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The Big Story Addressing both houses of Congress, the President proposed a "built to last" economy, rehashing the success of the 2009 auto rescue before pushing the Republican-dominated Congress to pass a mix of infrastructure investments and tax cuts that he has been proposing for months. "We will not go back to an economy weakened by outsourcing, bad debt and phony financial profits," Obama said as he stood by regulations and announced a new financial fraud task force. The State of the Union is always an extended exercise in political theater, and Obama used his time on stage to contrast his record with Mitt Romney and the other Republican candidates who pushed for the car companies to go bankrupt ("some even said we should let it die") and have called for greater deregulation. He tweaked Romney by demanding greater tax fairness on the same day the Republican surrendered his all-too-revealing returns. And the president didn't forget to mention that he took out Osama Bin Laden. READ MORE | |||||||||||||||||||
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My Front Pages, By Joe Conason Why the Republicans chose Mitch Daniels -- the former Indiana governor who once thrilled right-wing pundits as a 2012 hopeful -- to deliver a rebuttal to President Obama's State of the Union address is puzzling. His uninspiring remarks surely killed the Daniels fad, revived lately as the GOP frets over the unappetizing choices available in their primary. By shining the spotlight on Daniels, Republicans risked losing much more than a political rescue fantasy. He isn't merely a politician who looks like an accountant; he actually was an accountant -- or at least he played one during the Bush years, when he served as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Listening to him drone on about fiscal rectitude was a dull but effective reminder of the true source of our national problems. "Mitch Daniels...Isn't he the former Bush budget director who said the Iraq war would cost $50 billion when it ended up costing $3 trillion? The bureaucrat who promoted the Bush tax cuts when we were fighting two wars? The one whose budget projections were so fraudulent that he predicted federal surpluses in 2004 and 2005? Why the hell should we listen to him criticize Obama?" READ MORE | |||||||||||||||||||
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Featured Column: David Cay Johnston What advice do tax lawyers give private equity managers about saving on taxes as they build wealth? We got a first glimpse at the answer on Tuesday when, bowing to public pressure, Mitt Romney released his 2010 tax return and a tax estimate for 2011. There's no suggestion that the former Massachusetts governor did anything illegal. However, Congress allows managers of investment partnerships like the one Romney ran to enjoy tax-saving strategies not available to other taxpayers. So I asked 10 lawyers in seven states how they might advise a new client who is launching an investment partnership -- someone like Romney. READ MORE | |||||||||||||||||||
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Featured Column: Gene Lyons Look, nobody's third wife is going to be First Lady. In the privacy of the voting booth, American women won't stand for it. Regardless of how flawlessly the bejeweled Callista enacts the role of pious matron, she remains the embodiment of the Trophy Wife -- younger, more adoring, unencumbered by children, a climber on the make. In effect, a successful Monica Lewinsky, although unlike Bill Clinton's paramour, Callista was no kid. Even Ann Coulter knows that. Having placed an early bet on Mitt Romney, the GOP's vestal virgin pronounced herself shocked to hear South Carolina Republicans accepting "Democratic" arguments excusing Newt Gingrich's serial adultery. READ MORE | |||||||||||||||||||
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Featured Column: Carl Hiaasen As anybody who knows anything about the Everglades will tell you, the giant Burmese python is here to stay. If last year's hard freeze didn't kill off the tropical snakes, nothing short of a nuclear disaster will do it. READ MORE | |||||||||||||||||||
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Fair & Balanced? Cyber-transparency activist Julian Assange says he's launching a career in television, hosting what's being billed as a new brand of talk show built around the theme of "the world tomorrow." The WikiLeaks secret-spilling site said in a statement released late Monday that "iconoclasts, visionaries and power insiders" would be brought in so that Assange could challenge them on their vision of world affairs and "their ideas on how to secure a brighter future." READ MORE | |||||||||||||||||||
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