After presiding over the New York Archdiocese’s bicentennial last year, Cardinal Edward Egan now becomes the first New York archbishop to retire. The prelates who preceded him all died on the job, which was the norm before the church implemented mandatory retirements. So the new archbishop, Timothy Dolan, faces an unprecedented dilemma: He will take Read More
The G.O.P. is at war with itself. Or so we’re told.
Unaccustomed to their new minority status and unsure how to handle a Democratic president with enormous popularity and considerable legislative momentum, Republicans are dividing themselves into opposing camps, each convinced that a different formula will return them to glory.
This, at least, is the Read More
Press secretaries tend to be like broken clocks: They’re always going to say the same thing, and every once in a while, it happens to be the right thing. Case in point: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who early last week accused the D.C.-based media of being out of touch with the concerns and Read More
Roland Burris insists that he wasn’t "trying to slip something by anybody" last month, even though that’s precisely what he did.
In early January, Mr. Burris appeared before the Illinois state legislative committee that was looking into impeaching then-Governor Rod Blagojevich. It was a critical moment in his suddenly revived political career. Despite initial Read More
Anyone with a grasp of modern domestic political history should have seen last week’s stimulus package impasse in the Senate coming.
It was not at all surprising that Republicans loudly demagogued the package as a massive dose of pork, even as their examples of "pork" accounted for a tiny fraction of the overall bill. Nor Read More
Shortly after the November election, Newt Gingrich disputed the notion that Sarah Palin had emerged from her losing campaign as the new face of the Republican Party, declaring that "she’s going to be one of 20 or 30 significant players. She’s not going to be the de facto leader."
A few months later, the Read More
With apologies to all of the important and influential news outlets that are playing it up, there is absolutely nothing newsworthy about John Boehner’s apparent declaration of war on Barack Obama’s $825 billion economic stimulus package.
You didn’t actually think the top Republican in the U.S. House was going to support the new Democratic Read More
Measured by the impact of the language and imagery employed, Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural speech in 1865—"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right …"—stands as the most powerful of the 55 delivered between the founding of the republic and the eve Read More
Against the backdrop of something approaching national panic and with his looming push for a massive infusion of public money into the economy, Barack Obama’s inauguration next week is drawing understandable comparisons to Franklin Roosevelt’s at the height of the Depression.
But from a political standpoint, a more meaningful parallel can be drawn between the Read More
Roland Burris, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s choice to replace Barack Obama in the Senate, was on his way to Washington late on Monday, intent on participating in the ceremonial swearing in of new members in the Senate chamber the next day.
But the Democratic senators he aims to join, led by Majority Leader Harry Reid, Read More
