One of the criticisms President Obama has faced is that he tends to wait patiently, sometimes too patiently for some, for the public to reach conclusions that seem so obvious. With the release of his proposed 2012-13 budget, the president is now continuing to use his influence to support what...

I welcome the Huffington Post to my hometown, Miami. I've always felt that Miami was this great little secret. If you plan it right, you can live in paradise and still enjoy rich intellectual pursuits at the highest level. If you look around just a little, you will find...

Our ultra-conservative Governor of Florida, Rick Scott, said the other day that Florida colleges should stop wasting time educating anthropologists -- "who needs more anthropologists?" the Governor asked. This was curious, because it turns out Scott's daughter has a degree in Anthropology from William & Mary. At...

Back in the spring, before President Obama got bin Laden, his poll numbers were falling. The people who analyze these numbers claimed that the drop could be tied directly to people's anxiety about the economy, and what made people the most anxious was the rising cost of gasoline at the...

Here in Florida, there was an important story of reform -- real, perhaps revolutionary election reform -- that was lost in Tuesday's carnage. Florida Constitutional Amendments 5 and 6, designed to limit the power of legislators to design their districts to guarantee their reelection, were approved by over 62...

The firestorm coming down on Goldman Sachs is puzzling. The firm is getting what it deserves, but for the wrong reasons. Goldman Sachs is being vilified for being smarter than everyone else. In fact, they deserve what they are getting, not because they were so smart, but because they were...

This week on Hardbal, Chris Matthews voiced his frustration that Democratic leaders have been hesitant to sell health insurance reform as simply doing the right thing, and that those of us who are more fortunate should be willing to sacrifice for those among us getting shut out of the system....

The Republican response to President Obama's stimulus package and budget proposals have been nothing but predictable. They warn us that we are about to "saddle our children and grandchildren with debt," debt so profound that it amounts to "generational theft."

The president and a number of commentators were certainly correct...

I received an email from a friend in Los Angeles last Monday telling me that my buddy Chris Matthews quoted me on the midnight edition of Hardball. Earlier on Monday, I had emailed Chris to vent my frustration. For the last week or so I had been throwing things at...

I just returned from the early voting site at the Government Center in Downtown Miami. The sight was thrilling. There is a steady stream of voters, and the crowd skews to the young and minority. At another site here in Miami, over one thousand, mostly minority, voters are waiting in...

Last week, I suggested a bold plan to declare war on the meltdown. I discussed how our misadventure in Iraq had drained a trillion dollars from our economy, just like doctors used to drain blood from a sick patient. Senator McCain's basic answer is to tighten our belts, in effect...

It's time to declare war on our economic meltdown, and put America back to work.

Back in July, I shared some thoughts in this blog about what an "economy" is, and how the war in Iraq was bleeding dollars from our economy: George Bush has chosen to fight this war...

For years, we've marveled at the marketing and branding skills of the Bush White House. From "The Patriot Act" to "No Child Left Behind", these guys came up with great names for some toxic stuff. That is why I'm so surprised at how they've bungled the sale of Secretary Paulson's...

John McCain's week of flailing on the economic crisis has -- like his pick of Sarah Palin -- demonstrated that he is untethered and lacking in temperament to be our nation's leader. His latest gambit, his attempt to avoid the marketplace of ideas in Friday's debate, demonstrates he has no...

For nearly two weeks, all we talked about was lipstick. Now, finally, we are talking about the Republican stewardship over the economy. It's easy to forget that in just a few days, Barack Obama and John McCain will debate foreign policy. In that light, it's time to remember something we...

I had not been back to a national convention since 1976, so I had forgotten something: conventions are a lot like Super Bowls. When there are moments of drama, there's nothing like being there. The rest of the time - like the Super Bowl halftime show, for instance -...

One of the things we've been told about Joe Biden lately is that he takes the Amtrak home to Wilmington at the end of the day. The day I shared a car with him, I saw for myself that he doesn't just take the train. He works hard, and what...

Coming just the day after Exxon announced the largest quarterly profit in the history of the Earth, Barack Obama's announced willingness to consider the proposed Senate compromise to allow the possibility of new and limited oil drilling leases seemed a bit curious. When you drill down a little deeper --...

It has been described as Barack Obama's "good fortune" at the beginning of his recent trip. But what we've witnessed over the last few weeks was not a string of luck, but a culmination of a process of thought that has spanned much of the new century. Finally, in the...

John McCain has been arguing lately that we are closing in on "victory" in Iraq. It's sometimes hard to understand what "victory" means, especially when we watch Iraq's leader physically embrace Iran's Ahmadinejad, while Ahmadinejad calls for American troops to leave Iraq. Our "victory" is Iran's new best friend....