All year, the biggest fault line in the health care debate has been the public option—a proposed government-run insurance plan that Americans without access to group coverage would be eligible to sign up for.
To liberals, it has been the reason for doing health care reform, an innovative tool that will break up private insurers’ Read More
Mention Joe Lieberman’s name to a Democratic activist these days and you’ll probably hear some variation of the question: This is what we get for letting him keep his chairmanship? It was last November, you’ll remember, that Senate Democrats opted to hand Lieberman—who had just spent nearly a year championing John McCain’s White House bid Read More
Republicans in New York will have something in 2010 that they’ve lacked for years: a real opportunity to win. What they don’t have are candidates.
There’s been talk for at least a year now that Rudy Giuliani or George Pataki (or both) might run for statewide office next year.
In the right race, either of Read More
Tomorrow night, we’ll learn the identity of Ted Kennedy’s successor in the U.S. Senate. Or, actually, we’ll learn the identity of his successor’s successor.
Eager to provide the White House with a 60th vote for health care this fall, the overwhelmingly Democratic Massachusetts legislature voted to change the state’s succession law just after Kennedy’s death Read More
These days, there are three John McCains.
One is the pride-driven defeated presidential candidate who hopes Americans will compare him to President Obama and realize the error of their ways. Another is a true-believer neoconservative, dedicated to using his Senate perch to push for aggressive military efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. And then there’s Read More
Can you feel the George Pataki fever? Neither can I. But apparently the former New York governor think he can coax a lot of people into believing in him one last time.
For a while, Pataki has come up as a possible challenger to Kirsten Gillibrand—the appointed senator who has struggled to connect with New Read More
They may be on the wrong side of history, but—at least for the near future—most of the New York state senators who voted down gay marriage on Wednesday will not pay a political price.
The measure lost by a surprisingly lopsided 38-24 count, with eight Democrats joining all 30 of the chamber’s Republicans in opposition. Read More
On Election Night, I called Bill Thompson the Christie Whitman of New York politics, since his startlingly narrow, 4.6-point loss to Mayor Bloomberg represented perhaps the biggest near-miss shocker since a then-unknown Whitman came within two points of unseating Bill Bradley in 1990.
And now he’s doing exactly what Whitman did after that election: Read More
Before he became famous for donning ridiculous mascot headgear to make his weekly picks on ESPN, Lee Corso coached the Indiana Hoosiers football team for ten mostly forgettable seasons.
One year, one of his overmatched squads managed to score an early touchdown against mighty Ohio State, grabbing a 7-0 lead – at which point Mr. Read More
The set-up for Sunday’s “Face the Nation” was pretty irresistible – Dede Scozzafava appearing live with Dick Armey, the prickly Texan who helped sabotage her upstate congressional campaign this fall.
Alas, the follow-through was lacking.
Scozzafava and Armey were invited for a segment pegged to last week’s news that the national G.O.P. may Read More
