Columns

Last Thursday was the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's inaugural speech, and while the anniversary did not go unmentioned, it got less attention than I expected. I suspect that those of us who can remember that snowy day -- why do we schedule our great national outdoor ceremony for a day that is as likely as any to be the coldest of the year?

He only had time to answer a fraction of the questions posed, but Gov. Rick Scott made the best of the time and space allotted in his first Twitter Town Hall.

"O would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us," wrote the poet Robert Burns. As Hu Jintao wings his way home, America's hectoring still ringing in his ears, he must be thinking that maybe we Americans should stop lecturing them and take a closer look at ourselves.

Over the last two weeks since the tragic events in Tucson there has been a great deal of commentary at the national level on the scope and nature of our public discourse.

WASHINGTON -- It takes a worried man to sing a worried song, and in a recent speech that seemed like Larry Summers' swan song, the president's departed economic adviser warned that America is "at risk of a profound demoralization with respect to government." He fears a future in which "an inadequately resourced government performs badly, leading to further demands that it be cut back, exacerbating performance problems, deepening the backlash, and creating a vicious cycle."

OK, so conservatives have to be accused of fostering hatred with our alleged vitriol, the kind of vitriol that fuels the flames of violence, like we witnessed in Tucson except -- well, except there wasn't and isn't a shred of evidence that the killer was influenced by any conservatives since a) he didn't listen to or watch conservative programming and b) isn't a conservative.

Government budget crises can be painful, but the political rhetoric accompanying these crises can also be fascinating and revealing. Perhaps the most famous American budget crisis was New York City's, back during the 1970s. When President Gerald Ford was unwilling to bail them out, the famous headline in the New York Daily News read, "Ford to City: Drop Dead." President Ford caved and bailed them out, after all.

Outgoing state Republican Party Chairman John Thrasher worries that the GOP "is taking our Hispanic friends for granted."

In his superb speech in Tucson, Ariz., Wednesday evening, Barack Obama did great service to the nation. He put to rest the libel that political incivility is responsible for the Tucson shootings. He did so with three words that he added to the written text: "It did not."