Campaign watchers get a double-header of metaphors with reports that Barack Obama is eschewing a Rose Garden strategy and going head to head with Mitt Romney by name, along with a reminder of the President’s fondness for a three-year-old photo showing an African-American boy touching his hair in the Oval Office to compare it to his own. As they were no doubt intended to be by White House aides, symbolism lovers...

Trust Me: You Believe in Gun Control by Tina Dupuy If you ask the typical hyper-political gun owner (and I have … at Thanksgiving dinner), why it’s important to own a gun, they’ll bark about the Constitution. Yes, the Second Amendment: “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed!” This of course is the slogan the National Rifle Association adopted in the...

While America is a young country not as prone as some others to preserving ‘relics’ of the dead, we do appear to have a thing for blood, which, if modern science progresses as some think it might, could result in some interesting historical clones. This article on the subject by El Pais columnist Marcos Balfagon reflects on this odd historical preoccupation, and on the wisdom of someday restoring...

Friday, something unprecedented happened. The Right/Red blogs banded together to destroy ONE person (a blogger claims he feels “threatened”). The entire front page of Memeorandum is dominated by this coordinated attack and smear. That OUGHT to scare hell out of everybody else, but I see virtually no commentary whatsoever. The entire blogosphere has been coopted into the narrow agenda of a few individuals...

Back in September 2009, when the Navy was seriously considering allowing women to serve aboard its nuclear submarines, I posted an article titled, “Should Women Serve on Submarines?” and, at the end, asked, “What do you think?” With a couple of exceptions, most of the readers saw no problem with this change in policy or had some reasonable, practical reasons for opposing women serving on our submarines. One...

Does Mitt Romney have a clue? By the way, who are his campaign advisers? Does he have campaign advisers? Is he generally underinformed and living in a blur when it comes to education? … About school reform. Three big ideas: First, Romney is going to make the states provide “ample school choice.” Unless we’re talking, mushily, about vouchers, this one sounded exactly like the Bush law that...

Lowest Content Denominator by Peter Funt Recent Time and Newsweek covers constitute last gasps in the dying newsweekly business. Of greater concern, however, is that while these magazines are already in media’s rearview mirror, their turn toward tabloid-style sensationalism reflects what is happening all along the information highway. You saw or heard about the covers that caused the fuss: Time with a...

White House Website Gone Wild by Michael Reagan We’ll never know what Ronald Reagan would have done with WhiteHouse.gov, the official website of the White House But I know my father wouldn’t be abusing it the way Barack Obama is. WhiteHouse.gov is owned and operated by the federal government, but the incumbent gets to run it and design it to his own political tastes. Like nearly anything the federal...

Back in September 2009, when the Navy was seriously considering allowing women to serve aboard its nuclear submarines, I posted an article titled, “Should Women Serve on Submarines?” and, at the end, asked, “What do you think?” With a couple of exceptions, most of the readers saw no problem with this change in policy or had some reasonable, practical reasons for opposing women serving on our submarines. One...

David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

…you crybabies!

Blogger Patrick Frey has recently revealed details of how he was nearly murdered for being Conservative While Blogging. As I read this story, I had a creeping sense of horror. And my oft-stated sentiment that maybe I made a mistake ten years ago by blogging under my own real name became a genuinely fearful reaction. Really, this should be called terrorism. I’ve been known to call some people who comment...

The Politico has this top of the site story about Barack Obama stumbling out of the gate since formally announcing the beginning of his campaign three weeks ago. Are Democrats worried? Has Team Obama panicked? A good summary here on Morning Joe: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Presidential campaigns need a pithy phrase to nail the opposition, and the President is edging toward a killer label for Mitt Romney. In 1940, FDR won reelection against a likable corporate lawyer, Wendell Willkie, who was dubbed the Barefoot Boy from Wall Street and easily defeated. Four years later, Thomas E. Dewey, a buttoned-down former prosecutor with a campaign strategy of not being “prematurely...

Lessons of Lugar and Specter: Only Pure Need Apply by Scott Crass Over the course of the past two elections, voters in Democratic and Republican primaries have shown the door to two of the most senior and influential members of the body. They include the man who was arguably among the Senate’s few Constitutional and legal scholars, Arlen Specter, as well as one of the body’s leading Foreign Affairs scholar,...

The citizens of the United States are tired of war, George W Bush’s wars. Given that I have some advice for the Obama campaign – forget Bain Capitol and go after Romney’s foreign policy. Collin Powell gave them the talking points. WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday questioned Mitt Romney’s choice in foreign policy advisers, saying that some are so right-wing...

How confused and ‘dangerous’ has German foreign policy become? For the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, German Vice Admiral Ulrich Weisser [ret.] pulls no punches, as he lays out in detail how Germany has disappointed the United States and its NATO partners in Europe with its U.N. Security Council abstention on action in Libya, its refusal to allow its forces to face the same dangers as its coalition partners...

The New York Times has an interesting and, I am sure, controversial opinion piece, which from the beginning (Title: “G.O.P. Nightmare Charts”) to its conclusion (see below) suggests that present trends “do not bode well for Republicans.” All sarcasm aside and keeping in mind that the Times is called a “liberal newspaper” and worse, that it is written in “a place for opinionated...

WASHINGTON – This is a very serious moment for team Obama, an inflection point in the 2012 race. The above screencapture is from Politico on Wednesday and is more than just the usual Beltway baloney. Mitt Romney’s lucky the Republican primaries unmasked his warts long before anyone started paying attention. Sure America saw the clown show, but the circus has passed and now it’s down to business...

[Editor's Note: Due to a technical glitch part of this post was missing today. So we're reposting it and putting in on top.] How can a sitting Democratic President in 2012, who came to office with a huge electoral mandate four years earlier in the wake of a Republican-generated economic disaster, actually look like he might lose this coming November to a Republican who politically, economically and even personally...