By Rand Paul
Obama acts as though we no longer have a Constitution
Automatically taking effect March 1 because of Washington's inaction, across-the-board spending cuts present an opportunity to begin rethinking the role of our ever-expanding federal government in general, as well as public schooling and public safety.
OPINION/ANALYSIS
Diplomats, with the exalted titles of "excellency and plenipotentiary," do not really learn the ways of Washington until they have dinner with Esther Coppersmith.
As Americans seek to find an alternative to the stark and unappetizing choice between acceptance of Iran's rabid leadership having nuclear weapons or pre-emptively bombing its nuclear facilities, one analyst offers a credible third path.
The world is changing but diplomats such as John Negroponte, who spent much of his career working in some of the world's worst hotspots, still matter.
When explaining why President Obama has stuck by Joseph R. Biden for 3½ years of gaffes, overly exuberant flourishes and fumbles, political observers like to say the vice president is everything Mr. Obama is not: a garrulous, unscripted, yet seasoned political operator who loves to glad-hand and connect one on one.
The letter to the editor " 'Superfires' direct result of overregulation" (Monday) makes a strong case for one of the underlying causes of the disastrous fires in New Mexico and Colorado: lack of proper forest management beginning in the late 1960s.
The U.S. Air Force celebrates the 50th birthday of its youngest B-52 Stratofortress this year. This historic warrior and its counterparts predate the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam War and Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon.
Jackson Browne is hardly alone in seizing the opportunity that lies in Occupation. The Occupy Wall Street movement, a font of outrage and resistance against big business, commercialism and the wealthy, has nearly from the beginning managed to attract elements of all those things.
America's economy is in free-fall. Growth is anemic. The stock market is collapsing. Real unemployment - combining the high jobless rate with rampant underemployment - is higher than 16 percent. Manufacturing is dead. Deficits, debt and government spending are at record levels. Our credit rating has been downgraded for the first time in history. The trade deficit has exploded to the highest in years.A possible Great Depression haunts the land. Primarily one man is to blame: President Obama.
Again, and again, we must return to energy, the mother's milk of the economy, where the Obama administration's hamfisted tactics are strangling the baby of recovery in the crib.
Keep this column until April 2013. In the accompanying table, you will see two forecasts for federal debt-related items: the official Congressional Budget Office's forecast (which is close to the Obama administration's) and a pessimistic forecast (mine). No forecast is perfect, but it is likely that I will be closer to the mark than the CBO/administration because my assumptions are more realistic.
The Middle East is experiencing one of its periodic convulsions and, as day follows night, tsunamis follow earthquakes and trouble follows Lindsay Lohan, America's chattering classes have renewed talk about "energy independence." America's reliance upon "foreign" oil is said to be undesirable. Why? Because it makes us vulnerable to Arab oil embargoes, anti-American crackpots like Moammar Gadhafi and Hugo Chavez, and madmen bent upon acquiring nuclear weapons and dominating the Persian Gulf oil fields.
When he took over as secretary of state in the Clinton administration at age 68, Warren M. Christopher said he didn't expect to travel much. He went on to set a four-year mark for miles traveled by America's top diplomat.
President Obama has been trying to saddle up next to former President Ronald Reagan to gain political points with the American people. That's going to put quite the strain on your mystical smoke-and-mirrors machine there, Barry.
