BY JIM HIGHTOWER Years ago, a young, sorta-hippyish couple who lived nearby knocked on my front door. They had noticed that fig trees in my side yard were laden with ripening fruit. “If you’re not going to pick all the figs for yourself,” asked the couple, “could we harvest some of them?” Sure, I said, […]

BY SUSAN ESTRICH Sonia Sotomayor makes me smile. Maybe I should have a more highfalutin response to the back-and-forth between the judge and the senators. But why? They know [at least the smart ones do] and she certainly knows that while most of the cases that come before the court can be decided without regard […]

BY SUSAN ESTRICH Was that a $5,000 VBH alligator clutch that Michelle Obama was carrying in Italy? So the company bragged, absolutely certain it was theirs, until the White House responded that it was not the alligator but the patent, an $875 VBH clutch and not the more expensive model. To be honest, I didn’t […]

BY FROMA HARROP One of America’s toughest problems is being solved right before our unseeing eyes. As Mark Sanford strayed, Michael Jackson departed and Sarah Palin quit, the Obama Administration was quietly putting law, order and the national interest back into our immigration system. New York Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer says he will offer a […]

BY JOE CONASON The new senator from Minnesota is a comedian, writer and actor who lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and raised a lot of money from friends in Hollywood. The departing governor of Alaska is a hockey mom from a small backwoods town who likes to hunt and fish. Yet today, […]