If Gov. Bruce Rauner and his legislature in Springfield do not put a budget together by Friday, the Land of Lincoln will be the first state in the Union to see its debt plunge into junk-bond status. Illinois has $14.5 billion in overdue bills, $130 billion in unfunded pension obligations, …
“There is no education in the second kick of a mule,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. With some such thought in mind, Speaker John Boehner strode to the floor of the House to offer a “clean” debt ceiling bill and relied on Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats to pass it. They …
“Nothing is lost save honor.” So said Jim Fisk after he and Jay Gould survived yet another scrape in their corrupt and storied careers in the Gilded Age. Fisk’s dismissal of honor came to mind while watching Barack Obama in Boston smugly explain how his vow — “If you like …
“We told you you would lose!” wail the Beltway bundlers of the Republican establishment. “We told you you would lose!” moan neoconservative columnists from their privileged perches on the op-ed pages of the Beltway press. “Look at what Ted Cruz and this Tea Party people did to us,” wails the …
One way or another, the battle of the budget and the debt ceiling will be over by All Hallows’ Eve. Yet, as one looks deeper, at the irreconcilable conflict behind the present clash, only a roaring optimist would imagine we shall ever know again the tranquility and unity of the …
In the showdown over the shutdown of the U.S. government, the Obamaites tipped their hand yesterday as what their strategy is. Taking a page out of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” the plan is to maximize the people’s pain — to maximize the political damage to the enemy, the Republican …
In that year of happy memory, 1972, George McGovern, the Democratic nominee, declared he would chop defense by fully one-third. A friendly congressman was persuaded to ask Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird to expatiate on what this might mean. The Pentagon replied the Sixth Fleet might have to be pulled …
Rarely have second terms lived up to the hopes and expectations of presidents or their electorates. FDR’s began with an attempt to pack the Supreme Court by adding new justices and a second Depression of 1937. He was rescued only by the war in Europe in 1939 and the GOP’s …
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