There are more people at Obama's table offering ideas than there were five years ago, but when it came to facing up to the Republicans' threat to force a double-dip recession if they didn't get their millionaires' tax cut, they still amounted to nothing. And therein lies our fundamental problem.

Liberals do not appear to address potential solutions with anything like the far right's aura of God-given self-confidence.

American journalists tend to treat inequality as a fact of life. But it needn't be.

As with almost every significant aspect of the Bush presidency, its handling of 9/11 was a catastrophe from start to finish.

The White House and the media need one another in order to be successful in their jobs. The White House depends on the media to make its case to the public; the media need the White House to fill their airtime and news columns.

Liberals believe that they can't get a fair shake from the media anymore.

America's great newspapers have staffs that range from 50 percent to 70 percent of what they were just a few years ago.