Columns

WASHINGTON -- The punch line is at least as old as the eldest baby boomer: "I didn't get a pony."

As Barack Obama's lead over Mitt Romney in the polls narrows, and his presumed fundraising advantage seems about to become a disadvantage, it's alibi time for some of his backers.

In introducing his new book, "Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America," Paul Gottfried identifies a fundamental divide between neoconservatives and the traditional right. The divide is over the question: What is this nation, America?

Next month, the woman who actually beat out Oprah Winfrey for Winfrey's "dream job" will retire from that very job after 37 years.

WASHINGTON -- By now most sentient Americans have heard about the war on women. That is, the so-called Republican war on women, which has been framed as a battle waged by stodgy old white guys who want to deny women reproductive freedom.

The left wants us to believe that paying for teachers, firefighters and police is a federal responsibility. Not so. Such services have traditionally been the responsibility of state and local governments.

One of the worst things that can happen to a presidential nominee is being forced to look over his shoulder at the candidates he beat out for the partys nod -- and see that they are still running.<

President Obama's latest political ploy -- granting new "rights" out of thin air, by executive order, to illegal immigrants who claim that they were brought into the country when they were children -- is all too typical of his short-run approach to the country's long-run problems.

There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth as, in the spring, it appeared that forces supporting Mitt Romney would be able to raise about as much money as those supporting Barack Obama. There's even more now that it seems likely that the pro-Romney side will raise and spend more money than the pro-Obama side.