The Washington Times

On the day of the state of the union message, we might summarize the state of political play as follows: President Bush has fought his way back – from a catastrophic collapse of job approval all the way up to historic lows of job approval. And at this writing Monday morning, I can’t really tell if Democrats are filibustering the confirmation vote for Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court or not.

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The Washington Times

What to do about Iran’s nuclear ambitions is a problem whose complexity we are all busy admiring. It is already clear that no approach to the problem comes without significant costs, and besides which, offers no guarantee of success. And if there are any optimists out there, as there were prior to the Iraq war, I haven’t run into them.

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The Washington Times

Why don’t we let Jack Burden, the narrator of Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men,” have the first word this week? It’s the famous passage in which his boss, Willie Stark, the ambitious and corrupt governor of Louisiana modeled on the legendary Huey Long, makes a bid to have the last word on politics and the soul of man: “It all began, as I have said, when the Boss, sitting in the black Cadillac which sped through the night, said to me (to Me who was what Jack Burden, the student of history, had grown up to be) ‘There is always something.’ “And I said, ‘Maybe not on the Judge.’ And he said, ‘Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.’ ”

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Where K Street and Capitol Hill meet

The Washington Times

For those who are interested in political ideas and public policy-making, the role of K Street in the process is a source of considerable confusion. So perhaps the downfall of crooked Jack Abramoff will open a window through which the light at last shines on the whole multi-zillion-dollar lobbying industry. Unfortunately, I think it’s just as likely that the Abramoff scandal will obscure more than it reveals.

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The Washington Times

Oh dear, it happened again: By late fall, Democrats had talked themselves into the proposition that the Bush administration was, for all practical purposes, over and done with. A few scant weeks later, in fact just in time for Christmas, Mr. Bush was back, with a respectable and rising job-approval rating and momentum in the news cycle.

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