WASHINGTON — Any reporter who’s written about the federal budget knows that there’s a surefire solution to every problem. It’s called “fraud, waste and abuse.” You want to end budget deficits? Just eliminate all the “fraud, waste and abuse” in the $4 trillion budget. The same is true for cutting taxes or raising spending. Attacking […]
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Nominees must demonstrate commitment to departments they will lead
By Cass Sunstein Bloomberg View Presidents should generally be allowed to choose their own employees. Unless nominees fall below reasonable standards for honesty and competence, senators should vote to confirm them, even if they disagree intensely with their views. But that doesn’t mean the Senate should give a blank check to Donald Trump. Senators should […]
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Trump sets terms for economic worldview
In the course of a couple of tweets, Donald Trump may have ended the image of the GOP as the party of corporate America. After striking a Carrier deal to preserve about 800 jobs, the president-elect slapped the Indiana company Rexnord on Twitter for “rather viciously firing” its workers and then went after Boeing for […]
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Driver’s powerful story unlocks accident victim’s ability to write
It’s taken me all morning to regain a bit of composure. I’ve been in tears off and on for about two hours now, since reading this article. First, I want to thank Kathryn for writing a truly difficult but well written and beautiful piece. For the women, Janet, thank you for having the courage to […]
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Hostility to immigration a core theme of populist parties
NEW YORK — A joke among journalists is that we are taught to count: “one, two, trend.” But at this point, I think it’s fair to say we are witnessing a populist trend around the world. The real question is, what is fueling its extraordinary rise? Almost a month after Donald Trump’s election, Europeans went […]
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One amendment with five freedoms
What a thing of beauty, our First Amendment. Think about it: In only 45 words, it lays out five constitutional rights. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to […]
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Hillary Clinton, political martyr of the year
Documentaries, plays and grand operas will be written about what was done to Hillary Clinton in the election of 2016. Some normal mistakes were mixed in with her many accomplishments, but there was nothing normal about her treatment by political foes and many of the respectable media alike. The gang-up on Clinton amounted to political […]
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U.S.-Israel relations set to improve
The consensus in Israel is that the relationship between the Jewish state and the United States is going to improve in a Trump administration, says former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Zalman Shoval. On a recent visit to Washington, D.C., Shoval told me that he believes Donald Trump and his cabinet picks so far have […]
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Trump owns the political stage today
WASHINGTON — The most amusing part of the Trump transition has been watching its effortless confounding of the media, often in fewer than 140 characters. One morning, after a Fox News report on lefty nuttiness at some obscure New England college — a flag burning that led a more-contemptible-than-usual campus administration to take down the […]
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Many people took Trump literally
By Jennifer Palmieri Special To The Washington Post I know how to be a gracious loser. I could have let it go last week when Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, challenged me to look her in the eye and say she ran a campaign that gave white supremacists a platform. I considered for a […]