Columns

WASHINGTON -- The Islamic State is a nasty problem that can be remedied if its neighbors, assisted by the United States, decide to do so. Vladimir Putin's fascist revival is a crisis that tests the West's capacity to decide. Putin's serial amputations of portions of Ukraine, which began with his fait accompli in Crimea, will proceed, and succeed, until his appetite is satiated. Then the real danger will begin.

It was my usual weekly TV interview with ABC/WTXL/27 anchor Anne Imanuel. The program was branded Political Insight with Senator Bob McKnight, and aired in the North Florida and South Georgia market.

Some time ago I contrasted the reaction a conservative would get if he were in the same room with the two most consequential politicians of the 1990s, Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani.

The latest Gallup poll indicates that 14 percent of the people "moderately disapprove" of Barack Obama's performance as president and 39 percent "strongly disapprove."Since Obama won two presidential elections, chances are that some of those who now "strongly disapprove" of what he has done voted to put him in office. We all make mistakes, but the real question is whether we learn from them.

For all the angst over redistricting, the truth is, there is no way to have perfect voting districts.

Sept. 10 marks the statistical peak of hurricane season. Although Florida has escaped serious storms so far this year, we know that we have been lucky.

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is highly exercised about "inversion," the practice by which an American corporation acquires a foreign company and moves its headquarters out of the U.S. to benefit from lower tax rates abroad.

For the past half-century, and particularly since the 1983 "Nation at Risk" report, Americans have been heaving great sacks of money at schools. Federal spending alone has tripled since the 1970s. The New York Times calculates that the federal government now spends $107.6 billion on education yearly, which is layered over an estimated $524.7 billion spent by states and localities (source: National Center for Education Statistics).

Tuesday night Charlie-Come-Lately Crist won the Democratic nomination for governor of Florida.

NOTE FROM EDITOR NANCY SMITH: An inconvenient truth is never "shameful."

WASHINGTON -- Russia's ongoing dismemberment of Ukraine and the Islamic State's erasing of Middle Eastern borders have distracted attention from the harassment of U.S. Navy aircraft by Chinese fighter jets over the South China Sea. Beijing calls this sea, and the Yellow and East China seas, the "near seas," meaning China's seas. The episodes involving aircraft are relevant to one of Adm. Jonathan Greenert's multiplying preoccupations -- CUES, meaning Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea.

In some prominent corners of the liberal media, the grousing has begun about President Obama's habit of hitting the golf course during crises without any concern for looking cavalier. Everyone knows he joyfully hit the links at Martha's Vineyard five minutes after a nationally televised address expressing his disgust at the horrific execution of American journalist James Foley by ISIS extremists in Syria. He played nine rounds during this most recent vacation in a year filled with vacations.

Former Florida Gov. and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Miami Lakes, knows politics. Other than his race for president, Gov. Graham has never lost a campaign. He is also a constant student of effective politics. So, when he came up to me in 1986 and described a campaign in which I was involved as textbook, I took notes.

The unsinkable Charles B. Rangel appeared on C-SPAN over the weekend. Why unsinkable? Well, the House of Representatives censured the New York Democrat in 2010 by a vote of 333 to 79 (when the body was still majority Democrat) for violating 11 ethics rules and "bringing discredit to the House." The New York Times called it a "staggering fall" for the senior Democrat. But fall-schmall, he's since been re-elected and will retire at his leisure.

WASHINGTON -- What is called "the" 1964 Civil Rights Act is justly celebrated for outlawing racial and other discrimination in employment, "public accommodations" and elsewhere. But that year's second civil rights act, the Criminal Justice Act, which is 50 years old this month, is, some say, largely a failure because of unanticipated changes in the legal and social context. Is it?