Franklin D. Roosevelt wasn't always "Franklin D. Roosevelt."

As President Barack Obama devises his reelection strategy, he should understand the implications of this statement and act on them. Whether this election will have major consequences for our future and what Obama's place in history will be could both depend on...

Herman, we hardly knew ye.

But, then, neither did the Republican voters who flocked to you several weeks ago. Herman Cain has two qualifications that were enough to make him the frontrunner for his party's nomination, and both are to be found in his surname: It is not Romney, and...

"We're heading into nut country today," President John F. Kennedy said to his wife on the morning of November 22, 1963, in the third year of his presidency, as he showed her an ad, bordered in the black of a funeral announcement, that the John Birch Society had placed...

In 1937, when the economy went into a renewed nosedive during the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt claimed that the cause was a "capital strike" by businessmen intent on destroying him and the New Deal. Roosevelt had the FBI launch an investigation of a possible criminal conspiracy by the...

So, President Obama signs the terms of surrender -- his, progressivism's, the Democratic party's and that of common sense -- capitulating to the extremists of the Tea Party who held the economy and the nation's full faith and credit hostage. And what happens? The stock market takes a...

Can't we get Solomon to settle the debt ceiling extension?

As a friend pointed out to me at lunch today, the famous story of two women, both claiming to be the mother of a child, coming before Solomon to settle their dispute, seems to have great relevance to the current...

Haley Barbour, the Mississippi governor and likely 2012 Republican presidential aspirant, has recently made a series of missteps involving race and the Civil Rights Movement. He seemed unclear about basic historical points.

But he has now made a forthright declaration about the events swirling around what some Southerners...

The Republican minority on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission asserts that the Commission Report's conclusion that "the crisis was the result of human action and inaction" and so was "avoidable" is mistaken because it indicates that the collapse was foreseeable. The minority report claims that the crisis could not have...

Oh, Freedom!

"Freedom" was in the air -- the frigid air -- on that sunny early afternoon a half century ago today when John F. Kennedy uttered his most famous words. That enticing concept almost seemed to be tangible in the visible puffs of breath the new young president...

As an irate, long-term Obama supporter, I give the President a piece of my mind on his surrender to the Republicans and the hyper-rich in, as Harry Truman once said of a talk he had with the Soviet foreign minister, "words of one syllable, unadorned by the polite verbiage of...

In this video I, as one of Barack Obama's earliest supporters, lecture him and Senate Democrats on just how pathetic their willingness to "compromise" with Republicans on extending the tax cut for the rich is -- and I offer a different way of characterizing their lack of strength, getting away...

I want to scream. What in the hell is wrong with the Democrats?

The House has done as it should and passed the extension of the tax cut for the middle class without extending the tax cut for the rich.

But everyone in the media is saying, "It's just a...

If President Obama and the Democrats surrender to the forces of the Mega-Rich on the tax cut for the top two percent, they will demonstrate that they have no sense of purpose whatsoever.

The reason given for moving towards a "compromise" is that there aren't enough Democrats in the Senate...

Understanding what happened in Vietnam 40-plus years ago is a matter of great interest as Americans consider the future of our involvement in Afghanistan. Last November, Newsweek ran a cover story titled, "How We (Could Have) Won in Vietnam."

It is clear to me from three visits to Vietnam...

American students currently rank 25th in math among advanced nations.

The Republican "Pledge to America" will further lower that ranking.

Ever since Barack Obama became president, the Republicans have been shouting "No" to all proposals for improvement and encouraging people to focus on every...

In a letter to the New York Times published on Wednesday last week, I briefly stated what Democrats need to do to retain control of Congress. In its simplest form, the message is this:

There will still be...

For Glenn Beck & Sarah Palin, both preachers of hate and division, one who condemned social justice as "un-Christian" as the other urged someone who shouted the "N-word" to keep doing so, to stage a rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I...

So, the Republicans want to make this year's elections about deficits and debt.

Republicans and regressives are actively promoting -- through commercials, talk radio, speeches, and their "news" network -- the idea that growing debt is the greatest problem facing the...

Since the 2008 crash, the Wall Street manipulators have been called pirates and banksters. Those are appropriate words, but there is a much more accurate term for their function in our economy and society.

The self-fancied Masters of the Universe on...

A paragraph in an editorial in today's Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi) puts the attitude of those howling about (and suing over) the health care reform law's provision that everyone obtain health insurance in a very revealing perspective. I think it is worth passing along:

Most of these same politicians actively support...