Columns

WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama, an unbeliever genuflecting before the altar of frugality, is asking Congress, as presidents do, to give him something like a line-item veto. Coming in today's context of his unrelenting agenda of expanding government, his proposal constitutes a counterfeit promise to get serious about controlling spending and the deficit.

WASHINGTON -- Heres my question: Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place?

Intraparty civil war. It's a story line journalists often employ, though usually about only one party, the Republicans. Thus when three-term Sen. Bob Bennett failed to get enough votes at the Utah Republican convention, we were told that he was the victim of a purge by right-wing activists, despite his largely conservative record.

MILWAUKEE -- Before what he calls "the jaw-dropping" events of the last 19 months -- TARP, the stimulus, Government Motors, the mistreatment of Chrysler's creditors, Obamacare, etc. -- the idea of running for office never crossed Ron Johnson's mind. He was, however, dry tinder -- he calls Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" his "foundational book" -- and now is ablaze, in an understated, upper-Midwestern way.

Our community and state lost one of its most beloved sons with the passing of Sen. William G. Doc Myers.

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." That was the slogan of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's "1984," where Winston Smith worked ceaselessly revising the past to conform to the latest party line of Big Brother.

This month, three members of Congress have been beaten in their bids for re-election -- a Republican senator from Utah, a Democratic congressman from West Virginia and a Republican-turned-Democrat senator from Pennsylvania. Their records and their curricula vitae are different. But they all have one thing in common: They are members of an appropriations committee.

The U.S. Senate spent a precious five weeks of floor time debating the financial reform bill and passed the bill Thursday night by a vote of 59 to 39 before leaving for the week.

WASHINGTON -- I have a thing for Marines, always have. It began a long time ago when I watched my older brother amble away in the night toward his barracks at Camp Pendleton near San Diego.