Following yesterday's final confirmation of Al Franken as the new senator from Minnesota, thus ushering in the Al Franken Decade 20 years too late, all the talk on last night's political shows was of the magic number 60. Of course, multiple guests on all the cable talk channels were quick...

We've heard all the reasons, listed ad infinitum on Fox News and, particularly, at length on MSNBC's Morning Joe. Health care reform will cost too much. It will bankrupt the country. It will force government bureaucrats between patients and doctors -- as though this was somehow worse than our current...

My weekly newspaper columns are usually about local issues, but as this week's column had a national bent, I figured I'd post it here for all of you Huffers to enjoy.

We're nearing the July 4 holiday, so it's that time of year when decent, God-fearing, tax-paying...

Over on his Fix blog at the Washington Post, uber-political journalist Chris Cillizza has written that Obama's pick of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court reflects Obama's "supreme confidence that even a united GOP can't beat the White House." Cillizza is, all too often, right about just about everything,...

I have to say, I'm a bit shocked this hasn't received more play. But yesterday, Rep. Barbara Lee filed House Res. 383 -- The Lee Wexler Conyers Bill Establishing a Committee to Investigate Bush Admin Conduct. The full text of the resolution can be read at Rep. Robert Wexler's Web...

So, you've got a blue state represented by a Republican. Said Republican is old, and not as popular as he once was. Additionally, he faces a primary challenge that some polls say he will not survive, which would leave Democrats running against a far-right yahoo. So, what do...

Maybe it's because it just happened yesterday -- or maybe it's because all the national news networks are currently obsessed with SARS or Avian Flu or Mad Cow Disease or whatever the current potential pandemic that, like all the others, will surely result in the end of civilization as we...

It's a bit late to the party, I know, but what the heck. I figured that my column in this week's paper was worth posting, despite the HuffPo's horde of tea party reporters. Enjoy!

The Fort Lauderdale brand of the nationwide tea parties took place in front of...

In his latest move to become the Savior of the Republican Party (expect him to come riding into D.C. on a white horse sometime in the summer of 2011), Newt Gingrich has announced that the GOP needs to get its act together, or true conservatives may go third party...

When Barack Obama was first elected, he immediately began his straight-to-the-people, end-run-around-the-press style of Q&A by encouraging people to ask questions at Change.gov. One's fellow citizens could then vote throughout Nov. and the first part of Dec. 2008 on their favorite questions, and Obama's people would answer the most popular....

Currently, the lead story on Huffington Post's main page is entitled "Boss Battle." It links to an interesting, pot-stirring story by the HuffPo's own Arthur Delaney about Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele saying that he is the de facto leader of the Republican Party, not "entertainer" Rush Limbaugh....

Submitted without commentary as sent to me by the White House Media Affairs Office, but please do leave your comments below! (OK, OK. One comment. Certain inclusions on the guest list point to some obvious themes in Barack Obama's upcoming speech -- note the presence of Lilly Ledbetter, for example.)

One of the first signals I picked up on regarding the coming savagery of the Bush administration was the newly minted president's tendency to put people in charge of departments and administations that they had spent large portions of their careers working against. The examples are many. Mark Rey,...

The demands for the nascent Obama administration to fully investigate the crimes, up to and including war crimes, of the Bush administration are legion. Keith Olbermann's special comment on the subject, delivered last Monday in the man's patented, outraged style, has been passed around the liberal blogosphere like a...

I'm more well-known for my political commentary, both on Huffington Post and elsewhere, but I cut my critical teeth in the world of music journalism. Indeed, without music, I would never have come to politics -- the two are surprisingly similar in many respects, but that's a post for another...

It's no secret that the entire industry is going through a sort of self-flagellating introspection over its future these days. Newspaper readership is on the decline, magazines are folding right and left, the evening news has lost most of its prominence, and so on. Throughout the industry, companies have desperately...

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day who maintained that Caroline Kennedy was far and away the best choice to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate.

"I mean, who else is there?" he demanded. "Who would be better, and why?"

I rattled off a few names...

I usually don't post my print columns here at HuffPo, because they tend to deal with local problems and politicians that would be of interest only to my fellow South Floridians. But the news last week that Sen. Mel Martinez will retire in 2010, and that Jeb Bush will likely...

US News and World Report broke this yesterday, and since then I've received the pdf file indirectly and independently in e-mails from two people who work in the offices of two of the people on the chart. I don't know what that says about the accuracy of the...

I promised myself a while ago that I would never steal Hunter Thompson's oft-used phrase; my writing already draws too many comparisons to the man's as it is, which was fun and flattering the first few times, but has since become the source of a gnawing, Holden Caulfield-like insecurity about...