Does the secretary of agriculture need unlimited power over farmers to protect them against themselves? The Supreme Court might finally settle this issue in an imminent decision on one of USDA's most bizarre regimes.
Almost every candidate who is behind in the polls invokes President Harry S. Truman's come-from-behind victory over New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey in 1948 to boost the spirits of their supporters.
The foregone conclusive presidential nominations produced inevitable speculation on whether the political conventions have outlived their time. I hope not. Participation is the name of the game in party politics as in government. The convention party is the reward for ward heelers.
Jack Garner, a Texan whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt chose as his first vice president for "balance," put it succinctly: The vice presidency was "not worth a bucket of warm p---" (later cleaned up to "spit").
It has been 64 years since President Truman pulled the upset victory of the 20th century and historians still can't get enough of it. Now comes a new book brimming with fresh and detailed information. David Pietrusza's "1948: Harry Truman's Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America's Role in the World" contains more human-interest subplots than a Shakespeare play.
Well, it's official. The President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has asked the Nobel Prize Committee to take back President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize owing to Mr. Obama's missile strikes in Libya. The head of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, also has weighed in, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is really in a snit. This is the best news Col. Moammar Gadhafi has had in weeks.
The media tend to be filled with many items that are either untrue or obvious. Last week - from Politico to cable television, from Karl Rove to Mike Huckabee - was a moment for the obvious to be stated and restated: "The GOP should not underestimate how hard it will be to defeat President Obama next November; indeed, he has to be considered the favorite to win the next presidential election." True.
A sure sign that an administration is in trouble is Beltway buzz about making dramatic changes at or near the top. Lately, there has been increasing chatter about moving Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to a new job. The goal of the musical chairs would be to keep her from challenging the politically flailing President Obama in a Democratic primary in 2012.
