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Time for Decent Exposure for 04/19/2014
Of the 432 members today serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, he is 429th in seniority, having won a special election barely five months ago. But by now, Rep. Vance McAllister, R-La., is known...
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A Movie Worth Seeing for 04/26/2014
To run and to lose a presidential campaign is both publicly painful and painfully public, as the 1984 Democratic presidential nominee Walter "Fritz " Mondale lost 49 states to President Ronald Reagan....
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The Guest of Honor for 05/03/2014
Tell me Paris Hilton will be this year's graduation speaker at MIT. Tell me Dennis Rodman is the new consensus choice to be peace negotiator in the Middle East. Tell me Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh...
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One Man With Courage Makes a Majority for 05/10/2014
Even though the staff people who work on Capitol Hill voted him "the nicest" member of Congress, Rep. Walter Jones, the iconoclastic North Carolina Republican, is loathed, maybe even feared, by the...
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Do We Have a Stupid Party? for 05/17/2014
Long before he teamed with Erskine Bowles, a Democrat and former President Bill Clinton's White House chief of staff, to lead the bipartisan commission on reducing the federal deficit, Republican Alan...
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What Successful Political Leaders Have in Common for 05/24/2014
A long time ago, I learned from Bill Schneider, a very wise man, that in order to understand American politics, you have to understand the differences between an ideologue — a believer in a defined...
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Selling Political Candidates Is NOT Like Selling Beer for 05/31/2014
You've heard the argument: About two-thirds of a total of $5.19 billion spent on political advertising during the 2012 election year was spent on television. So selling a presidential candidate is...
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Defeat Doesn't Build Character; It Reveals Character for 06/06/2014
The bloody Republican primary in Mississippi where the six-term U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran faces the political battle of his life in a June 24 runoff election against tea party-backed state Sen. Chris...
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Reeling From Virginia for 06/14/2014
Let's be perfectly blunt. Ever since House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his Virginia primary to the underfunded Dave Brat, we political pundits (yes, I'm a card-carrying member) have been publicly...
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It's No Fun Being Goliath for 06/21/2014
Barely 18 months before Iowa's influential first-in-the-nation 2016 presidential contest, potential presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today holds a more commanding...
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The Little Giant for 06/28/2014
Back in the dark days — before the invention of cable news, texting and Twitter — there were a couple-dozen, mostly newspaper, almost all male reporters who covered U.S. politics nearly full time. They...
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Giving Public Service a Better Name for 07/05/2014
A while back, after the Gallup poll had reported that public confidence in Congress had fallen to a then-record low of 9 percent, Arizona Sen. John McCain observed that for Congress, "9 percent" meant...
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The Most Reliable Poll of All for 07/12/2014
I dimly recall being rousted out of my bunk bed as a young child before sunrise on Oct. 27, 1948, so I could stand at an intersection in my hometown of Weymouth, Massachusetts, to catch a brief glimpse...
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Nobody Asked Me, but ... for 07/19/2014
From time to time, the late New York sports-writing legend Jimmy Cannon used to do a column composed of witty, sentimental short takes he called, "Nobody Asked Me, but." It was Cannon who wrote of the...
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Guns in the Workplace, NOT for Pro-Gun Politicians for 07/26/2014
Its official title is the "Safe Carry Protection Act," and when it was signed by Georgia's Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, the National Rifle Association praised it as the "most comprehensive pro-gun bill...
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Nixon's 'Gift' for 08/02/2014
The U.S. Supreme Court, including former President Richard Nixon's own appointees, ruled 8-0 that Nixon must turn over 64 tapes of White House conversations to the Watergate special prosecutor on Aug....
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A Poll Apart for 08/09/2014
A long time ago, maybe in the first Eisenhower administration, my precinct committeewoman taught me the unchanging rules of how to respond to public opinion polls. If the polls show your candidate...
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Needed: An Honest Debate on War for 08/30/2014
Our country in September 2014 needs an open, serious and honest public debate so that this time, we can make an informed decision on whether to once again send Americans into war in Iraq. Tragically,...
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Exceptionally Good Luck for 09/06/2014
After enduring lavish praise while receiving an award before a big Hollywood dinner crowd, Jack Benny expertly deflected all the fawning with these words: "I don't deserve this honor, but then I have...
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Renouncing American Citizenship -- for Profit for 09/13/2014
The United States Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people with all the rights of flesh-and-bone citizens — beginning, of course, with the First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts...
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