On the night of his triumph in the South Carolina primary, Newt Gingrich declared that “The centerpiece of this campaign, I believe, is American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky.” That reference and subsequent references to Alinsky surely puzzled viewers of a certain age and probably many viewers of all ages. This is because Alinsky, a legendary community organizer, died in 1972. Translated, Gingrich’s dog-whistle demagoguery is: I am sure that a threateningly...

Frank Wuterich arrives at court with lawyer Neal Puckett Iraqis are reacting with outrage — and appropriately so — that the ringleader of the 2005 Haditha massacre that left 24 of their countrymen dead received no jail time and merely a reduction in rank to private as part of a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to a single count of dereliction of duty. “This is not new, and it’s not new for the American courts that already did little about Abu Ghraib and other crimes in...

For the first time in his presidency, Barack Obama was able to deliver a State of the Union address last night with the economic and political winds at his back as the lingering aftershocks of the recession ebb and Republican infighting diminishes the party’s chances of taking back the White House. Obama’s approval ratings are identical to those of the Great Conservative God, Ronald Reagan, at the same point in his first term and are rising, while the Tea Party militancy that...

DEBBIE BOSANEK (LEFT) BEFORE THE SPEECH Debbie Bosanek, secretary to mega-investor Warren Buffett, had stayed out of the limelight despite being the poster lady for President Obama’s tax proposals, but she took a star turn last night as she sat with first lady Michelle Obama during the State of the Union Speech. Bosanek, who has worked for Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway for 37 years and has been his secretary for 20, said before the speech that “I was so excited I couldn’t sleep...

It is beyond obvious that the Republican establishment, or what remains of it, is absolutely in shock over the possibility of Newt Gingrich winning the presidential nomination but is not firmly committed to Mitt Romney, the one man many pundits say might give President Obama a run for his money. But how to quantify this? The inestimable Nate Silver writes in The New York Times that the best way to do this is to measure endorsements from the so-called elite of party officials, and here Romney is...

House Majority Leader John Boehner is under attack from fellow Republicans for capitulating to the White House and his Senate peers on several key deals, under attack from voters for refusing to play ball on legislation to stimulate the economy and create jobs, and faces the prospect that a Newt Gingrich candidacy would jeopardize the GOP’s House majority. Yet he blithely predicts that the party will not only hold the House next year but for the next decade. The key to all of this, he tells...

Although the calendar says that the November 6 presidential election is nearly 300 days away, it seems more like an eternity. And Mitt Romney, still the putative favorite to win the Republican nomination after surviving a fusillade of negative ads and attacks on his character in South Carolina, surely must hope that voters don’t have long memories — or memories long enough to reach back to January — when it comes time to vote. The problem here for Romney is less voters’ memories...

There is an old saying that the apple doesn’t roll far from the tree, but in the case of George Romney’s son Mitt it has rolled far, far away. Allow me to take a somewhat different tack than Joe does in his post above: I was 21 and voting for the first time when George Romney sought the Republican presidential nomination. He had gotten rich as chairman and CEO of American Motors while his son got rich as CEO of Bain Capital. The father was ruggedly handsome and the son ain’t...

Joe Paterno, the longtime Penn State coach who won more games than anyone in major college football but was fired amid a child sex abuse scandal that upended his reputation for integrity, died this morning. Paterno, 85, built his program on the credo “Success with Honor” en route to winning 409 games. He took Penn State to 37 bowl games and two national championships, while More than 250 of the players he coached went on to the NFL. His son Scott said in mid-November that his father...

The people of the great state of South Carolina have spoken: They prefer a serial adulterer and racist who lies shamelessly over a rapacious capitalist and ultimate insider who flip-flops shamelessly. And Barack Obama will be laughing all the way to a second term. Newt Gingrich’s “stunning” double-digit win over Mitt Romney on the third stop en route to the Republican National Convention was because of his “commanding” performances in the two Palmetto State debates,...

Mitt Romney knew that he was going to be asked about releasing his tax returns during last night’s presidential debate in South Carolina. Yet he was defensive and yet again blew off questions about when and whether he will release returns and for how many years, as well as refusing to address the fact that it was his father who began the precedent of candidates releasing their taxes and that Barack Obama has consistently done so. And so a big question now looms: What is Romney hiding? And...

How does the Mitt Romney campaign defend itself against charges — entirely accurate, in this case — that the man who wants to replace President Obama got filthy rich on the backs of middle-class working stiffs, pays a tax rate substantially below those stiffs and hides some of his income in offshore tax havens? The answer is that you portray your critics as “liberals.” That seems to be the emerging strategy as Romney and his surrogates push back against a groundswell of...

I stopped eating meat about 15 years ago not on philosophical grounds or because I embraced a vegetarian or (heaven forbid) vegan diet, but because meat was expensive and I realized that I felt better without it. And so except for the very occasional greasy Philadelphia-style cheese steak with fried onions and mushrooms, I have become a so-called flexitarian with a diet that is substantially meat free. Americans, Mark Bitman tells us in an edifying New York Times commentary, eat more meat than any...

Pakistan bankrolled the Taliban, who destroyed the Buddhas of Banyan There is an old Afghan folk tale that portrays a foreigner balancing two connected trays attached to the handheld weighing device used in South Asian bazaaars. The foreigner carefully loads one tray and then the other with frogs. Just as he puts the last few frogs on one tray and then the other, some frogs on the first tray hop off. As the foreigner returns those frogs to the tray, frogs on the second tray hop off or attempt to...

Perhaps the best opportunity to kill Osama bin Laden prior to the 9/11 attacks came in 1998 when credible intelligence placed the terrorist leader at Tarnak Farm (image above), a compound on the arid plains near Kandahar in Afghanistan. With the aid of real-time video imagery transmitted by a Predator drone, U.S. intelligence agents half way around the world were able to watch Bin Laden as he walked through the primitive and undefended compound were he and his associates and their families then...

For the Obama re-election campaign, Mitt Romney is the gift that keeps on giving. At least so far. Never mind that the former Massachusetts governor is supposed to be the un-Obama, a man who has the expertise to turn around the economy by creating jobs while reducing the federal budget deficit. Today, three days before the South Carolina primary, which will validate Romney as the Republican presidential nominee, he is under withering attack from his presidential wannabe opponents, the effects of...

There was a time not long ago when free speech was guaranteed in America, and if someone had a problem with that the Supreme Court would weigh in with a reminder that the concept is a foundation on which our democracy is built. But a funny thing happened on the way to the second decade of the new millennium. According to a new study, the court led by Chief Justice John Roberts is hearing fewer free speech cases and ruling in favor of free speech at a lower rate than any of the courts of the...

(PORTIONS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN JANUARY 2007) When I was first cutting my teeth in the newspaper business, my editors sent me out on “house ends,” visits to homes where I would interview families of interest because something very bad of interest had happened to them. It was the late 1960s and many of these house ends were the result of the death of a young man, usually an Army or Marine Corps infantryman who had been drafted and sent to Vietnam. Most were African-Americans...

GEORGE HODEL AND ELIZABETH SHORT Sixty-five years ago today, a 22-year-old beauty by the name of Elizabeth Short was found brutally slain in a vacant lot at 39th and Norton streets in Los Angeles. Her body was cut in half at the waist with surgical precision, her face and breasts slit, and there was a large gash where her vulva should have been. She had been drained of fluids as if prepared for an embalming and she was left in a garish pose, her head turned to the side and one arm above her body. The...

I have just watched When Mitt Romney Came to Town and it is, in a word, devastating. The 28-minute film from Newt Gingrich’s Super PAC, a series of interviews with ordinary folk whose lives were never the same after Romney’s Bain Capital bought and took down local companies, is a double condemnation — both of his private equity work and the business model he used to get filthy rich. The interviews are with families from four businesses that Bain looted: Some of their comments: “I...

While I could care less, one of the frustrating things about the Republican presidential race for pundits is that after repeatedly anointing Mitt Romney as the man who will take on President Obama, he keeps failing to beat expectations that were fairly low to begin with. And is failing to pull away from a field that even minus Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain looks like it would be right at home in the locked ward in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The reason that this is easy to suss out:...

There surely will be a statue of Sarah Palin when the Temple of Political Chutzpah is erected. The former half-term governor and failed candidate, who never came clean about anything, says that Mitt Romney has brought his Bain Capital problems on himself by not being transparent and offering no documentation for the claim that he created 100,000 net jobs and refusing to release his tax returns. For the record, Palin was never transparent, never offered documentation for anything unless subpoenaed,...

That grinding sound you hear are the tectonic plates of Republican presidential politics shifting. In what direction and how far they shift may determine whether Mitt Romney has a chance of beating Barack Obama in November. That is if he can survive brutal attacks from some of his opponents. Although it was not noticeable, the shift began with the burst of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, first in New York and then in many other cities, beginning in September. Republicans, including Tea Partiers,...

Mitt Romney wouldn’t have caught Bin Laden. He would have bought Al Qaeda and fired him. ~ Commenters at DAILY KOS The clashes over class warfare that have bubbled to the surface as the Republican Party scrambles to anoint a challenger to President Obama is a healthy sign that addressing real issues is not completely dead, although the warfare happens to be for the wrong reasons. To find the right reasons, you have to turn to the guy who is likely to have his lease on the Oval Office extended. This...

REID BIGLAND, PRESIDENT OF DODGE, WITH THE NEW DART As the North American International Auto Show gets underway this week in Detroit, the Big Two and a Half automakers have reason to be ebullient. With 12.8 million vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2011, it was the industry’s highest-volume sales year since 2008. Detroit automakers each finished in the black for the full year — the first time that has happened since 2004. Meanwhile, each gained market share for the first time since forever. The...