Barack Obama on Tuesday abruptly abandoned his nomination fight for Tom Daschle and a second major appointee who failed to pay all their taxes, fearing a lingering ethics dispute would undercut his claims to moral high ground and cripple his presidency in just its second week. "I screwed up," Obama declared. ...more

February 3, 2009

If you're a political junkie, the last few days have been dazzling. This week promises more of the same. If you are tired of all the hoopla, well, it won't be going away any time soon. As citizens of this country, it's our duty to deal with the long campaigns and do our homework on the candidates we have. Partisan voters don't listen to facts, they just listen to the positives their candidates have and tout all the negatives against opponents. We understand this, but it's discomforting to think that some people are so unwilling to open their minds while making such critical decisions. It seems Americans want to sign up as many people as possible to vote in an election, because the more voices, the better decision. That sounds good - in theory. However, there's an argument to be made that if someone is so out of touch with voting, perhaps he or she doesn't deserve to take part. That's harsh, and controversial, but do we want uninformed people who don't have the initiative to learn about candidates making these critical decisions? Probably not. ...more

August 31, 2008

I come from a drinking family. I was raised in a drinking culture, the beer and bump blue-collar, middle-class, rubber-making heyday of Akron, Ohio. ...more

August 23, 2008

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it can be painful when we see things our country should have done and didn't when it had the chance. A perfect example of this followed the collapse of the Soviet Union as democracy swept the world back in the early 1990s. A New York University professor recently discussed with PBS's Charley Rose about the West's, as in Western Europe and America's, missed opportunity when communism fell in much of the world. Instead of using those heady times to make great in-roads in the world as the only super power, we instead looked inward and missed a huge opportunity. Now that's all lost. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, millions of people caught up in their first whiff of freedom sought what we had to offer. Everything seemed right and the rest of the world looked to us for leadership and guidance. Instead of stepping up and taking this opportunity, the West looked inward instead of outward. We could have affected so much change that benefited the world, and our country, but we missed the opportunity. ...more

June 16, 2008