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HEDGESVILLE, W.Va. — This is a little town on Route 9, almost directly south of where the Potomac loops around in the mountains and begins its run toward the Chesapeake Bay. There is a big Food Lion grocery store and a 7-11 that sells liquor. Cornfields and apple orchards ripple out from the middle of […]

If you like the Karl Rove-inspired attack on John Kerry’s Swift Boat service, you’re going to love the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s coming assault on John Edwards. Like the right-wing vets smearing Kerry’s Vietnam record, the anti-Edwards group is nominally an independent committee. But as The New York Times reports, the cochairmen of the new […]

Florida. Florida is never far from the minds of either campaign’s top strategists, but Floridians had bigger fish to fry than the presidential campaign this August as the state suffered much devastation at the hands of Hurricane Charley. Conventional wisdom has it that then-President George Bush Senior and then-Governor Lawton Chiles both suffered mightily at […]

I am a retired U.S. Army officer and a volunteer two-and-a-half tour Vietnam veteran. I also wear the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star with a “V” device (for valor) and oak leaf clusters (MACV General Orders Number 154, January 10, 1969) for wounds received and performance in combat action on July 3, 1968. It […]

Things have gotten a bit tangled on the old electric television set these days. All sorts of strange critters seem to be wandering around inside the cathode’s glass. Chris Matthews’ political libido, for example. Last time I saw it, it was sitting in the Prospect Buffet, staring down at a spot between its hands, the […]

Considering that he’s the sort of man who’s not above pretending to like Cheez Whiz in order to gain a fleeting political advantage, it should come as no surprise to learn that George W. Bush thinks of the Olympics less as a celebration of athleticism than as yet another opportunity for electioneering. Thus, while the […]

Among conservative commentators, and in certain quasi-liberal circles, there’s been lots of tut-tutting in recent weeks about John Kerry’s foreign-policy instincts. What has these concerned citizen-pundits nervously stroking their chins is the suspicion that Kerry is a “realist” who has no particular interest in promoting democracy and human rights abroad. It may well be that […]

I’ve sort of grown to like Bob Dole over the years, mostly because he’s shown himself to be a genuinely funny guy, able to move beyond the sort of faux-earnest self-righteousness of the practicing politician ever since he lost the presidential race. That, combined with his age (81) and the fact that he was missing […]

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says the economy has hit a “soft patch.” The recent flurry of bad news makes that pronouncement feel like quite an understatement. First, the 4-percent-plus growth we enjoyed for four straight quarters dropped to only 3 percent in the second quarter (April to June). Then came the news that only […]

There is something quite lunatic about the entire debate on whether to permit imports of drugs from Canada. It’s not as if Canada manufactures drugs more cheaply. Nor are drugs like trees, or bauxite, or hydro power, which just happen to be naturally plentiful in Canada. No, the cheaper Canadian drugs are the same ones […]