NEW YORK — Politicians are making like Santa Claus and asking business for wish lists of regulations it would like to eliminate. Rich people are heading out for shopping sprees at Tiffany and not feeling ashamed about it anymore. One economist at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is ...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s announcement that he would require federal agencies to review regulations on their books and remove those that “stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive” made me wonder. Which ones would those be? The piddling bit of regulation of the oi...

WASHINGTON — The Second Liberty Bond Act, which helped finance U.S. participation in World War I, established a cap on federal debt in 1917 at the now-quaint level of $8 billion. Today the limit is $14.3 trillion, and according to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the  government will need...

Proposed changes to Crow Wing County's land use ordinance threaten property values for homeowners and would impact the tourism industry in the greater lakes area of Minnesota. Proponents of the ordinance view it as a model for other counties to implement and emulate statewide. The ordinance proposes...

A vigorous debate over the role of government is always at the heart of our democracy. Since the shootings in Arizona, however, many have said that our partisan ferocity is unhealthy. So it seems like a good time to reflect on Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill. It would serve us well to understand how t...

WASHINGTON — It’s a bad sign for civility when you can’t have a civil conversation about it. In the days since a deranged assassin gunned down Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other innocents —six of whom are now dead -- President Barack Obama, Speaker John Boehner and pundits from across the ...

NEW YORK - So now both left and right are blaming each other following the shooting spree in Tucson, Arizona, that killed six and wounded at least 13 others. From the left, the charges are that Republican Sarah Palin's placement of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on a political hit list was taken literally ...

The hot question buzzing through Washington is: What impact will the many faces of the Tea Party have on congressional Republicans, now in charge of the House of Representatives? Republicans under Mitch McConnell in the Senate and John Boehner in the House have been almost 100 percent unified - a fe...

NEW YORK - While sorting through the perennial lip-pursing tempest about a certain word in Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" - the "N-word," as we now say it - I turned for inspiration to the master himself. "The difference between the almost-right word & the right word is ... th...

  For more than 200 years, a safety barrier has protected our nation's courts and our democracy. No matter how controversial the case or unpopular the ruling, no state or federal judge has been impeached for an opinion issued from the bench. In the next few months, that may change. The fight is...