Washington — In 1783, a mob of Revolutionary War soldiers, demanding back pay, marched on Philadelphia and laid siege to the Continental Congress.
Fearful members of Congress, knowing full well the considerable martial skills and rebellious zeal of the troops, urged Pennsylvania authorities to call out the state militia.
But the Pennsylvanians sided with the soldiers, […]
Washington – The Democrats may win the November election. They might even take back the White House in 2008.
But unless Democratic office-holders shuck their reliance on corporate cash and return to fighting for working families, says David Sirota, his party will be better off losing.
The nation’s capital is steeped in corruption, the progressive polemist […]
Washington — The Spanish-American War lasted less than a year. For a few hundred combat deaths in 1898, the United States remembered the Maine, routed an outclassed enemy, pried Cuba from Spain and seized Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
Just weeks after leading the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill, Col. Teddy Roosevelt was back […]
Washington — Barring a sudden burst of activity, the 109th Congress may go down in history as the highest-paid bunch of political slackers to ever inhabit Capitol Hill.
After voting to give themselves raises last year, members of the House of Representatives are following a schedule that calls on them to spend just 97 days […]
Washington — President Bush’s political woes have led to a laudable development here: Republican senators are showing signs of increased independence and creativity.
That may be a problem for Sen. Wayne Allard of Colorado. His strong suit is loyalty, not autonomy or innovation.
Washington — Two senators — rivals, each hoping to be president — have set different moral and political courses as they contemplate the endgame in Iraq.
Sen. John Kerry has no choice, really. Three decades ago, just back from the war in Vietnam, he posed a famous question: “How do you ask a man […]
“Democratic leaders have been silent or evasive. They have not offered an alternative to the war in Iraq. At a time of a deepening and widening crisis in Iraq, and a widening gap between America and the world, that to me is a form of political desertion.”
- Zbigniew Brzezinski
Washington - With that searing […]
For economist Richard Freeman, the “Eureka!� moment came at an academic conference, when a Chinese colleague gave him a chart of the engineering and science doctorates being awarded by China’s universities.
“Oh, my God!� Freeman said to himself, startled at how that total was soaring. “How could China be doing this?�
And so Freeman, an agreeably […]
Washington - In the weeks that followed the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush warned White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card not to get infatuated with the administration’s soaring approval ratings.
There would be setbacks and defeats ahead, Bush said. He foresaw a day when all his political advisers would tell him to back off. […]
Along with its more gruesome and horrific artifacts, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has a mundane relic on display: a Hollerith data processing machine.
This banal card-sorting device, manufactured by a subsidiary of IBM, was used to expedite the murder of millions of Jews and other Holocaust victims. Hollerith machines kept the trains on time. […]
Washington - Here’s what it takes for a Democrat to get elected governor in Montana, a state that gave President Bush 58 and 59 percent of the vote in the last two national elections:
You wear blue jeans, boots and bolo ties.
You run TV ads that portray you on horseback, or out hunting with your […]
Washington - Jed Bartlet’s presidency made its debut on Sept. 22, 1999, with White House aide Sam Seaborn in the bar at the Four Seasons Hotel, guilelessly hitting on Laurie, a lovely law student who moonlights as a prostitute.
Seven seasons and buckets of Emmys later, “The West Wingâ€? goes dark this spring, cutting a […]
Washington - Capitol Hill is in the grip of the great Wikipedia scandal. Various congressional aides, with mischief in their hearts and too much time on their hands, have been tampering with the popular online encyclopedia.
Some changes are clearly self-serving. Aides to Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., acknowledged they erased a Wikipedia entry that reminded […]
Washington - People have been nagging me about my wasteful oil consumption for 30 years. I didn’t pay much attention. I love my Mustang convertible.
I was the kind of guy who, hearing President Bush tout the virtues of ethanol and decry America’s “addiction‿ to oil in the State of the Union speech, would dismiss […]
Washington - Cold War terrors were at a peak and tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers were dying at the hands of communists in Korea when President Harry Truman, citing his authority as commander in chief, seized America’s steel mills.
Seething at this raw exercise of power, the steel companies appealed to the courts. In […]