[ Posted Wednesday, July 1st, 2015 – 16:43 UTC ]
June was a busy month for President Obama's job approval ratings. Lots of things were happening during the month, good and bad, and Obama's approval rating swung through an initial steep decline, but then at the end of the month experienced a spectacular recovery. What July will bring is anyone's guess, in other words. Obama wound up down for the month when the monthly averages were calculated, but they could very easily go right back up again in July. Here's our updated chart.
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[ Posted Tuesday, June 30th, 2015 – 16:59 UTC ]
The Supreme Court issued their last rulings of the season yesterday, and I thought one ruling kind of got short shrift by the media. Granted, there were other big rulings on the same day (the court usually saves their biggest cases for last, but this year they actually released the two biggest decisions last week) involving E.P.A. regulations and the death penalty, but the redistricting case -- to me, at least -- was more important.
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[ Posted Friday, June 19th, 2015 – 17:30 UTC ]
It's been a rollercoaster week in the political world, beginning with Hillary Clinton shifting the gears of her campaign by holding her first big rally, which was immediately followed by the man we're going to call "Jeb! Bush!" finally officially announcing his own candidacy.
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[ Posted Thursday, June 18th, 2015 – 17:13 UTC ]
The Supreme Court handed down two decisions today on free speech cases, both of which did some hair-splitting on the role government has in regulating certain types of speech. What's interesting is that they seemed a bit contradictory at first glance, since one was decided in favor of government regulation of free speech and one was not, but these are awfully fine hairs to be split and in reality the cases are only superficially similar.
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 10th, 2015 – 16:06 UTC ]
Perry is the tenth Republican to throw his hat in the 2016 ring, joining Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Rick Santorum. There are at least five other Republicans who will also likely make a run for their party's nomination, but they have yet to formally announced their candidacies.
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[ Posted Monday, June 8th, 2015 – 16:01 UTC ]
For political wonks, June is not the month to celebrate grads, dads, and brides, but instead the biggest SCOTUS month of the year. SCOTUS (for the un-wonky) stands for "Supreme Court Of The United States." June marks the end of the Supreme Court's yearly session, and it is when all the biggest decisions get handed down.
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[ Posted Friday, June 5th, 2015 – 21:05 UTC ]
We really wanted to use a different subtitle for today's column, one we are actually astonished that more news organizations didn't go with, given Rick Perry's announcement of his second run for the White House. That headline, of course, would have been: "Oops, He Did It Again!" Now, we do realize that the Britney Spears album is actually 15 years old (how time flies, eh?), but even so, with "Oops" being so central to defining Perry on the national stage, it certainly seemed like an obvious choice.
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[ Posted Tuesday, June 2nd, 2015 – 17:00 UTC ]
So the USA FREEDOM Act is now on its way to President Obama's desk to be signed into law. I have a few disjointed thoughts on the process this bill went through, so bear with me because this means I'm about to write a rather disjointed column about it.
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[ Posted Monday, June 1st, 2015 – 16:46 UTC ]
Yesterday, Senator Rand Paul stood firmly for his beliefs on the floor of the Senate. As a result, portions of the USA PATRIOT Act have been allowed to lapse today. Whether you think this is a tragedy, a victory, or even an absolute farce depends on your feelings for (or against) both the National Security Agency's metadata surveillance program and Senator Paul himself. But while others are debating the finer points of government surveillance, I'd instead prefer to focus on Paul's political tactics. Because, from where I'm sitting, Paul is to be admired and commended for both standing on principle and for using his position in the Senate to show the other candidates what actual (as opposed to rhetorical) leadership truly means.
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[ Posted Friday, May 22nd, 2015 – 17:03 UTC ]
It's one of those rare weeks in Washington where Congress deigns to actually do their job and vote on some stuff... before lapsing back into their default status, which is of course: "taking weeks and weeks off, on vacation."
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