The Republican primary race this election year was planned in advance to be more competitive and less of a "coronation" of whichever candidate emerged as the early frontrunner. Republicans had looked at the 2008 Democratic race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and concluded it would serve as a good...

That title is a hoary old doctor joke, and the punchline is, of course, "...but the patient died on the table."

Two years ago, Joe Biden was famously quoted for saying to Barack Obama upon the occasion of health care reform legislation finally passing: "This is a big [expletive deleted]...

Two hundred and forty-five years ago this week, celebrations of a political nature were held throughout the American colonies. The occasion, in 1767, was the first anniversary of the repeal of the hated Stamp Act. While not unique as a reason for celebration or as a piece of enduring American...

When those of a certain age hear the term "rare earth," what immediately springs to mind is a 1970s band of the same name, whose biggest hit was a song called "Get Ready." The song was catchy, but the lyrics ("Well tweedley-dee and tweedley-dum/Look out baby, 'cause here I come")...

Sometimes I'm just astonished at the inability of political campaigns to do a simple web search. Case in point: the story about Mitt Romney's dog Seamus.

That's a good Irish name (pronounced: "shay-muss"), but I already wrote my St. Patrick's Day column yesterday, so I'm going to just skip...

Both Houses of Congress are currently considering a bill which, in my humble estimation, would be wildly popular with the public -- if they knew about it, that is. This is a truly non-partisan issue, one that pits every taxpayer in the country against the 535 members of Congress themselves...

OK, quite obviously, I had to put that subtitle in quote marks, since I do not actually possess a uterus. The quote marks indicate I'm just suggesting it as a slogan for others (those of the female persuasion, of course) to utilize. Just to clear that up, in case you...

The factional infighting in the Republican Party certainly shows no signs of abating. That's the only clear message the party's electorate sent last night, on what was supposed to be the biggest primary night of the year. This fight began a few years back, when the ultra-purists in the party...

Obama Above Water

President Barack Obama's job approval numbers are back "above water" (where his approval rate is higher than his disapproval number), continuing an impressive rise in the polls, which began in November of last year. This is the longest run of improved public job approval Obama has managed...

Welcome to the 200th Friday Talking Points column!

Because of this momentous occasion, we are going to present a special column today which takes a look backwards at this column's history. Because of this, the normal weekly Friday Talking Points and the awards we normally hand out will all get...

[Note: This article is about a bit of sexism from America's past. It will quote sexist passages from days of yore, and deals with a subject that cannot escape the label of sexism. I say this up front, as a warning to readers, but it really is (and was) all...

While everyone knew that the Republican primary candidates would all be displaying plenty of "Obama Derangement Syndrome" during the campaign, this week the rhetoric took a bizarre tangent which might be called "Apology Derangement Syndrome." The concept is not only laughable, it is easy to prove what rampant and stinking...

"When the going gets weird," Hunter S. Thompson famously said, "the weird turn pro."

This quote has been running through my head all week. It's been such a weird week, in fact, that I even wrote a column praising a Mitt Romney campaign ad. Weirdness abounds, in other words....

Watch out!
You might get what you're after.
-- Talking Heads, "Burning Down The House"

You might not know it from the extended bouts of hair-pulling-and-garment-rending anguish emanating from the Republican Party establishment these days (see: any recent GOP commentary by a party elder or deep thinker which uses the...

George Washington, celebrated today by federal holiday, was (of course) our first president. When he died, the phrase which spread the country as part of the myth-making around Washington was: "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen."

While this may -- as a direct...

I normally don't do this sort of thing, but today I have to begin this column with a criticism of a single media voice, because the writing was just so offensive. I mean... bad puns? In today's polite society?

The boundaries between politics and show business have become murky ever...

Is the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party becoming irrelevant?

It's hard to draw any other conclusion to the news that the House Republicans have apparently agreed to extend the payroll tax holiday for the rest of the year -- without paying for it. The only open...

The primary season opens with so many Republican candidates for the party's nomination for president that it seemingly takes forever just to ask each of them a single question in the televised debates. Three different Republican candidates win the first three states' races, in a wide-open contest with no incumbent...

Before we get to the week that was, politically-speaking (and, with it, our final football metaphors of the season), we've first got to call another state in the Republican primary season race. Last week, we almost forgot to predict Nevada's race, and this column went out without containing such a...

The Obama administration recently ruled that churches and other religious organizations who provide health insurance to their workers at their non-church businesses must include free birth control, as indeed all health insurance plans are now required to do. This decision does not affect the churches themselves, but instead such satellite...