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Inside Politics Daily
Scott Brown and the Palin Path: Will He Choose Brassy or Boring?
Democrats Leave Health Care Behind for Jobs, Toyota, Gays in Military
Murtha Turned Against War, but Not Grab-While-You-Can Politics
Rep. John Murtha, Advocate for Pa. District, Pentagon, Dies at 77
Liz Christman, Enemy of the Passive Voice, Who Rocked Some Jaunty Hats
Is Obama's Search for 'Common Ground' Real?- Tim Tebow's Brilliant Fake Leads to Pro-Life Score
'Snowmageddon' in D.C. -- The Politics, Talk Shows and Snowball Fights Go On
Sarah Palin Serves Tea Party Delegates Red Meat and Certainty
My Left Breast Put Fancy TSA Scanner to the Test
From a Grass Roots Tea Party, a PAC Blooms
At Nashville Tea Party: Saving the Country, Waiting for Palin
Murtha Turned Against War, but Not Grab-While-You-Can Politics
By Walter Shapiro
House Democratic titan John Murtha, who died Monday at 77 following complications from gallbladder surgery, was not a congressman cut out for an era of $1.3 trillion budget deficits. As a grab-while-you-can champion of earmarks, Murtha risked becoming a national symbol for old-fashioned congressional greed. Representing since 1974 Johnstown and a time-warp slice of southwestern Pennsylvania – a forgotten blue-collar area where the good old days meant the 19th century – Murtha was an unashamed practitioner of pork-barrel politics. A gruff retired Marine, Murtha believed that his ...
The Ultimate American Heresy: 'I Am a Super Bowl Refusnik.'
By Walter Shapiro
Like so much in my life, I blame it on Richard Nixon. If Nixon had not purported to be such a fanatic football fan that he designed a special play for Washington Redskins coach George Allen... If, at the height of the Vietnam War, official Washington had not embraced the Redskins and pro football with a bipartisan bellicose frenzy unmatched since the Roman Senate worshipped at the Temple of Mars... If the Redskins under Allen, reflecting the theocratic excess of the sport, did not get down on their knees in the locker room to offer a prayer of gratitude after defeating the Dallas Cowboys... ...
Pulling the Plug on Space Travel: One Small Step for Obama's Budgetary Math
By Walter Shapiro
When John Kennedy made his commitment to land a man on the moon by the end of 1960s, the New Frontier president expressed a dream that went far beyond Cold War pride in planting an American flag on the lunar surface. Addressing a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961, Kennedy also spoke glowingly of the "promise of some day providing a means for even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space, perhaps beyond the moon, perhaps to the very end of the solar system itself." Nearly half a century later, the last flickering embers of that dream were extinguished in a single bullet point ...
For J.D. Salinger -- With Love and Squalor
By Walter Shapiro
Somewhere in England, I so want to believe, lives a jazz-loving, relentlessly honest, incisively bright, deeply sentimental 78-year-old woman named Esmé who long ago befriended an American GI in a tea shop on the eve of the D-Day invasion. They only talked for half an hour -- this self-confident and vulnerable 13-year-old girl, a war orphan, and this Army sergeant, who, in civilian life, had published a few fledgling short stories -- chaperoned by her governess and her young brother, Charles. They never met again, although they exchanged letters, but somehow this chance encounter mattered ...
Sign of the SOTU: Immigration Reform in What Lifetime?
By Walter Shapiro
The day after a State of the Union address is often dominated by the Politics of the Word Count as the speech is parsed sentence by sentence in an effort to divine the president's true priorities. And by these strict standards of presidential verbiage, immigration reform -- once thought to be near the top of Barack Obama's 2010 legislative agenda -- was widely viewed Thursday as the biggest loser. Even after making allowances for mushy speechwriting, the president's remarks about immigration (a 38-word sentence connected not by logic but by four separate "ands") were a portrait in ...
McDonnell's Bland-Is-Better GOP Response
By Walter ShapiroAmericans may little note nor long remember what Bob McDonnell said Tuesday night. But they just might recall how well he looked in giving the GOP response to the State of the Union address. The newly inaugurated Virginia governor recited what might be described as Republican elevator music – conservative clichés delivered in a soothing voice: "Top-down, one-size-fits-all decision-making should not replace the personal choices of free people in a free market . . . No government program can ever replace the actions of caring Americans freely choosing to help one another." ...
State of the Union: A Step Toward Political Redemption or Just Another Pep Rally?
By Walter Shapiro
A small wager: You may follow politics so closely that you know what offices the sons of Joe Biden and Harry Reid are running for in November. Or you may be so bored by the details of Washington that you vaguely think that Hillary Clinton succeeded Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court. But either way, I bet that you can close your eyes and instantly picture in advance tonight's State of the Union Address. This annual presidential message to Congress -- mandated by the Constitution and ritualized by two centuries of flag-draped patriotism -- is part policy speech and part bipartisan ...
SCOTUS Ruling on Corporate Political Spending Is a Business Decision
By Walter Shapiro
A little more than a century ago -- just about at the same time when Congress outlawed all campaign contributions by corporations -- humorist Finley Peter Dunne, channeling the diction of an Irish bartender, shrewdly wrote, "Th' Supreme Coort follows th' election returns." Normally, though, the Supreme Court has the self-restraint to wait more than two days. On Tuesday Massachusetts voters rebelled against special interests, Wall Street bailouts, and one-party rule by vaulting Republican Scott Brown into the Senate. Thursday morning the Supreme Court, by an ideologically predictable 5-to-4 ...
What Democrats Should Do Now on Health Care: Heed Their Inner Churchill
By Walter Shapiro
The never-ending quest by the Democrats to create a universal national health care system was always reminiscent of Sisyphus condemned to roll the same boulder up a hill for eternity. But the thunderbolt-from-the-voters defeat of Martha Coakley in Massachusetts brings to mind another pitiful figure from Greek mythology. The Democrats' current plight is more like that of Tantalus, who was forced to stand in a shimmering pool of cool water up to his neck. But whenever Tantalus bent his head to slake his thirst, the water suddenly receded. In the political annals of tantalizing frustration, it is ...
The Cable News Patrol: My Long National Nightmare Is Over!
By Walter Shapiro
At the finish line, there were no high-school marching bands, no pyrotechnics – not even a perky young TV reporter cloyingly asking the all-purpose how-do-you-feel question. Instead, at 1:26 pm Sunday afternoon, I rapturously luxuriated in a heavenly choir serenading me with the sounds of silence, as a blessed sense of peace washed over my body. After more than 60 hours of eye-glazed communion with the three major cable news networks (enough time to watch every episode from all three seasons of "Mad Men" twice), the television set was mercifully off. I had set out on this ...
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