Columns

What to make of all the polls on the government shutdown? You know, the ones that say that, to varying degrees, congressional Republicans are being blamed more than Democrats and Barack Obama.

WASHINGTON -- For all the hyped indignation over GOP "anarchism," there has been remarkable media reticence about the president's intransigence. He has refused to negotiate anything unless the Republicans fully fund the government and raise the debt ceiling -- unconditionally.

The following is the full text of the address U.S.Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., gave Thursday on the floor of the U.S. Senate:

"Ex-Marine Asks Soviet Citizenship" -- Washington Post headline, Nov. 1, 1959 (concerning a Lee Harvey Oswald) "He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. It's -- it had to be some silly little Communist." -- Jacqueline Kennedy, Nov. 22, 1963

I can think of one reason to end the federal shutdown: There are a lot of stupid people now roaming the streets. The Feds, however, do not have a monopoly on idiocy. Bureaucratic bumbling can be found wherever there's large government, even on the state, and yes, on the county level.

More than a week since the rollout of the new Obamacare health insurance marketplaces, and still not much about the process is going smoothly.

One way or another, the battle of the budget and the debt ceiling will be over by All Hallows' Eve. Yet, as one looks deeper, at the irreconcilable conflict behind the present clash, only a roaring optimist would imagine we shall ever know again the tranquility and unity of the Eisenhower-Kennedy years.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court must feel as though it is plowing an ocean as it repeatedly reminds Congress that the anodyne label "campaign finance reform" can encompass a multitude of sins. Come Tuesday, the court will have another occasion to consider that not all regulations of the indispensable means of disseminating political speech -- money -- are constitutional just because they are presented as means of preventing corruption or its "appearance."

WASHINGTON -- The Obamacare/shutdown battle has spawned myriad myths. The most egregious concern the substance of the fight, the identity of the perpetrators and the origins of the current eruption.

The following is the full text of the address FloridaSen. Marco Rubio gave Friday on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

As the federal shutdown drags on, Democrats and Republicans alike who are thinking about running for the presidency in 2016 would do well to hit the books and study up on the political fallout from the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

In the showdown over the shutdown of the U.S. government, the Obama-ites tipped their hand yesterday as what their strategy is. Taking a page out of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals," the plan is to maximize the people's pain -- to maximize the political damage to the enemy, the Republican Party.

WASHINGTON -- "If Reince Priebus from Kenosha, Wis., is the Republican 'establishment,' God help us," says the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus. His physical presence is almost as unprepossessing as James Madison's was, and his demeanor is self-deprecating. But with meticulous -- Madisonian, actually -- subtlety, he is working to ameliorate a difficulty that has existed for two centuries and in 2012 wounded the GOP.

It was very concerning to read Nancy Smith's Monday column in Sunshine State News, "Florida's Medical Records Copy Charges Don't Need to Go Higher."

WASHINGTON -- In life, context is everything; in Washington, leverage is everything else. Both are essential to understanding what just happened.