The basic problem is with the business model of journalism. That business model is premised on the idea that talk is cheap and reporting is expensive.

The basic problem is with the business model of journalism. That business model is premised on the idea that talk is cheap and reporting is expensive.

The key to fixing education is better teaching, and the key to better teaching is figuring out who can teach and who can't.

Almost no one under 60 remembers what fundraising was like before Watergate. Until the 1970s, campaign money was collected by "bagmen," familiar characters from the world of organized crime. As fans of Boardwalk Empire know, a bagman is a political fixer who walked around with stacks of $100 and $1,000 bills. At lower levels, he used brown paper bags. In presidential campaigns, the cash was more likely to be in briefcases. Classier that way.

Obama was willing to compromise and Republicans were not. That's not a biased statement. One of my problems with the limitations of journalism is that straightforward descriptions of reality are seen as being biased.

By laying the groundwork for a system centered on home ownership rather than the public housing popular in Europe, the New Deal made possible the great postwar housing boom that populated the Sun Belt and boosted millions of Americans into the middle class, where, ironically, they often became Republicans.

I think it's a terrible system, but money in politics is like water running downhill -- it finds its way.