The thought of impeaching Donald J. Trump is enticing, especially because my preferred approach, drawing and quartering, became illegal in the mid 19th century. Despite the allure of impeachment and despite its having been a pledge on which some new members ran for Congress in 2018, Nancy Pelosi was right to say she is against …
Continue reading On impeachment: should pragmatism Trump principle?
It took more than two centuries for the United States to have its first woman representing a major party as its presumptive presidential nominee. Last night, when it happened, when history was made, it was deeply affecting. To Hillary Clinton's many detractors, I concede her flaws, but I will not let you spoil the significance of …
Back in the 1990's, new House Speaker Newt Gingrich made me furious with his Contract with America, which critics dubbed the Contract on America. It was an era of slash-and-burn, anti-government GOP ascendancy, when in 1995 the Republican Party took over the House for the first time in 40 years. The victory signaled a more intense fight for smaller government, …
That whoosh you hear is the sound of money, gobs of it, flying from wellheeled donors to political candidates and "independent" committees on behalf of candidates. The roar is increasingly deafening especially when the money is coming from corporations and superPAC's (and, to a lesser extent, labor unions. Corporations, Mitt Romney explains to us, are …
If the four GOP candidates were running for legislator-in-chief, Rick Santorum would have won last night’s debate. But they are not, and, coming off three caucus and one primary victories plus a surge in the polls, former Pennsylvania Senator Santorum failed to present himself as commander-in-chief. He got mired in the arcana of Senate rules and …
The Huntington Theatre’s God of Carnage is a hilarious deconstruction of sophisticated social interaction and marital relationships. Two urbane and successful New York couples get together in the wake of a playground incident in which one couple’s son has hit the other couple’s son with a stick and knocked out two of his teeth. Their …
Continue reading "God of Carnage" gets at dirty little secrets
By the numbers, Mitt Romney can’t have the GOP Presidential nomination wrapped up until late April. By then he could have aggregated enough of the 1144 delegates needed to win next summer’s convention to take off some time and go boating on Lake Winnipesauke. To date, only 40 delegates have been chosen, two percent of …
Thank goodness for the Presidential race filling the vacuum created by a New England Patriots bye week. Waiting until 2:30 in the morning for Romney’s 8 point Iowa caucus margin of victory was a bit much however. Iowa starts the winnowing process. Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, despite having won last summer’s Iowa GOP fundraiser/straw poll …
Continue reading Eight-vote landslide boosts Romney’s front-runner status
No matter how unimpressive a party’s candidates for President in the beginning, by fall of 2012 at least one of them will seem Presidential. The Democrats’ underwhelming field in 1992 yielded Bill Clinton, who was a successful, two-term President despite being impeached for sexual lies. The current crop of GOP candidates, who debated Monday night …
Continue reading GOP Presidential field no more the “seven dwarfs” than the Dems in 1992
Keith Olbermann’s “indefinite suspension” for violating NBC’s policy barring donations to political candidates turned out to be just two days’ off the air. Which probably makes sense because his misstep was not in making the donations to three Democratic candidates but in not informing the NBC powers that be, as the network’s policy demands. Put …
Continue reading I’m shocked, simply shocked, to find political donations from Fox and MSNBC hosts
Marjorie Arons-Barron 