The one thing supporters and opponents of Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court should agree on is this: it’s about time we had some non-judges on the high court…again.
The history of the Supreme Court is one filled with brilliant (and some not-so-brilliant) members who had never been judges before being confirmed. That was once considered not only normal, but a good thing. The non-judges have been some of the most remarkable names in the Court’s long history: Marshall, Brandeis, Frankfurter, Rehnquist, Warren. Thirty-seven other justices were part of the …

Earlier this week I was having dinner with a noted pollster when the topic turned (naturally) to Obama and the Democrats — how bad was November looking? I argued that the hype over the coming Democratic debacle was both totally premature and wildly overblown. Surprisingly my polling pundit agreed. We both understood two things about the electorate — they have very short memories (Bush’s approval ratings are back up!) and care almost exclusively about one thing: their pocket books. And so, November is a lot farther away than the …

As health care reform becomes law and we either A) become a socialist nation on the brink of collapse, or B) like every other first and second-rate country in the world and have something approximating universal health insurance, it’s time to ask a really frank and important question.
Are Americans too uninformed to be part of the process? OK that’s a little over the top but after the last year it’s really difficult for someone who’s spent a career trying to find the facts and then report them to watch the …

You didn’t even need to pick up a copy of the New York Post this morning to know the paper’s oh-so-predictable verdict on President Obama’s speech at West Point. In fact you didn’t even have to watch the paper’s stable mates at Fox last night to know what was coming. Because it’s been coming for months. For his legion of well-heeled and widely-distributed critics, the bottom line is simply, if it’s coming out of Obama’s mouth or Obama’s White House it is, by definition, bad, misguided, and probably un-American. Their …

So the cat is out of the bag and now the even the White House is worried about New York Governor David Paterson’s incredible deflating poll problem. But the way it’s playing out is not how the President, nor the people who put him up to this, expected.
Back up to this past winter when Paterson’s amateur-hour handling of his pick to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate left just about everyone slack-jawed. He managed to piss of anyone connected to the Kennedys (not an insignificant body of people especially in …

It was inescapable from the very start of Barack Obama’s campaign waaaaay back in January 2007 that race and racism would play a big part in whatever came to pass. And of course it did and it has and it still is and it always will. Now the New York Times — or to be fair one of her columnists — has finally said what is pretty apparent: An awful lot of the screaming incoherent rage ostensibly directed at Obama’s actions is actually just plain racism.
Maureen Dowd put it this …

OK so if the pundits left, right, and center are to be believed Barack Obama’s 7-month-old Presidency is in trouble and his speech to Congress on health care was his last best chance to keep the ship afloat. We’ll let you decide if that’s a bit hyperbolic (see: Bill Clinton health care failure 1994, reelection 1996 or George W. Bush “Education President” 2001, Iraq War legacy-killer 2008).
The big speech on the hill is getting plenty of (digital) ink but it was not Obama’s most important speech on Wednesday. That came …

It’s nothing new. Humans seem to prefer faith to facts. And I’m not talking about religion.
Howard Kurtz got lots of (liberal) blog links early this week with an article about the health care “debate” and how facts have been relegated to the sidelines. Kurtz now reports that it was Monday’s most commented piece on the paper’s website as people poured forth their vitriol from both sides of the health care aisle.
Kurtz’s main point was pretty simple: Despite the fact that many reporters demonstrably proved that the death panels myth was …

If  Barack Obama has an Achille’s Heel (if? who doesn’t…) it is almost certainly his arrogance. Most of the time he keeps it in check, or at least does a reasonably good job of masking it. When it peeks through he is generally quick to recognize the potential damage (“You’re nice enough, Hillary”). But this time his arrogance may once again cost Americans the chance at having the health care system as good as every other industrialized country in the world.
The arguments about the relative merits of various plans, the …

No one ever accused Rupert Murdoch media properties of being fair and balanced least of all his money-losing Democrat-hating baby the New York Post. Still Friday’s Michael Starr article on Oprah Winfrey’s ratings declines is a truly remarkable effort in keeping the boss happy at all costs.
Starr writes about the long slow decline in Oprah’s ratings for her afternoon syndicated talk show. He notes early on that the show’s numbers are “down by nearly a third, 32 percent, records show” before jumping into the speculation pool for a quick dip …