From the gloom of news, a man-bites-dog story brings comic relief to a national tragedy. In Florida, a couple wrongfully targeted by Bank of America proves in court they have no mortgage, is awarded legal fees and eventually allowed to foreclose the branch when the bank fails to pay. Sheriff’s deputies, movers and the couple’s attorney go there with permission to remove desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets and cash in the teller’s drawers before the bank finally antes up what...

He must have been the brightest kid in school but, in three years, John Edwards has gone from a leading Presidential candidate to a pariah now charged with violating federal law. Yet, in a season of reminders that brains alone are not enough to navigate the world safely and successfully, to lump Edwards with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and even Bill Clinton as just another victim of unzipped desire would be an oversimplification. More to the point may be what social scientists call...

If Mitt Romney actually gets the Republican nomination, out of default or disgust with the rest of the field, Americans will have the chance to reprise 1976 when they, in effect, voted to leave the White House unoccupied by electing Jimmy Carter to take a breather from Watergate and its aftereffects. Still in shock from Nixon and offended by Gerald Ford’s pardon of him, Americans turned to a former governor whose chief appeal was “I will never lie to you,” but who was otherwise clueless about...

Wink, wink. John Boehner, Paul Ryan and their gang that can’t shoot straight are holding the debt-ceiling hostage to tax cuts but telling financial markets the guns aren’t loaded. “Just ignore Tuesday’s vote against raising the debt ceiling, House Republican leaders whispered to Wall Street,” says a New York Times editorial. “We didn’t really vote against it, members suggested; we just sent another of our endless symbolic messages, pretending to take the nation’s credit to the brink...

Amid excitement about Anthony Weiner’s Twittering comes a reminder of something less trivial–what Osama bin Laden’s death did not solve for America and the Arab world. “Bin Laden,” Thomas Friedman writes, “really did a number on all of us…the Arab states, America and Israel–all of whom have deeper holes than ever to dig out of thanks to the Bin Laden decade, 2001 to 2011, and all of whom have less political authority than ever to make the hard decisions needed to get out...

As a legendary woman of the last century turns 85 today, there are echoes of a Marilyn-like media frenzy in the hide-and-seek game being played now by another super-celebrity. “Congratulations, Sarah Palin, you have turned the Washington press corps into a bunch of paparazzi stalking your every move,” a reporter writes about the bus tour meant to bolster her presidential chances by blowing kisses to crowds while avoiding contact with journalists. What we have here is a 21st century equivalent...

The parades, flags and mass prayers are meant to honor men and women who died nobly for their country, but they also commemorate the barbaric enterprise of those who sent them to kill and be killed for reasons that are not fully understood and shared by fellow Americans. Since World War II, our young people have been giving up their lives in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East and smaller wars elsewhere with no clear consensus about the goals. On this of all days, shouldn’t we question why they have...

Republicans are doing more than try to win elections next year. In both presidential primaries and Congress, they are undermining the kind of American government that people are literally dying to emulate in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. The Presidency is in its second round of insult to injury as Sarah Palin follows Donald Trump into making a circus of the selection process, taking a free ride to pump it for personal publicity with no clear intention to take part in it, even as Michele...

It’s only his second campaign for president but Mitt Romney seems to have been running forever, like that battery-powered toy in the classic commercial, always in motion but never in a straight line. In a Republican field where too little name recognition is a problem for most candidates, Romney has too much. In 2008, he changed positions on issues as often as shirts and is starting now with a campaign tome titled “No Apologies,” but the dazed voter is likely to be sorting through a laundry...

The world didn’t end last weekend as predicted, but tornadoes have made the middle of America look as if it did. Devastation fills TV screens, making those safe at home aware of how fragile the daily existence we take for granted really is. How do we reconcile going about our days as if we were safe and going to live forever with the knowledge deep in our bones that we walk on a thin crust of earth that could crack at any time and swallow us forever? How do we cope with the world without either...

In these Alice-in-Wonderland days, occasional signs of sanity emerge, such as the Democratic victory in a traditionally Republican upstate New York House district, fueled by voter worries about Medicare and a Tea Party candidate on the ballot drawing just enough votes to make the difference. This used to be known as shooting yourself in the foot, but that won’t deter John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and other House GOP leaders, who contributed to the loser’s campaign, from pressing their...

Even as GOP hopefuls make pilgrimages for a blessing by President 41, the sound of a distant groundswell can be heard for a possible Bush 45. “His credentials,” says a throbbing pundit about the failure of Jeb Bush to step up, “are so good and his political abilities so acute compared to the others that his decision may well result in four more years of President Obama.” Could eight disastrous years of Bush 43 disappear down the Memory Hole so quickly? Would Independents who deserted McCain...

It’s getting harder to coopt reality for entertainment. Columnist Ross Douthat proposes a Dominique Strauss-Kahn epic—“one of those sprawling, complex, kaleidoscope-of-globalization movies that aspire to Oscar glory. Think ‘Traffic’ or ‘Syriana,’ ‘Crash’ or ‘Babel’”—but he has the wrong genre. The boffo box office gold may be in a remake of low comedy. Imagine the poster for the 1988 flick “Twins”–identically dressed Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito leaning...

Never mind men in outer space or those slogging in Middle East mud, media attention is on a horny old Frenchman in Manhattan detention, a former body builder with no procreative self-control and a preening pack of politicians playing Chicken with the national debt limit. In the Age of Viagra, masculinity is being downgraded everywhere. Even 60 Minutes is obsessed with strength cheating by Lance Armstrong and other cycling idols. The Bogart-Eastwood days of strong, silent men are long gone, replaced...

Tea Party Republican primaries are headed toward their logical conclusion. With Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana bowing out and Pizza Man Herman Cain stepping in, political experience is becoming a liability for GOP candidates. Cain won the first Fox debate boasting that he was unencumbered by government service, a political virgin whose purity would enable him to solve all the nation’s problems just as he had successfully marketed a cheese pie named for a Mafia head and gone on to talk radio prominence. Unlike...

Score one more for the Law of Unintended Consequences. In 2008, voters hungry for new ideas chose Hope and Change. What they have now is an extreme example of the ancient phenomenon of closed-mindedness. What Newt Gingrich is encountering fits perfectly the sociological definition of Groupthink “that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive ingroup, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.” Republican...

In World War II, U boats would send up wreckage to the surface to make pursuers think they had been sunk. The GOP presidential campaign is at that stage now. Huckabee, Trump, Barbour, (gulp) Gingrich…the flotsam and jetsam keep coming, but down below in the engine room, are real missiles being loaded? (Apologies to Sarah Palin for the war image.) A Gallup poll shows name recognition is still the game with only Romney reaching 20 percent as the preferred candidate. Most GOP voters seem to want...

With all the Schwarzegger gabble about why powerful men cheat, their wives are dismissed with clucking sympathy and respectful silence. Maria Shriver says, “This is a painful and heartbreaking time. As a mother, my concern is for the children. I ask for compassion, respect and privacy as my children and I try to rebuild our lives and heal. I will have no further comment.” Understandable, but her retreat into silence should be seen in context of what other political wives such as Hillary Clinton...

With Trump out, the GOP Blowhard title goes to Newt Gingrich hands down. Already this week, according to The Caucus, he has “slammed the Republican Medicare proposals in Congress, declared the city of Detroit ‘destroyed’ by food stamps and implied that he supported the individual mandates at the heart of President Obama’s health care overhaul. “What was supposed to be the beginning of a conversation with the American people about Mr. Gingrich’s big ideas became a nightmare of political...

Two presidential campaigns crash in one day. The Donald folds a flirtation with the 2012 Republican nomination after weeks of pasting his name over the news, as always leaving onlookers wondering what it was all about beyond enhancing the brand. In a nearby posh Manhattan hotel, a contender for next year’s French presidency flames out in more traditional fashion, with a bedroom scandal out of classic farce as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, is...

An editor, goes an old journalism bromide, separates wheat from chaff and prints the chaff. The biggest chaff-maker on the Internet, according to a new study, is Matt Drudge who still outdoes Facebook and Twitter in telling millions what they should know. “He can look into a huge stream of news,” says an admirer, “find the hot story and put an irresistible headline on it.” This Internet skill recalls Henry Luce, who founded Time Magazine in the last century to save readers from being confused...

Mike Huckabee’s decision not to run clarifies the career choice picture between Fox News and the White House. All the factors say go,” Huckabee explains (on Fox, of course), “but my heart says no.” Perhaps his finances do as well. Unlike Romney and Trump, for example, the ex-minister is not a wealthy man who, in making the race, would have to go off the Fox payroll, as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum did recently. As Sarah Palin ponders a potential run, the choice between trying to go to...

For the first time in history, would-be White House occupants have to make a financial choice between staying on the Fox News payroll or taking a financial loss by getting onto the taxpayers’. Mike Huckabee has made his decision but, for Sarah Palin, it could be more complicated. Of course, she could go rogue and do what she did with the Akaska state plane and put Air Force One on eBay… MORE.

The Paul Ryan crusade (all hail Ayn Rand) takes a slight turn away from “looters and moochers” of poverty to the real villains of our time–the old leeches who hold onto life beyond their span and suck future generations dry of their heritage. The Wall Street Journal opens its paywall for an attack on “The Millionaire Retirees Next Door,” those who live it up on Social Security and Medicare, refusing to go willingly onto the ice floe that would release trillions for future...

A. J. Liebling, the founding father, might have appreciated this. As the inventor of riding herd on journalism, the New Yorker critic would be bemused to see Barack Obama taking on Rupert Murdoch In a speech, the President quotes the Australian-born media baron: “Immigrants have made America great as the world leader in business, science, higher education and innovation,” adding about the Fox News owner, “I don’t know if you’re familiar with his views, but let’s...