Fresh from stalemating the deficit-reduction panel, anti-tax zealots can turn their attention to their movement’s close cousin: the campaign to privatize Medicare. A preview of the battle to get rid of government-run health care can be found in Florida, where Gov. Rick Scott is determined to privatize everything in sight, including the state’s 16 publicly-financed [...]

Where is the like of Hubert Humphrey when the Republicans so desperately need him — particularly when it comes to the Iowa GOP caucuses? The late Democratic U.S. senator and vice president (1911-1978) came to mind because of the continuing failure of just about any Iowa Republican, save one or two maybe, to speak up [...]

Republican presidential candidates are flooding into Iowa attempting to reach and influence the tiny sliver of GOP voters who actually will express a candidate preference at the much-hyped Jan. 3 “first-in-the- nation” Iowa caucuses. If past experience is a guide, the press will go ga-ga over the event, but most Iowa Republicans will have nothing [...]

Greenville, S.C. – Bolstered by his rising poll numbers and looking ahead to that night’s foreign policy debate, Newt Gingrich opened his first South Carolina campaign office with wife, Callista, at his side on Saturday. As he rises to compete in the top tier of GOP hopefuls, voters are taking a closer look, and conservatives [...]

While no one could ever say Condoleezza Rice has strayed far from Republican beliefs – in a recent appearance in Charlotte, N.C., she touted “low regulation and low taxes” as economic solutions – the views of President Bush’s Secretary of State on immigration and education reform reveal just how much the party itself has changed. [...]

As American troops prepare to head for the exit in Iraq, pundits prepare to critique the war. Let me contribute my two cents worth: the war was a spectacular failure for the vaunted American system of checks and balances. The only checks in evidence were those written to pay for the trillion or so dollars [...]

If you are a progressive, perhaps you got a “First, fill in your name” email requesting money from Barack Obama back during the ’08 campaign? That artful first person oh-so-friendly email, adroitly and effectively designed to make you feel that, hey, you could walk right into campaign headquarters and get a big fat hug from [...]

Inquiring minds may want to know how Iowans feel now that Rep. Michele Bachmann has dropped sharply in the GOP presidential derby. After all, the Hawkeye state often fashions itself as a presidential kingmaker, and it was Iowans — well, right-wing, evangelistic Iowans — who had crowned Bachmann as a frontrunner for the Republican Party’s [...]

Where is Buddy Roemer, Republican candidate for president? In the polls, the former U.S. Congressman and Louisiana governor is so low he hasn’t been included in any debates so far, and that includes Thursday night’s. This week, though, I knew exactly where I could find him – in Charlotte, N.C., around the corner from my [...]

I got a few questions from a Norwegian journalist asking my reflections on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. The questions tend to be a little lofty; as the writer, Tore Saevik, noted, “It is possible to write books about several of them.” But they all are good questions, so I took a shot at them. [...]