The spectacle of Roland Burris marched out of the Capitol by police guards is embarrassing – but not for Senate Democrats who turned him away. It is Burris himself who is to blame for the situation. When the nefarious Illinois governor asked Burris to accept the appointment, Burris had a choice, and he made the [...]

The once-gentle art of interviewing has been savagely mutilated on some of the cable news/entertainment programs, and nobody is more guilty of the offense than Chris Matthews at MSNBC. When The Washington Post reported on December 5 that Matthews is eyeing a run for the U.S. Senate, my first thought was I hope that augured [...]

Several years ago a caller to my talk-radio program insisted that, when it came to abortion, God told her what was right and the rest of the country should obey His dictates. I replied that whenever anybody claimed to know exactly what God has in mind, I was inclined to count the silver. Since the [...]

I suppose it was inevitable that media folk should at first insist on describing Barack Obama as the first African-American president-elect. Even now some are still pinching themselves, finding it hard to believe that this is so. The other day MSNBC’s Chris Matthews confessed as much on the air during his “Hardball” program. My hope [...]

The October 31st headline on The Washington Post editorial said it all: An ‘Idiot Wind.’ Long after the election, I expect that wind will continue to blow, because such habits of mind have a way of perpetuating themselves. The phrase was uttered by Rashid Khalidi, an American-born scholar who heads a Middle East Institute at [...]

In true Halloween spirit, the latest message from the McCain campaign to voters is this: The goblins will get you if you don’t watch out. And the biggest goblin of all is socialism. What in blazes is socialism, and why should we be afraid of it? In its extreme form, socialism means total government control [...]

Every time I hear somebody say that John McCain has more “experience” than Barack Obama, I think of a couple who used to live next door. The pair were good neighbors, friendly folks, but they had one shortcoming. They liked to travel around the world, and when they came back, they insisted that their friends [...]

Am I the only person in America who thinks Sarah Palin is SCARY? That she is a female candidate for vice-president may be different and interesting, but it is a distraction from the essential question: What kind of president would she be if called on to fill that high office? Briefly unleashed from McCain’s apron [...]

I guess 72-year-old John McCain thinks he’s immortal. Why worry – if elected – that old age or cancer might shorten his tenure and leave the nation in the hands of a singularly ill-equipped replacement? Maybe McCain doesn’t care what happens after he’s gone because he believes he’s not going. The man who says he [...]

I happen to like my Scotch straight up, unadulterated by ice or water. And I like my Convention coverage the same way. That’s why on the first two nights of the Democratic Convention I turned to C-Span, which offered without interruption what was going on at the stage level and also down on the floor. [...]