurist, recently prophesied that, "If the Republicans can't break out of being the right-wing party of big government, then I think you would see a third party movement in 2012." Con... http://www.caglepost.com/article/06874a39-ddac-418f-a8fc-2d5229f6dfa4.html Wed, 08 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT Oh, You Poor (Bleeping) Wall Street Types Americans make lousy aristocrats. Lacking a sense of hereditary entitlement, our homegrown elites scarcely acknowledge quaint concepts like duty and honor, much less shame. As if the entire presidency of George W. Bush weren't proof enough, consider ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/d44f2089-c858-4016-a0c9-b98092cc757a.html Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT So, Who's The Real AIG Bonus-Approving Villain? If everything you knew about President Barack Obama's role in the AIG bonus fiasco was his recent "60 Minutes" appearance, you'd feel reassured. On television, Obama gave a masterful performance, all calm confidence and disarming smile. Was he surpri... http://www.caglepost.com/article/9f31b4ef-fdb1-4e7d-a6cb-ad6fce926694.html Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:00:00 GMT Will these 'education' presidents ever learn? Here we go again: Another administration, another education president. The United States has no other kind. At least since the 1983 study "A Nation at Risk," every administration has declared its determination to save school children from what it cal... http://www.caglepost.com/article/c18bb366-b178-4134-b477-f637ffdebbde.html Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:00:00 GMT The idiot media's guide to economic stupidity Watching the national news media struggle to cover the economic crisis lately, one could be forgiven the fear that the United States had grown too ignorant and lazy to govern itself. Between mis- and disinformation, cheap political posturing and crow... http://www.caglepost.com/article/e8abf8e8-dc70-4aa7-ab41-1d461eb2b379.html Wed, 11 Mar 2009 07:00:00 GMT Throwing Sweet Feed To The Herd If the economic situation weren't so scary, it'd be amusing watching so many Republicans go crazier than a peach orchard boar, as country folks say. To the connoisseur of political folly, last week's CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) in ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/6de8e1de-79e5-48bb-ab3e-314b6ddd40cd.html Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:00:00 GMT Publicity Hounds Go Ape Over Witless Cartoon Frankly, I was afraid something like this might happen. Attorney General Eric Holder thinks we're "a nation of cowards" if we don't want to sit around talking about race all day. In a speech marking Black History Month, Holder told Justice Department... http://www.caglepost.com/article/b86c3d94-a267-4e36-bc7c-353c12040d98.html Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:00:00 GMT Gregg's Departure? D.C. Commerce As Usual Until recently, few outside New Hampshire could have picked Sen. Judd Gregg out of a police lineup. Chances are nobody will recall who the Republican lawmaker used to be a couple of months from now. For a bright, shining moment in February, however, ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/c9008a7e-bc7c-43ad-a568-c17bb4a6d373.html Wed, 18 Feb 2009 08:00:00 GMT Bush's Budgets Kill GOP Stimulus Balking Maybe the best way to get some perspective on President Obama's $800 billion economic stimulus plan is to compare it with a couple of his predecessor's noteworthy adventures in the art of governance. Faced with a mild recession in 2001, President Bus... http://www.caglepost.com/article/087a5534-aa3d-4711-ad4b-31463eb609dd.html Wed, 11 Feb 2009 08:00:00 GMT Forget Pushing Bipartisanship, Just Fix The Economy For President Obama to treat individual Republicans with civility is one thing. Etiquette, however, has its limits. Embracing "bipartisanship" as a political goal can be a snare and a delusion. It's certainly seemed so of late, as GOP congressmen re... http://www.caglepost.com/article/02468b24-d330-45d7-94dd-78f959cb34ad.html Wed, 04 Feb 2009 08:00:00 GMT In Closing Gitmo, We Start Winning Back The Moral High Ground All but the most far-gone adepts of the Chicken Little Right have long understood the need to shut down the notorious prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The damage done to U.S. prestige has been incalculable, enabling its enemies to portray America... http://www.caglepost.com/article/476b0766-1334-4188-8c2c-e7cddbe54ed7.html Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:00:00 GMT The Cowboy Rides Away Exit the make-believe Texas cowboy, smirking and whining. Until last week, the most telltale moment of the Bush administration had involved not the president, but his mother. Touring the Houston Astrodome, where thousands of New Orleans flood victim... http://www.caglepost.com/article/84efb769-d4c4-434b-9ca3-0d2deac7b17d.html Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:00:00 GMT The Israeli-Palestinian conflict: What's In It For Me? "The nation which indulges toward another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave." -- George Washington's "Farewell Address," 1796 At the risk of repeating myself, Israel remains a foreign country. Pointing that out during... http://www.caglepost.com/article/47ab7f19-6af5-47df-b059-01a6ecfc16ff.html Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:00:00 GMT Torture: A Coward'S Idea Of Toughness No sensible person wants to see the United States become the kind of country where "regime change" means flinging the party out of power into dungeons. That said, it's nothing short of pathetic to observe pundits who urged Bill Clinton's impeachment ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/f72eb4c7-cab2-472e-a6ac-17967b421761.html Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:00:00 GMT The Time Is Now Given the nation's deepening economic crisis, some are cautioning President-elect Obama to postpone comprehensive health-insurance reform until things settle down. For reasons both substantive and political, it's crucial that he ignore them. Fortunat... http://www.caglepost.com/article/94571301-9ac5-4020-8d15-757e6e88158e.html Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:00:00 GMT Choosing The White House Dog Since the election, Barack Obama apparently doesn't care whom he offends. In an interview with ABC's Barbara Walters, the president-elect insulted her dog, a Havanese named "Cha Cha." "It's like a little yappy dog?" Obama asked. "It, like, sits in yo... http://www.caglepost.com/article/b1f1dd7b-6ace-40f3-9dd3-fa5022007434.html Wed, 24 Dec 2008 08:00:00 GMT Substituting Gossip For News Although you'll never see celebrity journalists discussing it on television, one reason the country's in such terrible shape is the media's substitution of political "infotainment" for news. It's cheaper to feature chatter by Washington insider pundi... http://www.caglepost.com/article/0e03e271-6e10-4d6a-9478-c5cd347a8be7.html Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:00:00 GMT No Tears, No Regrets Purely to annoy President Bush's loyal supporters, all 10 or 12 of them, I propose that his administration's official theme song be sung in French. Edith Piaf's immortal ballad loses something in the translation: "No, I regret nothing." Dedicated by ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/b1f34c58-3817-4bfe-930f-e7aa6f751195.html Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:00:00 GMT Political Soap Opera President-elect Barack Obama's nomination of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state marks yet another setback for the professional Clinton-haters of the Washington press. It's also, however, an opportunity to advance the peculiar group narrative these... http://www.caglepost.com/article/4f8af83e-f5a0-4a51-9955-23860290665e.html Wed, 03 Dec 2008 08:00:00 GMT From One Stereotype To Another Over the past 16 years, I've apparently lived in three very different places. During President Clinton's first term, I inhabited a dark, "incestuous" world of political skullduggery and financial crime. After the election of George W. Bush, my home b... http://www.caglepost.com/article/9ec2c895-5d70-42fd-946d-44ab48e33439.html Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:00:00 GMT Must Obama 'Discipline' Democrats? One of the Republican right's most successful inventions has been liberal media bias. Even as the "mainstream" press has trended rightward, the liberal bias trope has had two big advantages in keeping the party faithful, well, faithful. First, it all... http://www.caglepost.com/article/b14081c4-63fb-4ab5-9d2c-81eac8026bf7.html Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:00:00 GMT Believing Your Own ... Um, Propaganda As someone who retained doubts as recently as September that Barack Obama could win the presidency, I've rarely been more gratified to be proven wrong. But could the Democratic nominee have prevailed without the Wall Street collapse that millions see... http://www.caglepost.com/article/b010a15f-df62-4c00-83f6-237737f16161.html Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:00:00 GMT Layla's Road To Damascus Everywhere I go, people ask me less often about politics than about Layla. For readers who missed my earlier column about the abandoned Charolais calf I adopted at birth, Layla's early weeks consisted of one life-threatening crisis after another. Al... http://www.caglepost.com/article/01512a44-e4ea-433c-a092-a4263c672786.html Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:00:00 GMT A Naive And Sentimental Republican Ever since the infamous '60s, Republicans have portrayed themselves as hardheaded realists and Democrats as sentimental idealists. The Daddy party versus the Mommy party, all that. Never mind that their idea of a manly avatar is George W. Bush. Conse... http://www.caglepost.com/article/fdae4c2f-abdb-48cc-a47f-2ec9b794242e.html Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:00:00 GMT GOP Backbiting Starts Early With fewer than two weeks until the presidential election, there's plenty of time for surprises. Virtually anything could still happen. But you'd never know it from the behavior of many Republican pundits and thinkers. Among GOP savants, the bittern... http://www.caglepost.com/article/6c8f5233-27b5-4112-904c-7381453f30f2.html Thu, 23 Oct 2008 07:00:00 GMT Bombers And Ballots Let's get real. If John McCain had a long-standing professional relationship with someone who had bombed abortion clinics, Democrats would never let him hear the end of it. And properly so. We're engaged in an American presidential election here, not... http://www.caglepost.com/article/414cea44-caa3-4b18-ba58-beea7a67cb97.html Wed, 15 Oct 2008 07:00:00 GMT The Devil Made Them Do It If the economic situation weren't so grim, it'd be darkly amusing watching conservatives hunting for a scapegoat other than Bush administration True Believers. (They're all Brownies now. Heckuva job, eh?) For a generation, devotees of the very bad no... http://www.caglepost.com/article/de21d976-8680-48cf-8325-4679210befbf.html Wed, 08 Oct 2008 07:00:00 GMT Adult Supervision Required If the headline on a recent Associated Press dispatch failed to alarm you, you can't have been paying attention: "Bush Confident Sweeping Measure Will Stabilize Economy." That was scant hours before the House rejected Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson... http://www.caglepost.com/article/b5c93770-365c-4aef-b9a1-eb2d010f47b6.html Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:00:00 GMT Wall Street Welfare If President Bush seems oddly unshaken, what with a 19 percent approval rating and an astonishing zero percent of the public optimistic about the economy, it's because for him, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, the Wall Street meltdown basically a... http://www.caglepost.com/article/e7c5918c-ea2a-43b5-b44d-4b5e43fea156.html Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:00:00 GMT With McCain, It's Bombs Away By actual count, Sen. John McCain has favored five of the last two American wars. You heard me. For the GOP presidential nominee, it's evidently not enough to have U.S. troops stalemated in Iraq and losing ground in Afghanistan. If McCain had his way... http://www.caglepost.com/article/f448ff4e-7a45-4914-a4eb-64395fd302af.html Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:00:00 GMT Enter Miss Congeniality, Stage Right "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." -- H.L. Mencken Future historians pondering the failure of the American experiment should ponder a recent AP dispatch from Hollywood. Headlined... http://www.caglepost.com/article/4d3f5192-83d6-461f-a254-53d6f10cb6a5.html Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:00:00 GMT The Role of A Lifetime With presidential elections increasingly resembling what are inaccurately styled "reality TV" programs, it shouldn't surprise us to find U.S. foreign policy treated as an action/adventure film scenario. We're not choosing a president so much as casti... http://www.caglepost.com/article/f69768e4-e9ba-494c-85ba-75ebad19e7a3.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:00:00 GMT Game Show Politics Something unusual happened during the run-up to the Democratic convention: A presidential candidate was subjected to a highly prejudicial, not particularly honest personal attack, and for once the victim was a Republican. Interestingly, the political... http://www.caglepost.com/article/adf0ee95-dc0e-4f0e-aed9-70577939abe2.html Thu, 28 Aug 2008 07:00:00 GMT Holier Than Thou "I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office." -- John F. Kennedy, 1960 Any Democrat who imagines that Barac... http://www.caglepost.com/article/cdbb20c6-3a85-4d83-85c7-ada57e8c8182.html Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:00:00 GMT Campaigning The American Way With Labor Day nearing, a wary nation awaits the premiere of "Dumb and Dumber III: The 2008 Presidential Campaign." Could it possibly be sillier than 2000, pitting a make-believe Texas rancher against an "elitist" Washington know-it-all who boasted h... http://www.caglepost.com/article/3db699c1-1c36-4a45-a819-fb9e5a04c9a7.html Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:00:00 GMT Rustling Up Some Bovine Love Maybe it's fitting that I became a cattleman of sorts about the same time President Bush dropped the cowboy act. As predicted here, Bush confirmed that he and Laura will move to a posh Dallas neighborhood after a relieved nation watches them leave th... http://www.caglepost.com/article/26fbedab-f000-4026-b1a5-d3c565137458.html Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:00:00 GMT Who's In Your Wallet? Credit cards, as most people theoretically understand, can turn into the 21st-century equivalent of sharecropping. First, you borrow from The Man to get your cotton planted (or maybe to buy that new flat-screen HDTV). Comes picking time (or the warra... http://www.caglepost.com/article/5f1bdb14-d719-422d-8b73-1d28258202fc.html Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT Political Satire A Two-Edged Sword The problem with satire as a political weapon is that it's virtually always a two-edged sword. One would expect the editors of a literary magazine like The New Yorker to realize that. Its July 21 cover caricaturing Barack and Michelle Obama as Oval O... http://www.caglepost.com/article/649eddf4-b85b-46de-b097-e0fe6f652781.html Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT Religious Squabbles Generate Much Heat, Little Light People act oddly during times of political uncertainty. Even so, I've been surprised lately to find myself agreeing with the perennially aggrieved William A. Donohue. For the uninitiated, Donohue serves as president, CEO and chief controversialist of... http://www.caglepost.com/article/dafc3a51-6c08-41f9-96af-213c33817d73.html Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT The Art of Political Fiction To the skeptical observer, an amusing aspect of the 2008 presidential contest is watching both candidates maneuver to place themselves above criticism, as willing media acolytes invent helpful storylines. At every opportunity, Barack Obama's campaign... http://www.caglepost.com/article/61e3f823-c196-470d-bd94-448b33673d0f.html Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT Obama Glides Rightward Recently, I spoke with a Clinton supporter who takes politics seriously. Was she still angry, I asked, or would she heed Hillary's endorsement of her rival? No question, she allowed. Come November, she'd cast her ballot for Sen. Barack Obama. "Yeah, ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/94660c72-3eab-47d1-815b-a6912ca92cf8.html Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:00:00 GMT Russert's Legacy As Journalist Problematic Few events so reveal society's unacknowledged values as a royal funeral. So it was following the untimely death of NBC newsman and "Meet the Press" moderator Tim Russert. We have no formal aristocracy in the United States, but Washington has a self-a... http://www.caglepost.com/article/ff09ce41-ef80-4eff-be25-1e8fd542b7de.html Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:00:00 GMT Less religion, More Politics, Please Yet another New York Times writer took a public pratfall recently, but for once it was easy to sympathize. The embarrassed scribe was Timothy Egan, the Seattle-based reporter who's simply one of the best. No matter the topic, from strip-mining in Wes... http://www.caglepost.com/article/913f2818-2b8f-476e-8246-9b79179dd16f.html Thu, 19 Jun 2008 07:00:00 GMT It's Not Tough To Be Stupid Given the wholesale failure of the Bush presidency and the bankruptcy of Republican ideology, Sen. John McCain's only shot at the White House is to caricature Democratic nominee Barack Obama as an elitist girly-man who can't keep America safe. Unfort... http://www.caglepost.com/article/5c51a3a7-30aa-489d-af22-18ebee4f0155.html Thu, 12 Jun 2008 07:00:00 GMT Scott McClellan, Unleashed Samuel Johnson, the iconoclastic 18th-century English essayist, put it best: "No man but a blockhead, ever wrote, except for money." So, sure, former Bush administration press secretary Scott McClellan compiled his memoirs with an eye toward making a... http://www.caglepost.com/article/e5aa477b-1402-49a6-9e10-c86666def707.html Thu, 05 Jun 2008 07:00:00 GMT Democrats Tempted To Ignore History The political tragedy of 2008 would be if, in making history, the Democratic party tore itself apart. The potential exists for a schism between two of the party's most loyal and enduring constituencies: African-Americans, and blue-collar white voters... http://www.caglepost.com/article/404429e0-d9d3-4e9c-b913-4645a487ead3.html Wed, 28 May 2008 07:00:00 GMT Democrats Who Reject Obama If Hillary Clinton had no other reason to keep running for the Democratic presidential nomination, it would be to demonstrate that Tim Russert, Keith Olbermann, Maureen Dowd, David Broder and the Beltway media gasbags don't decide American elections.... http://www.caglepost.com/article/f0865dd7-e7bb-4758-8a62-c69ea24ab5f6.html Wed, 21 May 2008 07:00:00 GMT Winning Tactic,Losing Strategy It's long been my opinion that if Hillary Clinton could be appointed president, nobody could do the job better. In a parliamentary system, she'd stand an excellent chance of becoming prime minister, since political parties tend to select leaders more... http://www.caglepost.com/article/20359f3c-0e74-4239-b513-4ad1cb2a7e8f.html Wed, 14 May 2008 07:00:00 GMT Breeding Sorrow Every time I witness something like the breakdown of Eight Belles in the Kentucky Derby, I tell myself I've watched my last horse race. Particularly after the filly's gallant stretch run. For a long moment it appeared she might actually catch Big Bro... http://www.caglepost.com/article/d71d5f4d-8bba-417d-9983-39faf4fe438b.html Wed, 07 May 2008 07:00:00 GMT Thank Heaven For Little Girls The First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom serves as the very cornerstone of American liberty. By minimizing sectarian political rivalries, it has helped American religious institutions to flourish. To the connoisseur of human folly, however,... http://www.caglepost.com/article/7d2c0bf1-8f37-4313-9100-19711b80ef98.html Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:00:00 GMT Drawing To An Inside Straight Leave it to Democrats to try drawing to an inside straight in the most important presidential election of our times. For the uninitiated, that's a poker metaphor for making a longshot bet against the odds. Will America have its first woman president,... http://www.caglepost.com/article/c6230996-0471-448c-af59-07800aa8323d.html Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:00:00 GMT Obama's Elitist Gift To McCain Some weeks ago, this column asked a rhetorical question: What could Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama possibly have been thinking about, sitting in a Chicago pew for 20 years listening to the crackpot effusions of the Rev. Jeremiah Wrigh... http://www.caglepost.com/article/88deaaff-8edf-46b8-bf40-8dd7b843161d.html Mon, 21 Apr 2008 07:00:00 GMT Playing By (All) The Rules So here's my question: If it's such a lead-pipe cinch that Sen. Hillary Clinton can't win the Democratic nomination, why are so many people indignantly demanding that she drop out? What harm can come from letting this fascinating seven-game series of... http://www.caglepost.com/article/724c5904-af26-472c-a707-310383c6b1e0.html Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:00:00 GMT Playing Dumb Helps No One In 2000, Democrats were outraged that, due to the Supreme Court's ruling in Bush v. Gore, not all of Florida's presidential votes counted. In 2008, advanced thinkers supporting Sen. Barack Obama have persuaded themselves that fairness dictates none o... http://www.caglepost.com/article/5785b96e-a968-4151-80c2-866dacd3b752.html Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:00:00 GMT Ethnic Groupthink Imperils Democrats Perhaps due to naive Americanism, I've long resisted ethnic groupthink. Judging by this year's Democratic presidential contest, I'm in the minority. But will quarrelsome Democrats throw away the general election? As of today, I'd say the odds favor P... http://www.caglepost.com/article/1d0ccc7b-7ca9-4d8b-9360-9cd135aa2dde.html Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:00:00 GMT It Ain't Over Until It's Over People who tire of sports metaphors have my understanding, if not always my sympathy. Even so, watching overwrought Democrats carry on about the extended presidential primary season, it was my wife, a baseball and basketball coach's daughter, who won... http://www.caglepost.com/article/a7bfa08d-d79c-49a6-bd99-bbc8254d846a.html Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:00:00 GMT Girls Who Vote Are Stupid, And Have Cooties It's two days before the critical Texas and Ohio primaries, and how does the mighty Washington Post decorate its influential "Outlook" section? Well, the online headline kept changing: First, "Women Aren't Very Bright," followed by "Why Do Women Act ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/7a68d52b-c7f4-4590-96e2-c41f2b9ec728.html Mon, 10 Mar 2008 07:00:00 GMT Applying 'Clinton Rules' To McCain To the connoisseur of political farce, few events have been more entertaining than the grave and serious New York Times hinting that Sen. John McCain, presumptive GOP presidential nominee, may have enjoyed "a romantic relationship" with a blonde lobb... http://www.caglepost.com/article/c2e8f643-1807-43d1-985c-d9b570c9fff3.html Mon, 03 Mar 2008 08:00:00 GMT Is Obama Guilty of The 'P' Word? Chances are you've seen the video clips. First comes Sen. Barack Obama, responding to the charge that he's long on rhetoric, short on substance. "Don't tell me words don't matter," Obama told voters. "'I have a dream' -- just words. 'We hold these tr... http://www.caglepost.com/article/2278fc28-0862-40a5-af72-f6a601135c6f.html Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:00:00 GMT Passions voter turnout fuel Dems high Numbers are spurring Democrats' optimism about running the table come November, regaining the White House and continuing to control both houses of Congress. On "Super Tuesday," 15.4 million citizens voted in Democratic primaries. Only 9.1 million par... http://www.caglepost.com/article/8d50c095-cf70-4687-a99e-6f0590a73d86.html Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:00:00 GMT Should We Still Be Building An Empire? Almost regardless of who wins the presidential nomination, there's small likelihood of serious debate about the most crucial long-term foreign-policy question facing the American people: Do we or do we not want to maintain a global empire by force of... http://www.caglepost.com/article/818546cb-39ca-43e4-9b3f-37f40764181d.html Fri, 08 Feb 2008 08:00:00 GMT Muzzle That Bill In this time of strife among Democrats, it's good to know that so many of the nation's deepest political thinkers have the party's interests at heart. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan laments, "the Clintons ... http://www.caglepost.com/article/76d39853-8324-46c9-a0b7-bf84d833b154.html Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:00:00 GMT Obama Works The Refs Some time back, this column opined that many Democrats feared that nominating Sen. Hillary Clinton for the presidency risked setting off a national psychodrama that could cost their party the election. Both as a woman and a Clinton, Hillary's hated o... http://www.caglepost.com/article/4f0f81ff-f0b8-48b9-bba8-3e7246d838a1.html Wed, 23 Jan 2008 08:00:00 GMT Erasing The Race Try this political pop quiz: Can you identify the presidential candidate promising "a fresh start after a season of cynicism ... a president who can unite this nation, a president who puts aside the endless partisan bickering that seems to gridlock o... http://www.caglepost.com/article/44435f97-80ea-49e2-a266-31cac11655f7.html Wed, 16 Jan 2008 08:00:00 GMT Soothsayers Damage Democracy Chances are that the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee will have been chosen by the time you read this column. Chosen, that is, by a cadre of self-promoting New York/Washington pundits with less than 1 percent of primary voters having registered a... http://www.caglepost.com/article/90404182-21bd-42d0-b195-7e780f9cb37f.html Thu, 10 Jan 2008 08:00:00 GMT Bipartisanship Is Bunk Nobody asked, but if I were a congressional Democrat, I'd have two New Year's resolutions. One: No more Mr. Bipartisan Nice Guy. Two: Less substance, more political theater. If you haven't noticed, 2008 is an election year. Democrats hold small m... http://www.caglepost.com/article/bbbc01ca-f1d1-4f49-af87-7c83fcdfa97e.html Fri, 04 Jan 2008 08:00:00 GMT Dogs gone Christmas Resident Scholars at Unsolicited Opinions.org, the prestigious think tank where this column originates, strive to avoid controversy during the holiday season. Many readers are strung out to begin with, particularly those who have succumbed to the lat... http://www.caglepost.com/article/ceccdc4e-4d2f-40af-8348-9ebdd0c192a2.html Fri, 28 Dec 2007 08:00:00 GMT A family affair This column doesn't make political endorsements or predictions. Its prevailing orientation, however, is progressive. And because I've lived in Arkansas since 1972, I've long been acquainted with Sen. Hillary Clinton. How well I know her is probably b... http://www.caglepost.com/article/71523ca5-c9b4-4ffa-9e1b-f07541dc1c09.html Sun, 23 Dec 2007 08:00:00 GMT

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