On August 10th, I suggested that President Obama should take a lesson from Muhammed Ali and use a rope-a-dope strategy to counter the attacks on his health care plan. Listening to his speech tonight, I saw him do this to his opponents. After laying out the benefits to those who...

As of today the Health Care Debate raging across the country has been a discussion of campaign tactics. Is the outrage on the tube manufactured? Is it real? Who organized the pros and the cons? Are the Tweeters being outmanaged by the emailers? And when the debate turns to the...

Budd Schulberg, Academy Award winner for the script of the movie On the Waterfront, and a member of the Boxing Hall of Fame, died this past week. Too bad he couldn't have been the corner man for President Obama in his fight for health care reform. I think the President...

Two prolific and titanic practitioners of the English language passed from our world this week: Walter Cronkite and Frank McCourt. There is little left to be said about the accomplishments of these two...their lives' work defined and explained them both.

To all of us here, and most of the world,...

I'm not a lawyer, but let me play one for now...after all, with the antics in Albany, how could it hurt? In thinking about the monotonous, boring and buffoonish situation in our State Senate these past few weeks, I've wondered why no citizen has stepped up to file a legal...

I'm not a lawyer, but let me play one for now. After all, with the antics in Albany, how could it hurt? In thinking about the monotonous, boring and buffoonish situation in our State Senate these past few weeks, I've wondered why no citizen has stepped up to file a...

Since the New York State Senate has continued its self -induced paralysis by failing to reach some sort of a short term working arrangement, a number of consequences await the citizens of New York this week: counties may have to raise property taxes because they have no ongoing authority to...

My former boss, the late Senator Daniel P. Moynihan, was a noted author and social scientist. He wrote an article for the American Scholar in 1993 where he referred to a phenomenon in which society begins to accept levels of behavior that heretofore would have been unacceptable.

As this...

The eyes of the New York political world, and perhaps the nation, have been turned on the New York State Senate. The coup and near counter-coup of a few renegade members have exposed the most "dysfunctional" state legislative body to editorial scorn and cartoon ridicule. Moreover it is impossible to...