Like most Americans, I stay as far away from the taxman as possible. I am self-employed and like Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner, I “self-prepared� my tax returns. But unlike Geithner, I think it's outrageous that he failed to pay self-employment taxes between 2001 and 2004. It...

There was a time when Administrations seeking to gauge the political temperature of the political community might call in a Steven Rosen, Malcolm Hoenlein, or Abe Foxman and feel confident that what they heard represented the communal consensus.  And invariably, the tune they sang was straight pro-...

As President-elect, Barack Obama continues to surprise and puzzle me. I was, like many, disappointed to find out he’d given the spot of invocation for the inaugural to legendary religious huckster, homophobe, and all-around worshiper of false idols Rick Warren. I was equally disappointed to fi...

I woke up this morning to find a bustle in the blogosphere’s hedgerow. It seemed that the Wall Street Journal was leading off today with news that Google had been trying to cut deals with cable and Internet providers to give it a “fast lane” for delivering its services to users. In...

HanzoSpam sends us this story from Space News, which begins: "US President-elect Barack Obama's NASA transition team is asking US space agency bureau to quantify how much money could be saved by canceling the Ares 1 rocket and scaling back the Orion Crew search Vehicle next year. ... The questionnai...

I’m a policy wonk so on Saturday, I attended a daylong conference on building bridges between African American and immigrant communities. As I walked past the Princeton Club, I thought about New York Times columnist David Brooks lauding President-elect Barack Obama for assembling a Cabinet of Wash...

I know it's early--- hell the poor guy hasn't even been sworn in yet--but it sure looks like the O man is thinking like a certain Bubba from "Pig Suey" country. Rham Emanuel, Daniel Tarullo,Jack Lew,Lawrence Summers,Peter Orszag....you get the picture. And before you Obamaholics get yourselves into ...

“Has hell finally frozen over?” That was my first thought when visiting the City of Aberdeen’s new web site. Of course that may be due to being presented with a header graphic depicting a snow-covered evergreen with Aberdeen’s new slogan, “The Future of Harford”, ...