An enduring belief of most Americans is that we have greater mobility than folks in other countries. It's the poor boy makes good, every kid can grow up to be president ideal. In June's edition of The Atlantic, Senior Editor Clive Crook calls that into question in his article, "Rags to Rags, Riches to Riches."
Conservatives love to vilify Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for defeatism and cynicism for his comments about the Iraq war being unwinnable. But he's hardly alone in his assessment of the war.
President Bush, in the second veto of his six-year term, killed an Iraq spending bill that included timetables for troop withdrawal to begin in October of this year, setting up another showdown between the Bush administration and Congress. But what will the new bill look like?
The Kurdish population is spread across Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, and all of those countries have long been nervous about the loyalties and intentions of their Kurdish population.
There's a fairly large display ad on page A21 of Thursday's New York Times with a large caption reading "Challenge Debate" followed by even larger letters proclaiming that "Global Warming is Not a Crisis." The ad has a picture of Lord Monckton labeled "For" and a picture of Al Gore labeled "Against."
I live a few miles from Williams College. The college had an incident exactly a week ago that seems to me to exemplify a particular gulf in values in this country that has caused a lot of heat and will likely cause a lot more.
In a further sign of eroding support for the Iraq war among Republicans, talk show host and former Florida Congressman Joe Scarborough announced on his MSNBC program Tuesday night that the United States "can't win this war."
The novelist Andrew Klavan has written a rant titled "The Big White Lie" that celebrates himself for being a conservative. I hate self-congratulatory stuff like this, whether it's coming from the right or the left, because it reduces politics to a sports rivalry in which your team rox and the other team sux.
Add Congressional staffer Mark Zachares to the list of casualties of the Abramoff investigation.
In his April 19th radio show, Rush Limbaugh referred to the ideology of the Virginia Tech shooter as liberal, and then acknowledged he would be attacked for it.