WASHINGTON — Boy, you could see that one coming. It was a pivotal moment earlier this month when Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates backed repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Pivotal, but not enough. I don’t spend a lot of time chatting up military officers, but enough to know that, just below the top-most ranks, there remains an enormous, if incomprehensible, amount of squeamishness about letting gay men and women serve openly in the military.
WASHINGTON — How big a deal was Marco Rubio’s speech to CPAC Thursday? If you are asking, as former President George W. Bush did jokingly the other day, “Who the hell is Marco Rubio?” you probably won’t be for long. Rubio is the 38-year-old former speaker of the Florida House and a conservative challenger to the state’s Republican governor, Charlie Crist, in the GOP Senate primary. If you are asking, what is CPAC? you probably aren’t a conservative Republican. CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, is, for several days every winter, the epicenter of the conservative movement; Ronald Reagan spoke before the group a dozen times.
WASHINGTON — The most striking part of Sen. Evan Bayh’s retirement announcement was his on-air job application. He’d be interested in managing a business, Bayh suggested, heading a university, or maybe running a charity.
WASHINGTON— Jenny Sanford was my role model, until I read her book. Well, not role model, exactly, but improbable heroine. When her cheating, blubbering, disappearing-with-his-soul-mate husband turned up on national television to confess that he had not been hiking the Appalachian Trail, Jenny Sanford was neither standing by his side nor crawling into a hole.
One morning, at the breakfast table, while eating a bowl of Fruity Pebbles, your chest begins to hurt. The pain worsens and you feel breathless. You briefly consider the possibility that what you’re eating really are pebbles.
WASHINGTON — My husband and I were away last week — working, but away. My mother was watching the kids, but she also works. So it was particularly important, I told my new but already somewhat spotty baby sitter, that she turn up on time, every day.
WASHINGTON — This won’t comfort Democrats mourning the loss of their filibuster-proof majority, but the existence of the filibuster is,…
Weekly Note: Ruth Marcus will be replacing Ellen Goodman’s column. Goodman retired at the end of 2009. WASHINGTON — Since…
Weekly Note: Ruth Marcus will be replacing Ellen Goodman’s column. Goodman retired at the end of 2009.
2010 is an important year. We will participate in the 23rd U.S. Census to determine our nation’s population. The census is mandated every 10 years by the U.S. Constitution; the results are used to allocate congressional seats, electoral votes and government program funding.
San Juan County Health & Community Services will participate in the state’s annual Point in Time Count of Homeless Persons (PIT) on Thursday, January 28. Prior to that date it will contact and enlist the cooperation of local agencies and organizations that come in contact with homeless members of the community.
Weekly Note: Ruth Marcus will be replacing Ellen Goodman’s column. Goodman retired at the end of 2009.
BOSTON — There is something fitting about writing my last column on the first day of a new year. January,…
