We used to live in a simpler world. It was a world in which we were blessed by an abundance of cheap hydropower and fossil fuels. It was a world in which our pursuit of low-cost electricity and fuel was not complicated by our mounting impact on the environment, natural resources and habitat. A world of seemingly endless economic growth and opportunities. Now that world is not so simple.
WASHINGTON — I am so going to miss Justice Stevens.
WASHINGTON — It isn’t easy being a caucus of one.
WASHINGTON — The public is zero for seven at the Supreme Court this term.
WASHINGTON — There is something weird going on in the Republican Party when Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn is the voice of reason.
WASHINGTON — My heart aches for the parents of Phoebe Prince, the 15-year-old Massachusetts high school student who committed suicide in January after being relentlessly bullied at school and online.
WASHINGTON — A woman did it.
WASHINGTON — Here’s a phrase you can expect to hear a lot in the next few days: “According to the CBO.” The CBO is the Congressional Budget Office, the official scorekeeper of the costs of proposed legislation. Rarely has a CBO report been more anxiously awaited than the analysis released Thursday of the proposed changes to the Senate health care reform bill. Democrats are delighted with the bottom-line analysis that the measure would save $138 billion over the next 10 years, and as much as $1.2 trillion in the second 10 years — all this while expanding coverage to 32 million people who would otherwise be uninsured.
WASHINGTON — The chief justice is a big crybaby.
WASHINGTON—Sometimes I think I’ve gotten too cynical after so many years in Washington.
WASHINGTON — Boy, you could see that one coming. It was a pivotal moment earlier this month when Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates backed repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Pivotal, but not enough. I don’t spend a lot of time chatting up military officers, but enough to know that, just below the top-most ranks, there remains an enormous, if incomprehensible, amount of squeamishness about letting gay men and women serve openly in the military.
WASHINGTON — How big a deal was Marco Rubio’s speech to CPAC Thursday? If you are asking, as former President George W. Bush did jokingly the other day, “Who the hell is Marco Rubio?” you probably won’t be for long. Rubio is the 38-year-old former speaker of the Florida House and a conservative challenger to the state’s Republican governor, Charlie Crist, in the GOP Senate primary. If you are asking, what is CPAC? you probably aren’t a conservative Republican. CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, is, for several days every winter, the epicenter of the conservative movement; Ronald Reagan spoke before the group a dozen times.
WASHINGTON — The most striking part of Sen. Evan Bayh’s retirement announcement was his on-air job application. He’d be interested in managing a business, Bayh suggested, heading a university, or maybe running a charity.