The national outpouring of grief and praise in reaction to the death of Roger Ebert signaled the film critic’s ultimate victory in his long-running competition with cross-town Chicago rival (and on-air TV partner) Gene Siskel. When Siskel died of a brain tumor in 1999 his passing provoked few if any front page tributes, no effusive presidential proclamation, and scant sentiments like the LA Times headline anointing Ebert as “First Citizen Critic and Father to Us All.” Read More

On talk radio, in internet commentary and at right wing conferences, worried analysts and activists obsess over the dire electoral consequence of "three million missing Republicans" who doomed conservative chances in 2012. Read More

I recently said goodbye to car I had enjoyed and cherished for several years, repeating an experience familiar to most of my fellow baby-boomers. Bringing our twenty-year-old son into the garage the night before taking the vehicle back to the dealer at the expiration of the lease, I unsuccessfully invoked the bittersweet nature of the moment. “Take a good look,” I urged. “This is the last night he’s going to spend in this garage, the only home he’s ever known.” Read More

As Barack Obama prepares for his trip to Israel on March 20th—his first as President—he might consider taking the opportunity to correct common distortions about the Jewish state that his administration has, on occasion, helped to promote. Clearing away some of these persistent misunderstandings on the part of both policy makers and the public could strengthen America’s connection to its closest Middle Eastern ally, but also help the president make the peace process progress he clearly craves as a goal of his second term. Read More

The 2013 Academy Award broadcast generally steered clear of overt political statements, but two aspects of the occasion demonstrated the movie industry’s strong liberal values. Read More

As President Obama prepares his State of the Union Address and the nation looks forward to a Presidents Day holiday, Americans should consider the warning examples of our worst chief executives. Read More

The Great Gun Debate shows American political discourse at its irrational worst; with both left and right promoting panic and hysteria that distracts attention from the nation’s truly menacing problems. Instead of addressing crushing deficits, economic stagnation, political gridlock, and the erosion of middle-class security, politicians and pundits obsess over gun violence—one of the few challenges where the United States has made dramatic progress in recent years. Read More

If the president called instead for a genuine program of shared sacrifice, he could rally support from moderates and pragmatic conservatives and make serious progress in reducing the devastating deficit. With no other alterations in projected federal spending, an increase in taxes of 2 percent across the board (yes, including corporations), combined with a cut in spending and benefits that also subtracted 2 cents on the dollar, would yield deficit reduction of $400 billion this year—four times as much as the mandated sequestration cuts scheduled for March, and nearly seven times as much as the combined tax hikes in the fiscal-cliff deal. In fact, if applied for a full decade, the 2 cent fix would easily top the $4 trillion in total deficit reduction the president declared as his ultimate, visionary goal. It would move the country nearly all the way back to the normal, post-war spending-to-revenue ratios that applied as recently as 2007—19.5 to 18.3 percent of GDP. This compares to the unprecedented imbalance of last year, which saw spending at 24.3 percent and revenue at just 15.8. Read More

Exhilarated by the record number of women elected to both the House and Senate in 2012, giddy commentators have begun suggesting that increased representation by females could cure the poisonous polarization in Washington and repair the broken institutions of our government. A more sober, comprehensive analysis, however, reveals no historical or logical basis to assume that the much heralded influx of female politicos means an automatic improvement in the dysfunctional performance of the legislative branch. Read More

As Washington staggers into a new year, one side of the political spectrum polarizes and paralyzes all ongoing debates due to its irrational reliance on a higher power. Read More