Now that Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate, the rumor, floated earlier in the summer, that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on Romney’s short list for vice president brought foreign policy briefly back into the presidential campaign limelight.  Her name was probably floated because she would fill a gap in Romney’s résumé, […]

            Three headlines in the news last month suggest just how serious the problems confronting many state and local governments might be in the near term.             The first – “Unions Fight Scranton Mayor After He Cuts Pay to Minimum Wage” – has been largely ignored as a singular problem faced by a relatively small city/town.  […]

            Predicting the results in a presidential election is always precarious, especially over 100 days before the actual voting.  But conflicting polls notwithstanding, Barack Obama is facing a triple threat to his re-election that will be very hard to overcome.               The triple threat includes one obvious problem, one readily apparent problem, and one very subtle […]

            Last week’s Supreme Court decision affirming the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (the Act) has been widely hailed as a victory for President Obama, and in terms of validating the tremendous expenditure of time and political good will it took to get the bill passed into law, it certainly was.             But a […]