Sparty

One of the best decisions I made was to move into Washington so I would not have to deal with the long commutes–though the trade-off is living in a city with an incompetent government.  Last Friday reinforced this feeling.  It was the first day back to work for most people since the back-to-back snow storms hit the [...]

In yesterday’s Washington Post, there was an article about how members of Congress get the choice seats for the State of the Union address.  There is a picture of Representatives Sheila Jackson Lee and Eliot Engel saving their seats well before the start of President Obama’s address.   Basically it is first come, first served.  There is no saving [...]

Republican Scott Brown’s defeat of Democrat Martha Coakley in the election to complete the Senate term of Senator Edward Kennedy is in many ways the fault of the late senator himself.  Granted, no one—including Mr. Kennedy—thought a Republican would gain the seat.  Yet as the old saying goes, there are no certainties in politics. Hindsight being [...]

Last week I happened to catch a segment on CNN in which Wolf Blitzer was interviewing Colin Powell regarding the tragedy in Haiti.  They were discussing the use of the U.S. military in aiding the victims of the earthquake.  Mr. Blizter asked Mr. Powell whether he thought the military could do a good job given [...]

There has been much justified criticism of the way Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) handled the health-care reform bill—especially the political payoffs to various senators like Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Ben Nelson (D-NE).   James Capretta and Yuval Levin have a good article in the recent issue of The Weekly Standard on this topic. No one [...]

The Washington Post has an article which talks about a request inserted into the Senate health care bill for $100 million for construction of a Connecticut hospital.  The senator responsible for it was Chris Dodd (D-CT).  The spending request was inserted into the bill behind closed doors.  Given the sensitivity of the health care bill, Senate majority leader [...]

This week the Senate held hearings on the safety problems of the subway system in Washington.  Naturally, politicians like Senator Mikulski (D-MD) blamed Metro officials for the problems.  Yet if one looks at things objectively they would realize many of the problems are not the fault of Metro officials, but of the politicians, who over the years, made bad public [...]

The Washington Post continues to publish article written by liberal Catholics and non-Catholics who enjoy nothing more than criticizing the Church’s beliefs and teachings.  The latest is by Colman McCarthy called Catholic education, then and now.  In this article, Mr. McCarthy interviews three professors who teach at Catholic colleges and universities, asking them what are some [...]

There is an article in the latest issue of The Economist, which discusses Syria’s economic and political conditions.  Part of it says: (Syria’s) GDP, its foreign trade and the value of loans to its private sector have all nearly doubled in the past four years, as reforms have tapped suppressed entrepreneurial vigour.  For decades Damascus looked [...]

In Friday’s The Washington Post  Petula Dvorak’s column criticised the Archdiocese of Washington and Catholic Charities for opposing the gay marriage bill before the city council and that as a result many poor and needy will go without as a result.  None of this is true.  The objection of the bill was that there was no [...]