Columns

Liberal journalists were glowing and full of hope after President Barack Obama won a second term. As 2012 drew to a close, there was the traditional hour of ABC's Barbara Walters fawning: "Mr. President, Mrs. Obama. There is a photograph of you (hugging) that went viral, became the most shared photograph in the history of Twitter. How do you keep the fire going?"

WASHINGTON -- When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer. And a penguin? In case you missed the most pressing issue of the season -- Santa's race -- Fox News' Megyn Kelly reaped a whirlwind when she recently declared that not only is Santa white but so was Jesus.

All this year, House Speaker John Boehner has been taking criticism from all quarters.He is a squish selling out to the Obama administration and the Democrats, many conservatives charged when he engineered bipartisan (mostly Democratic) approval of higher tax rates on high earners rather than go over the fiscal cliff.

"It's not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one damn thing over and over." -- Edna St. Vincent Millay WASHINGTON -- Liberals' love of recycling extends to their ideas, one of which illustrates the miniaturization of Barack Obama's presidency. He fervently favors a minor measure that would have mostly small, mostly injurious effects on a small number of people.

Democratic National Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz says that Obamacare will be a vote-winner for Democrats in 2014. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the same thing.Perhaps they really believe that. But the numbers in polls conducted since Oct. 17, when the end of the government shutdown put the spotlight on the rollout of Obamacare, tell a different story.

WASHINGTON -- In explaining the disastrous rollout of Obamacare, President Obama told Chris Matthews he had discovered that "we have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly." An interesting discovery to makeafterhaving consigned the vast universe of American medicine, one-sixth of the U.S. economy, to the tender mercies of the agency bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Internal Revenue Service.

WASHINGTON -- The education of Barack Obama is a protracted process as he repeatedly alights upon the obvious with a sense of original discovery. In a recent MSNBC interview, he restocked his pantry of excuses for his disappointing results, announcing that "we have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly":

After looking closely at how student-athletes move from one school to another, the Florida High School Athletic Association has proposed a significant policy broadening student-athlete eligibility. This new policy will be better for student-athletes, better for parents and most important of all better for the cause of sportsmanship and fair play.

The most defining moment of how MSNBC sees President Barack Obama came when a positively giddy Chris Matthews stated the night before his interview with the president, "I got the Christmas Eve excitement brewing right here at 'Hardball' because tomorrow night at precisely this time ... the president of the United States is going to join us."

If you've read the news recently, you've witnessed the backlash against the implementation of the Common Core State Standards both in Florida and across the country. These new standards have been met with opposition across the political spectrum.

Charlie Crist, aka Chain Gang Charlie, is running as a born-again Democratagainst his former partyand as a civil-rights champion. But how can a man who pushed for far-right conservatism suddenly turn on his long-held principles and move in a completely opposite direction?

Ed Ball, the late head of the duPont trust, had a favorite toast: Confusion to the enemy.

Last month in New Jersey, a state where Republicans are only 20 percent of registered voters, Gov. Chris Christie was re-elected with more than 60 percent of the vote. This news came after months of analysis by media pundits and national political observers that the Republican Party is losing its ability to connect with the majority of voters.

Watching the twists and turns of American foreign policy while reading Christopher Clark's "The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914" is an unnerving experience.

WASHINGTON -- In his disproportionate praise of the six-month agreement with Iran, Barack Obama said: "For the first time in nearly a decade, we have halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program." But if the program, now several decades old, had really been "halted" shortly after U.S. forces invaded neighboring Iraq, we would not be desperately pursuing agreements to stop it now, as about 10,000 centrifuges spin to enrich uranium.