Who remembers the Hungarian revolution?

I do, for one. I was a teenager who watched in horror on my black-and-white TV as gallant young Hungarians went up against Russian tanks in beat-up old trucks in 1956. They waited in vain for American help. It never came, and the Iron Curtain...

Maybe it's time to bring back the working class heroine.

OK, she went to Wellesley and Yale Law School, but Hillary Clinton turned out to be a world-class campaigner when it came to lunch-bucket Democrats, the ones who seem to be eluding Barack Obama.

The race is just too...

In the near future, will American women be legally barred from using the most popular form of birth control, the pill? And could a doctor who prescribes an IUD for a woman go to jail? What about the woman herself? Could she do hard time for her intrauterine device?

Sound...

Barack Obama's halo has slipped, and I, for one, hope it just falls off. He's no longer Saint Barack, but a charismatic, inspiring politician, who can dodge and feint when he needs to, and that's all to the good.

But that fact has made some on the left very...

"She Bad! She's Black! And she's angry!"

Does this sound like an ad for one of those 70s blacksploitation movies where dark-skinned chicks in big Afros went around kicking male butt?

Maybe. But it's how a lot of people these days are trying to represent Michelle Obama. It's rather like...

Will the sexism aimed at Hillary Clinton in the media and in political discourse create a new interest in feminism?

There are increasing reports that women who never experienced the snickering and mockery that greeted the feminist movement of the '70s are awakening to the fact that we may not...

Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick told the Boston Globe the other day, "I think the country is so hungry for leadership -- uplifting, visionary leadership -- that a lot of our traditional differences don't matter."

Well, maybe. But I have been around politics long enough to be a bit cynical about...

Maybe Barack Obama ought to go looking for his Inner Atheist, because lately, his spiritual advisers are throwing him under the bus instead of leading him towards a Sweet Chariot.

The performance of a Catholic priest in Obama's Chicago church, mocking Hillary Clinton in a cruel and humiliating way, is...

Does anyone wonder why women who support Hillary Clinton for president get (excuse the vernacular) PO'd at some of our fellow Democrats?

It's because very time we turn around, someone is dissing our candidate in ways that infuriate us. He (or she) is using sexist, insulting language about the first...

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright put forward a peculiar view of African- American versus European brains in his Press Club speech. It was a garbled mess, and it's surprising that his ideas on this subject have gotten very little attention in the mainstream media.

Wright argued that African-American children have a...

The mathematics of who's elite and who's "just folks" in presidential politics is somewhat mysterious. It doesn't correlate with class or income.

FDR, with his long, elegant cigarette holder, his little dog Fala and his aristocratic voice, should have been almost a caricature of upper-classness. But he used that voice...

Early on in the presidential primaries, it seemed that Barack Obama had managed to do the improbable, if not the impossible -- transcend the thorny question of race in American politics. I had hoped this situation would continue.

It was not, alas, to be. The whole issue of Reverend...

The Democratic party has two strong contenders for the nomination, and big primaries remain, with millions of votes yet to be cast. It is nearly unprecedented for a major candidate to be asked to pull out in such a situation, but there's a media clamor for Hillary Clinton to do...

How independent of powerful men do women have to be?

If you're a feminist, do you have to trash the "Stand by Your Man" scenario?

And how far does illicit sex with a powerful man get women, anyhow?

The strained, pale face of Silda Wall Spitzer is etched...

Is the amazing Barack Obama campaign a blitzkrieg that will sweep relentlessly to the nomination, or a bubble that will ultimately burst like a child's balloon with a pinprick?

Never before have I seen anything quite like it. The "Get Clean for Gene" campaign in 1968 by young people...

How perfect will the first woman president have to be?

Too perfect to be human, I suspect. And in Hillary Clinton's case, the demand often comes from women.

Take Maureen Dowd's recent New York Times column that summed up many women's grievances about Hillary.

"As a...

Why did John Edwards' crusade against poverty find so little resonance in the media?

It seemed a perfect time for his message. In 2006, 36.5 million people were in poverty, and 35.5 million Americans lived in "food insecure" households, 22.8 million adults and 12.6 million children. On any given...

Bill Clinton reminds me of Chopper, a friend's pit bull. Chopper is a happy dog who loves people, likes to party and is a favorite at the doggy-day-care he frequents.

But once in a while Chopper gets out, off his leash, and scares people. If you see Chopper coming...

The news media is giving Mike Huckabee a free pass on the fact that he signed a statement declaring that wives should be "'submissive" to their husbands.

In a recent Fox debate, Huckabee adroitly sidestepped the issue, saying, "The point is that as wives submit themselves to...

Did the media's savage attack on Hillary Clinton stir up some atavistic instinct of anger or protectiveness among women, helping her to win New Hampshire? Was there a massive CLICK moment, as old-guard feminists used to call it, when women collectively thought, "Hey, this isn't fair!"

My guess would...