The Pledge, a candidate's commitment to oppose broad-based sales and income taxes, has been an article of faith for winning New Hampshire politicians for nearly half a century. It has the ring of virtue in our “Live Free or Die” State, is oft cited as a part of the New Hampshire Advantage, a…

Remember. Forget. Repeat.

In 1982, James Q. Wilson and his Harvard colleague George Kelling offered a simple idea that had a profound effect on policing: "If a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken." And that is not simply a blight for the neighbors but…

While I don’t expect everyone to agree the with the opinions I write, I do have the hope that people will get the big picture and apply a reasoned judgement; applying the same standards to all and not having one set of rules for one party and a different set of rules for the other. However, …

Early on Sunday morning, April 1, our Head Fool received a report from his most trusted intelligence source. "Small army of migrants marching toward the United States," headlined his favorite show, Fox & Friends. The commander-in-chief wasted no time in responding to this imminent threat…

At this unique moment in American history, liberals and conservatives have something in common: an abhorrence of government prosecutors run amok.

Media outlets this week are all over a new Pew study that finds, the headlines promise, that President Trump's support is not quite as broad and not quite as happy as his stunningly stable approval rating might suggest.

In backing John Brennan's right to keep his top-secret security clearance, despite his having charged the president with treason, the U.S. intel community has chosen to fight on indefensible terrain.

I awoke last week to read that over 350 newspapers from 43 different states and territories took the time to answer a challenge from the Boston Globe. These newspapers answered the president’s assertion that the press is the “Enemy of the People.” And on that same day — August 16 — the president of the United States again attacked the press via Twitter.

America's political history has been written in the fierce narrative of war — not only our country's many military clashes with foreign nations, but also our own unending war for democracy in the U.S.

The Pledge, a candidate's commitment to oppose broad-based sales and income taxes, has been an article of faith for winning New Hampshire politicians for nearly half a century. It has the ring of virtue in our “Live Free or Die” State, is oft cited as a part of the New Hampshire Advantage, a…

Remember. Forget. Repeat.

In 1982, James Q. Wilson and his Harvard colleague George Kelling offered a simple idea that had a profound effect on policing: "If a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken." And that is not simply a blight for the neighbors but…

While I don’t expect everyone to agree the with the opinions I write, I do have the hope that people will get the big picture and apply a reasoned judgement; applying the same standards to all and not having one set of rules for one party and a different set of rules for the other. However, …

Early on Sunday morning, April 1, our Head Fool received a report from his most trusted intelligence source. "Small army of migrants marching toward the United States," headlined his favorite show, Fox & Friends. The commander-in-chief wasted no time in responding to this imminent threat…

At this unique moment in American history, liberals and conservatives have something in common: an abhorrence of government prosecutors run amok.

Media outlets this week are all over a new Pew study that finds, the headlines promise, that President Trump's support is not quite as broad and not quite as happy as his stunningly stable approval rating might suggest.

In backing John Brennan's right to keep his top-secret security clearance, despite his having charged the president with treason, the U.S. intel community has chosen to fight on indefensible terrain.

I awoke last week to read that over 350 newspapers from 43 different states and territories took the time to answer a challenge from the Boston Globe. These newspapers answered the president’s assertion that the press is the “Enemy of the People.” And on that same day — August 16 — the president of the United States again attacked the press via Twitter.

America's political history has been written in the fierce narrative of war — not only our country's many military clashes with foreign nations, but also our own unending war for democracy in the U.S.

Friday, deep into the 17th year of America's longest war, Taliban forces overran Ghazni, a provincial capital that sits on the highway from Kabul to Kandahar. The ferocity of the Taliban offensive brought U.S. advisers along with U.S. air power, including a B-1 bomber, into the battle.

Why is it considered "liberal" to compel others to say or fund things they don't believe? That's a question raised by three Supreme Court decisions this year. And it's a puzzling development for those of us old enough to remember when liberals championed free speech — even advocacy of sedition or sodomy — and conservatives wanted government to restrain or limit it.

Have you heard? A woman who recently ran for president got nearly 3 million more votes than Donald Trump. Only the Electoral College — actually, a few thousand ballots in three key states — delivered the presidency to the current POTUS. And that was with an assist from Russia.

On July 19, the Knesset voted to change the nation's Basic Law. Israel was declared to be, now and forever, the nation-state and national home of the Jewish people. Hebrew is to be the state language.

In early June, I traveled to "The Valley," as the McAllen-Brownsville area of Texas is called, down where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico. This river, one of the longest in the U.S., forms the entire Texas-Mexico border, meandering south and east 1,250 miles from our far-west desert city of El Paso to the semi-tropical tip of my state. Its cartographic function aside, the narrow and shallow Rio Grande has historically been viewed by families in the region as more a connector than a divider, and it has long fostered a rich, cross-fertilized culture along its length, uniting generations of us Americanos with our Mexicano neighbors.

With so much attention being paid to President Trump’s alleged extramarital affairs by the “get Trump” cadre of press and politicians, I thought I would do a little research on the subject. What I found was volumes of information that date as far back as George Washington. The research divulged a lot of information that appears to be factual, and a fairly equal amount that seems to be mere gossipy speculations; unverified.

My son was in the other room on the phone, and he sounded like me, which is not always a good thing. By the time I caught on, he was asking for the supervisor's supervisor. Usually, he gets mad at me when I lose it with customer service representatives, but here he was, channeling me at my worst.

Donald Trump once famously said that he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" and not "lose any voters." He hasn't shot anyone, though he's seriously wounded a number of economic interests. The most serious casualties, however, are far from Fifth Avenue. America's urban gentry, who overwhelmingly did not vote for Trump, are doing just fine.

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce," a saying attributed to Karl Marx, comes to mind in this time of Trump.

The president tweeted the following a couple of weeks ago: "We cannot allow our country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief, hoping it will help them in the elections."

It costs a pretty penny to earn a diploma in stupid.

The annual list price to attend Boston University — including tuition, fees, room and board — currently rounds out to $70,000. To acquire a degree in economics from this tony institution of higher learning, an undergrad must complete courses in calculus, microeconomic and macroeconomic analysis, empirical economics, statistics and assorted electives.

What's in a name? By definition, the name of a person, place or thing is its personal designation... a distinct way of being known to others. Unless, of course, it's the opposite — a label meant to disguise who or what a person or thing really is. In other words, a fake name.

This is what happens when you lose an election. You get Justice Neil Gorsuch instead of the wonderful Merrick Garland, who President Barack Obama nominated before Democrats lost in 2016.

Beginning his joint press conference with Vladimir Putin, President Trump declared that U.S. relations with Russia have "never been worse." He then added pointedly, that just changed "about four hours ago."

As the division within the our country continues to swell, it might be time to take a look back to see how the seeds of divisiveness were planted . . . what events took place that have caused some to choose party over country.

Theater, much like Japan's Kabuki — that's all the Supreme Court confirmation process is. Donald Trump's presentations of his two nominees, Judge Neil Gorsuch last year and Judge Brett Kavanaugh on Monday, were uncharacteristically graceful — a worthy theatrical innovation, in the view of even some Trump critics.

Ours is, after all, a nation of laws, right? We value justice and we believe everyone has a right to have their day in court. Right?

A deeply humane friend recently suggested that medics stop saving people on their third opioid overdose. The subject was naloxone, a medication that can yank users from the jaws of death. It can be given via Narcan nasal spray or injection.

If Mitch McConnell's Senate can confirm his new nominee for the Supreme Court, President Donald Trump may have completed the capture of all three branches of the U.S. government for the Republican Party. Not bad for a rookie.

When this writer was a military brat living in Germany, his father took the family to visit the memorial at Dachau, the first concentration camp the Nazis built.  Although a kid, he was old enough to have a good idea of what the Germans had done and he started asking, “why would the Germans, whom I have experienced as good people, do this?”

Will NAFTA survive? Last week, Mexico elected as president longtime NAFTA critic Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (always called "AMLO") by a wide margin. He promptly had a cordial telephone conversation with longtime NAFTA critic President Donald Trump, who remains U.S. president for the next 30 months and, if re-elected, for all of AMLO's six-year term.

If I worked for Donald Trump and designed a T-shirt that read "I don't believe in borders" in Spanish — and I got a Democratic congressman, say Minnesota's Keith Ellison, to parade in it — I'd probably get a raise. Heck, he might even give me a top agency job with his unspoken permission to abuse the taxpayers.

It was Justice Anthony Kennedy's resignation that did it.

Last week was not, for fans of the Constitution's prohibition of intentional discrimination, such a great week with him. Could a president spew anti-Semitic garbage before and after issuing a travel ban limited to Israel? Could it be worse? It most certainly could.

A while back I wrote a little about British MP Daniel Hannan’s book, “The New Road to Serfdom”. In the book, he cited how the European Union was basically being run by non-elected bureaucrats who have the power to dictate rules and regulations to the nations that are part of the union. I use that book as the “canary in the cage” for where we too, may be headed; the non-elected dictating our future.

"No ban. No wall. No borders at all."

That is the radical rallying cry of the Democratic Socialists of America. Waving desecrated U.S. flags, grubby fists and ratty anarchy banners, DSA's professional protesters are targeting Trump administration officials, threatening immigration enforcement agents, and blockading detention facilities and processing centers nationwide.

President Donald Trump’s tariffs are starting to matter. The stock market is wobbly, and Harley-Davidson says its next expansion will be overseas, costing American jobs.

"If you're ... pathetically weak, the country is going to be overrun with millions of people, and if you're strong, then you don't have any heart, that's a tough dilemma. ... I'd rather be strong."

The time has come for Donald Trump's critics to take a much-deserved vacation from all things Donald Trump. The media especially can use this time to work on dropping their compulsion to obsess on every lie, insult and provocation he crafts for their consumption. This invitation extends to participants in social media, which, after all, are media also.

Where is the Democratic Party? The Party of the People is stuck in the status quo — the still reigning, old-line hierarchy of the Democratic party is unwilling to just be dedicated to well, to the democratic interests of its own political base. People know from real-life experience that the economy has been rigged against them for the benefit of the uber-rich and the political system has been totally corrupted by the bipartisan pay-to-play ethic that protects the status quo from interference by us commoners. While Republicans are a wholly-owned corporate subsidiary, unabashedly dedicated the narrow interests of the moneyed elites, the Dems' congressional elders, key party officials, entrenched consultants and corporate funders continue to push bland, business-as-usual candidates running on a pusillanimous policy agenda of vague "reforms" that don't actually change anything. Then the party establishment wonders why such people stray or stay home in November!

"It is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart," says former first lady Laura Bush of the Trump administration policy of "zero tolerance," under which the children of illegal migrants are being detained apart from their parents.

The woman soon to be Rudolph Giuliani's third ex-wife is not the most sympathetic of victims. Judith Nation cavorted openly with Giuliani while the New York mayor was still living with his second wife and their two children.

It’s a safe assumption that most Americans have lived their life trusting our government to abide by the laws enacted to guide all the people inside and outside of government. However, in a relative flash of time that trust has gone. We have seen some government leaders “weaponize” the embedded bureaucracy for political reasons. And we have seen the embedded bureaucracy, the “deep state”, do likewise. For example:

"The public will no doubt be surprised at the economic importance of this industry as (we measure) the impact of activities like boating, fishing, RVing, hunting, camping, hiking and more."

"I also have a dream."

This rallying cry, handwritten on a simple white placard held up by an Asian-American mom at a protest this week against liberal New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to radically transform New York City's public schools, says it all. A new civil rights struggle in education has exploded — yet the national media and the usual celebrity voices for equality and justice are nowhere to be found.

Question: If you inject a stream of raw ignorance into a vat of gaseous arrogance, then jolt the mixture with 1,000 megawatts of malevolence ... what does it produce? Answer: Donald Trump's Executive Order of April 12.

At the G-7 summit in Canada, President Donald Trump described America as "the piggy bank that everybody is robbing."

That was quite a show Donald Trump put on in Canada. Insulting our closest friends and trading partners while sucking up to Russian leader Vladimir Putin — well, that got people's attention. As Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium, tweeted, "Just tell us what Vladimir has on you. Maybe we can help."

"Though New York City has one of the most segregated schools systems in the country," writes Elizabeth Harris of The New York Times, until now, Mayor Bill de Blasio "was all but silent on the issue." He was "reluctant even to use the word 'segregation.'"

It was John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, who is responsible for the first quote that comes to mind this week. The baron died more than a hundred years ago, but one person will come to many minds as you read his words:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority."

New Hampshire is a great place to live, work, and raise a family, but there is always more that can be done to help those who are struggling. This morning, I will join patient advocacy groups, doctors, hospital officials, members of law enforcement, lawmakers and patients in Laconia to sign two important pieces of legislation that are critical to the future of our state’s health care system. The first, HB-1791, will help substantively lower the cost of prescription drugs. The other, SB-376, seeks to proactively address the growing threat of methamphetamines in New Hampshire.

Friday, deep into the 17th year of America's longest war, Taliban forces overran Ghazni, a provincial capital that sits on the highway from Kabul to Kandahar. The ferocity of the Taliban offensive brought U.S. advisers along with U.S. air power, including a B-1 bomber, into the battle.

Why is it considered "liberal" to compel others to say or fund things they don't believe? That's a question raised by three Supreme Court decisions this year. And it's a puzzling development for those of us old enough to remember when liberals championed free speech — even advocacy of sedition or sodomy — and conservatives wanted government to restrain or limit it.

Have you heard? A woman who recently ran for president got nearly 3 million more votes than Donald Trump. Only the Electoral College — actually, a few thousand ballots in three key states — delivered the presidency to the current POTUS. And that was with an assist from Russia.

On July 19, the Knesset voted to change the nation's Basic Law. Israel was declared to be, now and forever, the nation-state and national home of the Jewish people. Hebrew is to be the state language.

In early June, I traveled to "The Valley," as the McAllen-Brownsville area of Texas is called, down where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico. This river, one of the longest in the U.S., forms the entire Texas-Mexico border, meandering south and east 1,250 miles from our far-west desert city of El Paso to the semi-tropical tip of my state. Its cartographic function aside, the narrow and shallow Rio Grande has historically been viewed by families in the region as more a connector than a divider, and it has long fostered a rich, cross-fertilized culture along its length, uniting generations of us Americanos with our Mexicano neighbors.