Columns

Republicans can win midterm elections by fighting for economic growth and shedding their negative image.

It is not easy to demonize people who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money to help educate poor children. But some members of the education establishment are taking a shot at it.

FLINT, Mich. -- Earnest moralists lament Americans' distrust of government. What really is regrettable is that government does much to earn distrust, as Terry Dehko, 70, and his daughter Sandy Thomas, 41, understand.

Remember poverty? It was once a chief preoccupation of the Democratic Party. Lyndon Johnson made war on it. An entire ecosystem of federal, state and local programs has been created over the course of the past half-century to combat it, costing taxpayers more than $1 trillion annually.

There's an old saying: When the horse dies, dismount.But despite the demise of a faithful old equine ridden by liberals for decades, the left refuses to stop flogging it unmercifully.

WASHINGTON -- The Cliven Bundy spectacle in Nevada has provided a Wild West backdrop for our hottest political issues as we gallop toward the midterm elections. Politically, the conflict between the Bureau of Land Management and the Bundy family has highlighted the importance of picking one's battles wisely. Suffice to say, a smattering of pundits and politicians drank from the wrong chalice.

"Mr. Obama is focused on isolating President Vladimir V. Putin's Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside world ... and effectively making it a pariah state."So wrote Peter Baker in Sunday's New York Times. Yet if history is any guide, this "pariah policy," even if adopted, will not long endure.

WASHINGTON -- Every once in a while a great, conflicted country gets an insoluble problem exactly right. Such is the Supreme Court's ruling this week on affirmative action. It upheld a Michigan referendum prohibiting the state from discriminating either for or against any citizen on the basis of race.

Last Sunday, April 20, marked an important religious celebration of life and sacrifice for many around the world. However, for many Coloradoans, the day was darkened by the 15-year anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre.

WASHINGTON -- Recently, Barack Obama -- a Demosthenes determined to elevate our politics from coarseness to elegance; a Pericles sent to ameliorate our rhetorical impoverishment -- spoke at the University of Michigan. He came to that very friendly venue -- in 2012, he received 67 percent of the vote in Ann Arbor's county -- after visiting a local sandwich shop, where a muse must have whispered in the presidential ear. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., had recently released his budget, so Obama expressed his disapproval by calling it, for the benefit of his academic audience, a "meanwich" and a "stinkburger."

WASHINGTON -- The word is out that Chelsea Clinton is with child, making the favorite Democratic presidential nominee a soon-to-be grandmother. The headlines were inevitable -- "Grandma Hillary" -- followed by the similarly crucial question: Will being a grandmother help or hurt Hillary Clinton's chances in the 2016 election?

Have the Republicans become the white man's party? Are the depth and bitterness of Republicans' opposition to Barack Obama and his administration the product of racism?Those are questions you hear in the clash of political argument, and you will hear plenty of answers in the affirmative if you click onto MSNBC orsalon.comwith any regularity.

WASHINGTON -- The new "agreement" between Russia, the U.S. and our allies is exactly what the former KGB agent ordered. This isn't to say it's not a good "prospect" for ending tensions in Ukraine, as President Obama has said. But neither should it surprise anyone that Vladimir Putin is willing to step back from that country -- not to ease economic sanctions but to satisfy his own designs.

The Republican Party is roiling with internal conflicts, say the analysts. The tea party is confronting the establishment. The noninterventionists are at war (forgive the expression) with the interventionists. The libertarians would like the party to endorse same-sex marriage.

Tests are tough. I am here to share some tips for you and your children to go through these FCAT weeks with confidence rather than fear.