Don't feel too bad for any golfer who hacks his way into one of the 96 sand bunkers on Congressional Country Club's Blue Course during the U.S. Open this week. No matter how treacherous his plight, he'll have it easier than Betty McIntosh did when she slithered through those bunkers face-down carrying a .32-caliber rifle back in 1945.
Nearly a decade after Congress told the National Park Service to try to buy Ronald Reagan's boyhood home, the plan remains in limbo — the victim of a budget dispute and of the former president's own limited-government philosophy.
In his excellent book "The High Tide of American Conservatism: Davis, Coolidge, and the 1924 Election," Garland S. Tucker III provides a timely perspective on the last election in which both major parties nominated candidates committed to limited government, low taxes and individual liberty.
In the last week or two, an eccentric debate has been dividing Democratic Party polls and commentators in Washington: In 2011, should President Obama strive to be more like Harry Truman in 1947 or Bill Clinton in 1995?
Commentators need to give Hillary Clinton a break. The secretary of state is under fire for ordering American diplomats to engage in detailed information collection against foreigners with whom they come into contact during the course of their duties. Among the documents released by WikiLeaks is the 8,300-word National Humint Collection Directive.
The late James H. Boren once observed that it's hard to look up to a leader who keeps his ear to the ground.
The Wall Street financial crisis of September 2008 swept Barack Obama into the White House. His utter failure so far to revive the economy and create jobs might well be dooming him to be a lame-duck, single-term president.
The New York Times has written in explaining why the political parties have lost the confidence of the public: "Their machinery of intrigue, their shuffling evasions, the dodges, the chicanery and the deception of their leaders have excited universal disgust, and have created a general readiness in the public mind for any new organization that shall promise to shun their vices."
President Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner have made it clear they want big tax hikes on job creators - successful investors and entrepreneurs - by letting the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011. This is despite the troubling persistence of unemployment greater than 9 percent.
