Columns

Is the Republican Party's Middle East policy up for bid?For four days ending Sunday, a quartet of presidential hopefuls trooped to Las Vegas to attend the annual gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

In my lifelong study of the liberal mental process I've always been amazed at the ability some have to take a totally meaningless talking point or bumper sticker and run with it as if it were a showstopper.

"This is my last election," President Obama said in words caught on an open mic. "After my election, I have more flexibility."He was speaking in Seoul, South Korea, in March 2012, almost exactly two years ago, to Dmitry Medvedev, then in his last year as Vladimir Putin's stand-in president of Russia.

Politico reported something interesting before President Barack Obama met with Pope Francis: "The visit is a rare chance for Obama to associate himself with a world leader whose cool factor far outweighs his own."It's rare for pundits to admit that someone else might top their revered Barack in the coolness category. They're equating coolness and popularity, and the pope certainly polls much better than the president, which is no surprise these days.

For Floridas 3 million citizens who are deaf or hard of hearing, being heard and properly represented by the hearing world can mean the difference between life and death, success and failure, freedom and incarceration.

Medical marijuana and Charlottes Web are inextricably linked due both to politics and policy.

"The United States does not view Europe as a battleground between East and West, nor do we see the situation in Ukraine as a zero-sum game. That's the kind of thinking that should have ended with the Cold War." -- Barack Obama, March 24

WASHINGTON -- Igor Stravinsky, the Russian composer, said of Poland, perilously positioned between Russia and Germany: "If you pitch your tent in the middle of Fifth Avenue, it is quite likely you will be run over by a bus." Poland has been run over hard and often; indeed, between 1795 and 1918 it disappeared from the map of Europe.

One thing that has been consistent during the recent economic recession and subsequent upturn -- dare I say recovery -- has been the way two states have led the country in growth, job creation and economic development.

Recently former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice added her voice to those who have long been urging the Republican Party to reach out to black voters. Not only is that long overdue, what is also long overdue is putting some time -- and, above all, some serious thought -- into how to go about doing it.

Will Hillary Clinton be elected America's next president? The polls suggest she will.Recent polls compiled by Real Clear Politics show her winning 67 percent of the vote in Democratic primaries, with no other candidate above 11 percent. General election polling shows Clinton with an average lead over various possible Republican nominees of 51 percent to 39 percent.

WASHINGTON -- Critics of Rep. Paul Ryan's remarks about cultural factors in the persistence of poverty are simultaneously shrill and boring. Their predictable minuet of synthetic indignation demonstrates how little liberals have learned about poverty or changed their rhetorical repertoire in the last 49 years.

Sweeping through Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania this week, Joe Biden reassured all three that the United States' commitment to Article Five of the NATO treaty remains "solemn" and "iron clad." Article Five commits us to war if the territory of any of these tiny Baltic nations is violated by Russia.

The most febrile of George W. Bush haters liked to claim during his tenure that the former president "scared" them. There is far more reason to be frightened by President Barack Obama, because fecklessness and inconstancy trigger wars.

Editor Lenore Devore thinks reporters should look at the wheat to be found in public records, and not the chaff of press releases peddled by taxpayer-supported ministers of disinformation.