Shortly after President Obama in a highly political speech Thursday said the U.S.-Mexican border is the safest in 20 years, 21 persons were killed in a gun battle between rival drug and immigrant trafficking gangs. Although the shootout occurred 12 miles south of the Arizona border, residents north of the border fear the motive for this kind of violence spills into the United States in other forms. One aspect of such collateral damage is Phoenix being turned into the kidnapping capital of North America,...

One thing President Obama is not is accused of being incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. The president has so many major platters on his agenda it dwarfs the size of a picnic table jammed with plates of enchiladas and tamales at a Mexican fiesta. For the first time in 18 months as president, Obama Thursday delivered a major speech calling for immigration reform legislation. It fulfills a campaign promise to his Hispanic supporters. He called for a path to citizenry for an estimated...

Even before she became Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi was a lightening rod for the Republican attack machine, the epitome of a liberal, free-spending Democrat from — gasp — San Francisco. In my family and circle of friends in California, Pelosi is the face of all what is wrong with Democratic liberals for she is seen as an elitist, environmental tree hugger, bleeding heart, anti-war activist, big government advocate and, worst of all, from a city that harbors illegal immigrants and...

The $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress in 2009 did better than Republicans would have you believe and worse than the progressive Democrats maintain. The U.S. economy needs another transfusion of gigantic proportions but without the pratfalls of the last one to avoid what Kensyian economist Paul Krugman predicts a third prolonged depression since 1873. Actually, I have one foot on Krugman’s boat and one on the dock. Which poison would you prefer: Risking inflation and a massive...

To hear Democratic media cheerleaders tell it, Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner had a tough day at the office Tuesday. The office of the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, that is. His interview did not go well and the film clips I saw made him look like he swallowed a month’s prescription of a sedative moments before the sit down. I disagree with Rachael Maddow his comments spoken in a monotone laced with no doze may cost the Republicans the November midterm elections. Judge...

In a 1995 book review, Elena Kagan wrote that the Supreme Court confirmation hearings were an “air of vacuity and farce.” Now that Kagan is the nominee, she changed her mind and agrees the lifetime appointees should remain mum if questions from senators “have some bearing on a case that might some day come before the Court.” Her epiphany came, she testified Tuesday, when Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah took her aside and urged caution in her testimony. Furthermore, she testified she...

A friend from the 1960s tracked me down after all these years and in our email exchanges asked what I thought about Joe McCain. Joe is Arizona Sen. John McCain’s younger brother. He worked briefly for the two San Diego dailies in the late 1960s where my friend and I toiled. Joe immediately established himself as a legend. Not as a reporter. As a prankster of which survivors of those days still fondly recall. Joe is the literal definition of a Navy “brat.” It was beneath his dignity...

The loss of Sen. Robert Byrd who died Monday is not any particular game changer of politics played out in Washington for it is peanuts compared to other people’s pork he fed the folks in his home state of West Virginia. Byrd was dubbed the “King of Pork” and damned proud wearing that mantel no matter how hard the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste tried to embarrass him. Byrd even flipped the bird at his detractors. I come before you today not to bury or malign the...

There are conflicting reports out of the Afghanistan capital of Kabul that President Hamid Karzai has held face-to-face talks with Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of a particularly brutal militant group with ties to al-Qaida. Al Jazeera, a normally reliable Arab news agency in these matters, reported the meeting Sunday. The presidential palace denied such a meeting. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul had nothing to report. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said earlier in the week that the Haqqanis were...

I have battled obesity most of my adult life and in the past year considered gastric bypass surgery or at least a lap band procedure. I mention it only because a story Saturday is circulating about a New Jersey researcher who concluded two family members having the surgery are more successful in weight loss and improved health yardsticks than those who try it alone. That makes sense even though it rules me out since I’m single. Dr. Gus Slotman, a clinical professor of surgery at the University...

Let’s see if I got this right. The Washington Post hired an on-line reporter to cover the Tea Party and other conservative causes because his resume was that of a libertarian conservative. Three months later the Post fires the reporter, Dave Weigel, because a gossip website published snide remarks in emails he wrote about the very conservatives he was paid to cover. That’s when all hell broke loose. You would have thought Ben Bradlee, managing editor of the Washington Post, had fired...

In the polarization of politics, parsing words of politicians has become a fine art form by opponents to score points as if the public has a mental scoreboard in their heads. I’m drawing from memory here as most voters would on criticism tossed at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Banking chairman Chris Dodd. After passage of the health reform legislation, Pelosi said we won’t know what’s in the law until it plays out in real time. After the joint conference agreement on the...

Relief well drilling, capping and cleanup crews will be forced to evacuate in as early as three days if the first tropical storms of the hurricane season find a path to the Gulf of Mexico. The National Hurricane Center by mid-Friday placed a 70% chance one of the storms with winds in excess of 100mph will whip through the area where an oil well blowout of volcanic proportions has spewed an estimated 60,000 barrels of oil and gas daily since April 20. However, computer models were divided evenly whether...

In the campaign to be elected California governor — a job no one in their right mind would want — the opening salvos between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown perfectly frame the candidates’ Achilles heels. The Republican Whitman paints Brown as a chameleon in a television ad released Friday. In a montage of old news video clips, one shows a 1992 debate where Bill Clinton says Brown “reinvents himself every year or two.” Brown’s union supporters earlier blanketed the...

Provincetown, Mass., school district now allows free condoms given to first graders upon request. This is serving a softball right up Bill O’Reilly’s alley. Film at the click of your finger.

In a game of chess, the Obama administration may appeal a federal judge’s second order ending the government’s six-month moratorium on some drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The government in effect is stalling for time as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar crafts a new moratorium that he hopes will pass the legal hurdles posed in the first one issued May 5. Fifth District Judge Martin Feldman Thursday rejected to stay his decision June 15 when he ruled the government failed to prove its case...

Besides my computer crashing and taking care of nasty business in my drug coverage caused by cutbacks in California’s Medicaid bankrupt system, I was effectively muzzled by weariness yesterday to file a column on Afghanistan. So a day late and many dollars short, I think what I began to write still holds true. Here’s the first part. By naming Army Gen. David H. Petraeus the new military commander in Afghanistan, Barack Obama is failing to take advantage of a crisis — his chief...

The frenzy whether Gen. Stanley McChrystal will resign, be fired or retained as commander of Afghanistan military forces for disparaging remarks about his civilian counterparts is misplaced. The focus should be on the foot soldiers carrying out the counterinsurgency mission with rules of engagement that are “handcuffing” their efforts to defeat the enemy. Indulge me for reprinting one paragraph from my column yesterday from the Rolling Stone article that I considered most revealing: At...

I needed a respite from talking generals and oil blowouts so what better than tell the story of an Arkansas detention officer who posed in the semi-nude for Playboy’s on-line gig? Jessie Lunderby, 21, was placed on administrative leave Sunday when her boss, sheriff Tim Helder of Washington County in Fayetteville, Ark., found out about it. He said wearing a pink bra and panties in a photo shoot as Playboy’s on-line “June 7th Cyber Girl of the Week” violated department policy. “It’s...

The Obama administration said Tuesday it would immediately appeal a ruling by a federal judge who upheld a challenge by Big Oil against a moratorium that shutdown deepwater offshore drilling for six months. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans said he granted the preliminary restraining order because the government assumed erroneously that because one rig failed, all companies and rigs doing deepwater drilling pose an imminent danger. President Obama issued the moratorium shortly after the...