Feb 8, 2012
Most Americans can hardly believe we're having a national debate about birth control in the 21st century more than 50 years after the pill became available and decades after condoms became as commonplace as, well, balloons.
The reason for the incredulity is because...
Feb 6, 2012
Two of the top news stories this past week have revolved around reproductive rights, though both raise far more troubling issues than a woman's right to contraception or abortion.
The more compelling questions concern a person's or an institution's freedom of conscience...
Feb 1, 2012
When a friend was writing a novel, he was concerned that his protagonist was too perfect.
People can't identify with perfection, he said. For the character to be sympathetic, he needs to have a flaw. He needs an injury or a wound of some sort so that people can identify...
Jan 23, 2012
Newt Gingrich's standing ovation Thursday night, when he attacked CNN moderator John King for asking about allegations that Gingrich wanted an open marriage with his second wife, told us little about South Carolina, but much about human nature.
The query, for which King...
Jan 19, 2012
My recent column about Michelle Obama, which I wrote to counter the negative responses to Jodi Kantor's new book, The Obamas, apparently has been misinterpreted by some. I did not intend to indict Kantor, who, in fact, wrote a mostly complimentary portrait of the first...
Jan 10, 2012
Iowa front-runners Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have a little problem. Both are too nice to be mean to each other.
Who can throw the first punch in a tight race growing tighter?
This is why God made Newt Gingrich. The formerly self-anointed nice guy, the one who...
Jan 4, 2012
The great thing about Iowa is that no matter whom the voters select in their neighborhood huddles, it doesn't really matter. Placing in Iowa might land one a talk show (see Mike Huckabee), but the preferences of a handful of Americans belonging to a committed, ideological...
Dec 21, 2011
It is axiomatic in these political times that The Candidate must submit to comedic humiliation with grace, humor and the skin of an armadillo. In this upside-down universe, the court jester is the monarch and the would-be king must submit to the jester s pranks.
Most...