Columns

WASHINGTON -- When it comes to Newt Gingrich's post-speaker activities on the Hill, it all depends on what your definition of "lobbying" is.

President Obama and Congress need to focus on policies in 2012 that will unleash the economic growth necessary to get the economy back on track, create jobs and lower the unemployment rate.

It was hard to tell who took a bigger beating in Monday night's debate -- Newt Gingrich or NBC.

As in our nations capital, there has been much talk about the value of higher education degrees here in Florida.In order to attract and grow business, there must be a well-trained work force and an ever-emerging intelligent populace.

This may be the golden age of presumptuous ignorance. The most recent demonstrations of that are the Occupy Wall Street mobs. It is doubtful how many of these semi-literate sloganizers could tell the difference between a stock and a bond.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court can pack large portents in small details. When in late March it considers the constitutionality of Obamacare, there will be five and a half hours of oral argument -- the most in almost half a century.

Those who take a certain pleasure in denouncing the evils of negative political advertising should have spent the last week in South Carolina.

On Sept. 21, 1976, as his car rounded Sheridan Circle on Embassy Row, former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier was assassinated by car bomb. Ronni Moffitt, a 25-year-old American women who worked with Letelier at the leftist Institute for Policy Studies, died with him.

Every election, were told, is important. Critical, even. But its more than the usual hyperbole this time.

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. -- The crowd at the Fox News/Wall Street Journal debate in Myrtle Beach was feisty, with whoops and cheers for Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, though not so much for Ron Paul.

LOS ANGELES -- Shawn Nee, 35, works in television but hopes to publish a book of photographs. Shane Quentin, 31, repairs bicycles but enjoys photographing industrial scenes at night. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department probably wishes both would find other hobbies.