Year: 2014

On Feb. 17, 2009, President Obama promised the sun and the moon and the stars. That was the day, five years ago, when he signed the $800 billion “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” President Modesty called it “the most sweeping economic recovery package in our history.” He promised “unprecedented transparency and accountability.” He claimed the […]

Hannah Arendt coined the term “the banality of evil” to describe the galling normalcy of Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann. Covering his trial in Jerusalem, she described Eichmann as less a cartoonish villain than a dull, remorseless, paper-pushing functionary just “doing his job.” The phrase “banality of evil” was instantly controversial, largely because it was […]

Few have ever heard the name Debo Adegbile. He’s President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the civil rights division of the Justice Department. A few months ago, his nomination would have been a non-starter — there is more than a whiff of radicalism in his past. But we are in a new world. Sen. Harry […]

The big story about the federal budget this week was the Republican Party’s struggle to deal with raising the debt ceiling. Last year’s big budget story was President Barack Obama and the Democrats coming to grips with the so-called sequester, a policy gimmick that modestly slowed the growth of federal spending. Neither of these storylines […]

The nightmare societies portrayed in the George Orwell novels “1984” and “Animal Farm” gave us the word “Orwellian.” That adjective reflects a vast government’s efforts not just to deceive and control the people, but also to do so by reinventing the meaning of ordinary words while rewriting the past itself. America, of all places, is […]

Michael Sam appears to be a fine young man. But, no, he isn’t the first openly gay male U.S. athlete to play in a major sport. And “brave”? Can we please dispense with the absurd Jackie Robinson comparisons? Wake me when a black collegiate pro prospect “comes out” as a Republican. A starting senior on […]

“If at my convenience I might break them (laws), what would be their worth?” — Charlotte Bronte, “Jane Eyre” We’ve come a long way since Justice Charles Evans Hughes remarked a century ago, “…the Constitution is what the judges say it is.” Or have we? According to the Galen Institute, a nonprofit public policy research […]