The New Republic

Can you believe it? James Baker, of all people, has enlisted in a campaign to get the Supreme Court to approve as precedent both state and federal laws that guarantee both "ballot security and full access to voting."  In this effort, he is joined by Jimmy Carter who spends much of his time certifying that elections in select third world countries are fair, honest and democratic -- even when they are not.In 2005, Baker and Carter led a bi-partisan Commission on Federal Election Reform that did tackle the problem and proposed a uniform voter photo ID. READ MORE >>

I was sitting with my daughter and son-in-law in New York on Sunday morning, and she observed that the usual Democratic Party pre-election post-card informing voters where they cast their ballots had not come. She said she just assumed that it was in the usual place.OK. But what about the young voters who hadn't ever voted before?  I suppose they'll have to find out themselves. Before Tuesday.I have a theory. Yes, it just a theory. READ MORE >>

My old colleague John H. Mollenkopf -- we taught a course together at Harvard on "Power" eons ago (yes, it was a sixties course) -- is director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. READ MORE >>

There's an article in the Metro section of Sunday's Times which may not have been included in the on-line edition. It reported on the contributions of selected celebrities to the various candidates. Ah, a very important dispatch. Clip it, save it. Hasn't the Times got more significant news to tell on the newspaper of record?In any case, Alec Baldwin, the intellectual lightweight of the Hollywood left, gave $2,000 to Hillary Clinton. READ MORE >>

The Financial Times has an article in Saturday's edition about the sartorial tastes of the remaining male presidential cadidates. The article has photographs of Romney, McCain, Barack Obama and John Edwards who, as you know, has dropped out. In any case, it wasn't his clothes which spoke to the electorate but his haircut. READ MORE >>

A Labour prime minister iof Britain in the sixties and early seventies, Harold Wilson, once observed that "a week in politics is a very long time." It has certainly has been a long time since South Carolina. READ MORE >>

The Methodist Church in the United States seems to have embarked on its annual foray into the murky waters where hostility to Zionism and Israel just barely averts anti-Semitism.  Or maybe not.The righteous Methodists are once again considering disinvesting from public companies which do business in Israel in general and with companies that somehow help sustain the occupation of the West Bank.  This might mean a farm machine company like International Harvester or John Deere or perh READ MORE >>

In 2006 The New Republic had an article by Ben Smith, currently of the Politico (then of the New York Daily News), narrating the smarmy tale of how Hillary Clinton was courting Rupert Murdoch. Let me confess to being a friend of Rupert's and even then finding the liason highly improbable, that is, any political liason between the two. READ MORE >>

Poor Hillary was snubbed by Barack Obama.  I suppose she thinks he should have snubbed Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri instead.  He was closer to McCaskill then he was to Hillary who was, in any case, already engaged in false pleasantries with Senator Kennedy.  What's more, Hillary is known to snub people all the time. In fact, she even snubbed me once at a reception at the White House.  I was talking to someone in the Rose Garden, and she came over to greet the someone with READ MORE >>

Having anointed Bill Clinton the first black president,Toni Morrison has now cast her ballot for someone I hope will actually be the first black president. Still, she's stuck with her nonsense about Clinton's blackness. But Barack Obama is authentically black and, also in his mixed parentage and cultural upbringing, an auguring of the multi-racial demography of our future.   READ MORE >>