A Jeopardy answer and question: Answer: You’re not a good liberal if you ask hard questions about this late Senator. Question: Who is Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion? Roger Mudd as far as I know has never claimed to be a liberal, but if people ever thought of him that way – after all, he [...]

One of the riddles of news coverage of Iowa politics, at least for me, is why the Iowa Republican Party is not reported for what it is: Not a political party, but a driven assembly that wants to force feed its perspective on Christian beliefs down the throats of the rest of us. More than [...]

When it comes to domestic violence, the Washington Post doesn’t get it. On Feb. 17, for example, it published a truly appalling piece of reporting about the killing of a Maryland woman by her estranged husband. The killer’s mother turns up in the article as the expert on domestic violence, being oh-so-sorry, for… whom? For [...]

“The president is a socialist ideologue trying to change America into something it will never be: a socialist state,” William Parker, of Selma, Cal., wrote in a letter published on the Feb. 15 Newsweek’s “Feedback” page. Let’s take a quick look at the validity of the accusation and then at a broader question: Why publish [...]

What would I do if I were in charge of a dozen highly skilled investigative reporters? Where would I sic them? What marching orders would I give them? (Dan Froomkin, deputy editor of Nieman Watchdog, put those questions to me recently.) The number of registered Washington lobbyists increased nearly 45 percent between 1998 and 2008, [...]

Mindful of the awful winter besetting much of the nation and the political news frustrating all of us, here are 10 travel tips and trivia should you decide to escape Down Under to Australia and New Zealand. (Accommodations provided by our son-in-law’s family and friends not included.) 1. Qantas is an acronym: Queensland and Northern [...]

As an old assignment editor I’m used to asking questions and not being embarrassed if they expose me as naïve or wrong minded, because sometimes there’s a good story lurking. So here are a few simple questions. The biggest financial institutions are said to be on the verge of issuing $145 billion in bonuses. My [...]