By Michael Kinsley – Apr 26, 2012 Two floating bridges across Lake Washington connect Seattle with its eastern suburbs. The roadbeds rest on huge pontoons and sway a bit as you drive across them on a windy day. One is the last gasp of Interstate 90 as it finishes its journey from Boston to the [...]

By Michael Kinsley – May 3, 2012 Mitt Romney didn’t exactly fire Ric Grenell, who is gay, as his foreign policy spokesman. But when the religious right got wind of Grenell’s hiring, his job started to shrink. Grenell was told to sit in on conference calls with reporters and not say anything, which is tantamount [...]

The busiest subway stop in downtown Washington was until recently festooned with green banners and billboards warning of a terrible danger. One of America’s great national symbols is under attack: the dollar bill. A few unpatriotic senators want to phase out the dollar bill and replace it with a dollar coin. Several previous attempts to [...]

Supreme Court justices, like anyone else, sometimes change their minds. True, there is stare decisis, the principle that they shouldn’t change their minds too often. Reason: If you expect citizens and the government to obey the law, they need to know what the law is and will be. Also, it’s only fair to treat people [...]

Apparently, when Greg Smith arrived at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) almost 12 years ago, the legendary investment firm was something like the Make-A-Wish Foundation — existing only to bring light and peace and happiness to the world. Smith, who was executive director and head of the firm’s U.S. equity derivatives business in Europe, the [...]

Barbara Bush said the other day that the 2012 presidential race has been “the worst campaign I’ve ever seen in my life.” I disagree. My vote would be for 1988, when her husband, George H.W. Bush, built a repulsive campaign against Michael Dukakis based on state prison furlough policy, obscure judicial rulings about reciting the [...]

Many years ago, when Senator Ted Kennedy was challenging President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination, I quit my job at a national magazine in protest over the owner’s refusal to publish an article I had edited about the senator’s extramarital activities. At that time, there was a general consensus among Washington journalists that one didn’t do that [...]