BY FROMA HARROP There was a time when New England sent lots of Republicans to Washington. These were fiscally conservative but socially liberal “Rockefeller Republicans,” also found in the Northwest, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states. As the party turned socially conservative and fiscally reckless, many Yankees departed. The trend culminated in the George W. Bush Administration, […]

BY JIM HIGHTOWER Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to war we go! As President Barack Obama begins winding down the Bush war in Iraq, he is building up his own war farther east. We’re told that it will be a new, expanded, extra-special American adventure in Afghanistan, involving a vigorous surge strategy to “stabilize” this perpetually […]

BY FROMA HARROP Anyone who has watched “Law & Order” over the years, as I have, knows that the ending must feel right. The circumstances of the crime may be complex and the legal issues muddy, but in the end, most viewers are left feeling that some justice has been served. The great American audience […]

BY JOE CONASON Having long flattered themselves as “masters of the universe,” the creative financiers of Wall Street and London are today exposed as grifters rather than geniuses. Their proud claim that society cannot prosper without them – voiced so often whenever anyone raised subjects such as taxation or regulation – would now provoke bitter […]

BY SUSAN ESTRICH He was positively infuriating. I e-mailed his then-girlfriend – as the crowd was applauding him at Madison Square Garden in 2004 – that I hoped she wasn’t dating the [expletive deleted] anymore. She was. Ron hammered me about that e-mail: Did I like a friend less because I disagreed with him on […]