Who says that August is the silly season?

** "A THEORY THAT'S OUT THERE." I love Rick Perry. I really do. With Michele Bachmann, even though she's listening to her smart advisors and doing things Sarah Palin can't, like speak in sentences and even paragraphs, you know you've got...

I'm a bit behind the curve on Harry Potter. The last movie in the series has, astonishingly, grossed over $1 billion in worldwide box office after only its third weekend in release. In fact, having just passed the final Lord of the Rings picture, it's the highest grossing movie around...

As the dust settles and the adrenaline abates from the big budget fight, what really happened? Far less than met the eye.

The result, despite all the sturm und drang, doesn't amount to much. Certainly markets here and around the world aren't impressed by the big deficit/debt deal. Nor are...

This time around as governor, the irrepressible Jerry Brown has been unusually reticent, spending most of his time behind the scenes working on California's chronic budget crisis. He didn't get his dearly hoped for grand compromise of big cuts and new revenues, but most of the problem was solved by...

Last week's end of the space shuttle era came with neither a bang nor a whimper, and no little sense of anti-climax. Did it mark the end of the Space Age? Or a new beginning?

I loved the space program. I grew up with it, thrilled to the early Mercury...

What's President Barack Obama up to in the big federal budget deficit/debt ceiling debate? After months of letting Vice President Joe Biden carry the ball, Obama has placed himself center stage in the midst of controversy, even as agreement seems to get farther away.

What is he really after? To...

It seemed very counter-intuitive. But was it?

Late on the evening of June 28th, in a move with major national labor implications, Brown vetoed card check legislation sought by his old allies, the United Farm Workers, authored by state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg.

This would have allowed certification...

The politics of war are endlessly fascinating. Especially as they concern the party which set itself up as the party of "Long War" after 9/11.

Republican politicians are beginning to follow their voters as their voters shift away in recent months from their staunch backing for the war in Afghanistan,...

The latest round of California's chronic budget crisis is finally coming to an end. It's a significantly better end than in the past. But it's not an ending with finality.

Governor Jerry Brown finally acceded to the probable on Monday, dropping his months-long quest to get four Republican legislators to...

Barack Obama has plenty of problems with the Republican Party. But his biggest problem is the least obvious of them: the Republicans are turning anti-war. And as they do so, any popular base of support for the Afghan War disappears.

While the Republicans' long-entrenched hawk faction favors a less aggressive...

The dust is still settling in the wake of Governor Jerry Brown's veto of the California state budget. That budget, designed by Democratic legislative leaders and their backers, had good things in it, and also some highly questionable elements, i.e., gimmicks, some of which may be replaceable in another iteration....

New York Congressman Anthony Weiner has his definitive claim to fame. He's center stage in the first big social media political sex scandal. It seems fitting that his surrealistic meltdown of a press conference came on the same day that Steve Jobs unveiled another path to making our lives more...

While California's chronic budget crisis continues, Governor Jerry Brown, once again, feels he is closing in on a solution. But he has a new problem to deal with.

Brown is dealing with an emerging problem with the largely dysfunctional state Legislature that goes beyond the constantly remarked upon difficulty with...

In the wake of the take-down of Osama bin Laden, President Barack Obama used last week's glittering European tour to further lay out and demonstrate his emerging multilateral geopolitical doctrine. It's an approach with promise, even as threatening crises continue to press in on his presidency. But as soon as...

Governor Jerry Brown is back. Again. For the third time. And not a moment too soon, as California needs to solve its chronic budget crisis and, after a Supreme Court ruling, deal with its chronic prison crisis. But will Brown try, once again, to do it all behind the scenes?

Tuesday night saw the season finale of NCIS, the most watched scripted television series in America. Indeed, if a national poll is to be believed, the veteran CBS procedural about Navy cops (NCIS standing for Naval Criminal Investigative Service), finishing its eighth season, is not only the most popular...

The first official to announce the death of Osama bin Laden was not President Barack Obama, it was Senator Dianne Feinstein. The Senate Intelligence Committee chair was speaking at a memorial service in Santa Monica for her longtime campaign manager, Kam Kuwata.

Feinstein says she thought that Obama...

If there was a worse week in which to hold the first Republican presidential debate, it's hard to think of when that might be.

It's probably poetic justice that the first Republican presidential debate took place Thursday night in the shadow of Osama bin Laden, for his very existence...

California Democrats gathered this past weekend in Sacramento for their annual party convention were in a rather curious mood. They've gotten what they wanted. But they have mixed feelings about what they've ended up with.

Like their Republican counterparts who gathered in convention less than a month-and-a-half earlier in...

President Barack Obama has no shortage of nasty critics at home, including the present gong show known as the Republican presidential field. But despite them and what was already an uneven economic recovery, his biggest problems still lie abroad.

Obama has a multi-dimensional obstacle course to pick his way through...