Category Archives: Featured

Bring Back the Gephardt Rule

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Ted Cruz, the freshman Senator from Texas and Tea Party firebrand, is channeling his inner Don Quixote and promising to filibuster the clean debt limit that was just passed by Democrats in the House.

By taking this worthless step, Cruz is taking a huge problem for the Democrats and making it a problem for the Republicans.

The debt limit vote is universally unpopular and it always has been unpopular. The American people aren’t comfortable with extending the limit on the national credit card. Continue reading →

A Glance at the Polls

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The Gallup organization polls every day asking respondents a number of questions including how they think the President – in this case Barack Obama – is doing. This is known as Presidential Job Performance.

Gallup does this on a three-day rolling basis.

SIDEBAR
I know you understand this, but for the other person who doesn’t, here’s a quick explanation: A three-day roll Continue reading →

No Sure Thing in Politics

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Originally published in The Hill

Uncertainty is the one thing that seems certain in the world today. We are in an age of transition, sparked by changing social mores and unstoppable technological progress.

Where it will end, nobody knows.

Uncertainty breeds instability. And instability breeds insecurity.

Both political parties are embroiled in insecurity. Continue reading →

The CBO & Obamacare

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The best political snowball fight of the winter season broke out this week when the Congressional Budget Office (generally identified as the NONPARTISAN Congressional Budget Office) released numbers that infer Obamacare will cost jobs and, thus, slow economic growth.

You know that I am generally careful when I wade into these things and tend to take a “yes, but …” position. So much so that some of you have gone so far as to call me a Ceratotherium simum cottoni (Northern White Rhino).

Continue reading →

Reid Tips Balance on Trade

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Originally published in The Hill

It was typical Harry Reid: blunt, to the point, and unambiguous.

“Everyone knows how I feel about this….The White House knows. Everyone would be well-advised to not push this right now.” The “this” is trade promotion authority. And with that unadorned statement, the Democratic Senate majority leader killed the president’s most important job-creating initiative.

Earlier in the year, the Commerce Department announced that the United States exported a record $194.9 billion in goods and services in November 2013. The New York Continue reading →

The Big Game

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

A few days before the BIG GAME, you can’t swing a dead Palm Pilot without running into someone or something tied to Super Bowl XLVIII which, for those who might have cut the high school class that taught us Roman Numerals, translates to 48.

The first Super Bowl was officially known as the First World Championship Game and was played in the Los Angeles Coliseum on January 15, 1967 between the NFL champion Green Bay Packers and the AFL champs, the Kansas City Chiefs. Green Bay won that game 35-10. The next year, the game was officially named the Super Bowl and carried the designation II as that first championship game was retroactively designated Super Bowl I. Continue reading →

Kristol is Wrong & It Ain’t the First Time

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I like Bill Kristol and I think he generally has some informed opinions on most subjects. But he is not infallible.

He was an early and eager proponent of Sarah Palin, for example. He believed that Dan Quayle would be a good President. He is also too neo-conish for my taste. He pushed hard for the Iraq War, and if he had his way, we would be dropping bombs on Iran yesterday.

Continue reading →

SOTU — 2014

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

What I thought the President needed to do:
Let me start from what I didn’t think he needed to do. President Obama did not have to appear to be reaching out to Congressional Republicans nor, for that matter, Congressional Democrats. He doesn’t much like them. They don’t much like him and, unlike Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, Barack Obama is not a good actor.

What he did need to do was to make a start in reassuring interested Americans that he is capable of not just getting through the next three years (he only got through 2013 because December 31 happened); but that he can do even small things to help the economy and the people who go to work every day to make the economy work. Continue reading →

Résumé

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The Darling-of-the-Left du jour (how many French words can I pile up at the top of this column?) is a Democratic State Senator from Texas named Wendy Davis. You may remember that she burst onto the national scene by staging a filibuster in the waning moments of a special Texas legislative session this past summer.

It helped that she was a blonde and attractive woman. It helped that she is a Democrat in a very Red state. And it was crucial to the narrative that her filibuster was an attempt to stop the State Senate from voting on a law seen as pro-life. Continue reading →

A Non-Attorney Spokesperson

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

You may have seen, read, or heard that Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife were indicted on Tuesday by a Federal grand jury in Richmond, Virginia.

For a couple of months over the summer, I was the spokesman for the Governor’s private legal team. I am not an attorney. I felt like one of those announcers for a Lawsuits-R-Us ad on TV: “I am a paid, non-attorney spokesperson.”

Continue reading →

Snowden: Case Against Him Grows Stronger

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

There are those who believe that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden is a patriot. I think not.

It is just too vast a leap of faith to believe that his thievery and treachery were of noble intent, done to protect the Republic and my privacy, and that he exhausted all other avenues to his end before decimating our national security and running off to Russia.

So it was with some satisfaction that I listened last weekend to Sunday talk show guests House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers of Michigan, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Diane Feinstein and former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who made these observations: Continue reading →

Common Sense Murderer: Helicopter Government

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

We live in an era of helicopter government.

No, I am not talking about the NSA and black helicopters that reportedly buzz the sky, spying on the American people, although, these days, I wouldn’t put it past them.

I am talking helicopter government like we have helicopter parents.

A helicopter parent is somebody who hovers above their kid, (and it usually is one child, because if you have a bunch of kids, you simply don’t have the time to hover over all of them), making sure that nothing bad happens to them. Continue reading →

Cynical

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I am crumbling beneath the heavy gravity of our national cynicism. I am being washed away by the flood of ill will between and among Americans. I am blinded by the whirling police light on Drudge and by the “Breaking News” scroll at the bottom of my TV screen. I have been rendered deaf by the non-stop shouting on cable chat shows.

I know this sounds like I’m signing off. I am not. But I feel like I need to go to Good Citizenship Re-hab along with about 317 million others, and get back to some semblance of a shared national direction. Continue reading →

“Enemy of the State” Foreshadowed Snowden

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Everything I know about the National Security Agency, I learned by watching the movie Enemy of the State.

Will Smith stars as a labor attorney who mistakenly gets caught up with a whistleblower who knows too much about the nefarious activities of a high ranking NSA official, played by the always villainous Jon Voigt.

Voigt, parenthetically, is the father of Angelina Jolie, who apparently is a huge Ayn Rand fan. But I digress. Continue reading →

Benghazi…Still

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SCCI) has released it’s long-awaited report on what did (and did not) happen in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 and what the Obama Administration said (and didn’t say) about it. The attacks led to the death of four Americans including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

The entire report is 85 pages long with about half of that devoted to appendices and to an “Additional Views” section by committee members. The SCCI is made up of 15 members; eight Democrats and seven Republicans. Continue reading →

Christie Scares Far Left and Far Right

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

It’s not often that Ed Schultz and Mark Levin agree on something. But when it comes to Chris Christie, they both agree that he is a terrible human being.

Levin, the conservative radical firebrand, compared Christie to Barack Obama and Eric Holder on his radio show the other day. Since the scandal erupted, Schultz has pounded the voluble governor day after day, night after night.

Schultz once called Christie a cold-hearted fat slob. If you have ever seen Ed Schultz in person, you wouldn’t exactly call him svelte. A couple of years ago, another talking head who is not exactly a modern day Charles Atlas, Rush Limbaugh called Christie a “fat” fool. Continue reading →

“The Prince” Lives On

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Originally published in The Hill

It was in 1513 that Niccolò Machiavelli first wrote The Prince, although it didn’t hit the printing presses until 1532, five years after the most infamous of political philosophers had died.

That was by design, because the Catholic Church didn’t much care for the tone of Machiavelli’s most famous work and put it on its list of banned books.

Despite the early controversy, The Prince still lives in the heart of the modern politician. Here are some examples:  Continue reading →

Poverty War

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

50 years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared a “War on Poverty,” in the Chamber of the United States of Representatives. Johnson had only been in the Oval Office for three months, and the country was still reeling from the assassination of John Kennedy.

The Texas Democrat clearly wanted to change the subject from lingering concerns about who killed his predecessor. Nobody would have guessed that the Dixie politician would have put forward such a bold and liberal plan, but Johnson’s ambitions were seemingly boundless. Continue reading →

Dangers of Prevent Defense

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Originally published in The Hill

Congress is coming back into session as the Super Bowl season begins, so I am going to rely heavily on a football metaphor in this column.

Congressional Republicans have a solid lead going into the second half. They are the favorites to keep the House, and the odds are looking good for them to take the Senate. The president is unpopular, his key legislative initiative (ObamaCare) is a disaster, and both the Senate map and House redistricting should give the GOP a big edge in the coming elections. Continue reading →

302 Days to Go

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Add this to your Outlook calendar right now: Election day is November 4, 2014 – the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. 302 days from today.

All 435 voting U.S. House seats are up for election as are 35 Senate seats. There are 33 seats that would be contested in the normal rotation for the Senate but there are also special elections in Hawaii and South Carolina to fill vacancies.

This election will be the mid-term election in the second term of President Barack Obama’s Presidency. Historically this is not good news for members of the President’s Continue reading →