Paul Krugman
10/15/2010

The latest in the mortgage foreclosure crisis is that many servicers, or companies that collect payments on behalf of mortgage owners, who have been foreclosing on many mortgages and seizing homes have been ignoring the law and doing so without required documentation and in some cases seizing homes that were not in default. Significant numbers of borrowers are being defrauded by these trusts. Krugman says this could create another financial morass. The Obama administration’s response has been to oppose any action that would upset the banks, while Republicans have asked Americans to trust the banks. Krugman says this is unacceptable. Where no clear property rights exist, it’s the government’s job to create them because what we are doing now is not working.

Krugman is a New York Times columnist.

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Bruce L.R. Smith
10/15/2010

The author takes issue with Dinesh D’Souza’s piece about how President Obama’s current policies were shaped by his father. Smith knew Obama, Sr. personally if not closely and presents him as a serious liberal intellectual with a somewhat quirky sense of humor. Obama Sr. was not, as D’Souza claims, an anti-colonialist. Rather, Obama Sr. was a reasonable man who spoke out against tribal politics and corruption. Where D’Souza sees rage in President Obama’s “Dreams from My Father,” Smith sees a pragmatic, cerebral sense of injustice. Perhaps this detachment has been instrumental in Obama’s ability to incite anger from various political coalitions. Smith concludes that conservatives have their reasons for criticizing the president, but the portrait D’Souza paints does not aid political discussions.

The writer is a retired senior staff member of the Brookings Institution and now a visiting professor at George Mason University’s School of Public Policy.

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Dana Milbank
10/14/2010

Christine O’Donnell’s debate with her opponent, Chris Coons, showed a candidate considerably evolved but still substantially unrefined. While there was no mention of witchcraft or mice with human brains, she charged Coons repeatedly with holding Marxist beliefs and went out of her way to tweak Blitzer, even revealing in the course of the debate that she’d refused a prior interview request from him. Coons actually came to her defense, suggesting that the attention given her past statements was unfortunate and distracting from the more serious concerns of the election.

Milbank writes about political theater in the nation’s capital.

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Timothy Egan
10/14/2010

A rookie Democratic congressman named Walt Minnick is leading the polls in Idaho’s First Congressional District race. Minnick’s unlikely success in leading a district rated the third most Republican in the nation is because he reflects the Republican view that the government should not tell people how to live their personal lives. Egan looks at the mix of political convictions Minnick has and says this was typical of what used to be called the Western independent, governing from the middle, and, as Minnick says, pragmatic and moderate.

Egan blogs for The New York Times on American politics and life as seen from the West.

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John Edgar Wideman
10/7/2010

The author, a man of color, rides Amtrak’s high-speed Acela train from his home in New York City to a teaching job in Providence, R.I. Over four years he has conducted an informal sociological experiment and has noticed that people will shun a free seat if they have to sit next to him. After ruling out body or breath odor, an angry demeanor, or an appearance that would indicate he is a religious extremist or gangster, Wideman concludes he is left alone because of his race. Although he savors the extra space, the reason behind why he is riding alone is not only sad but scary when you examine it.

Wideman is a professor of Africana studies and literary arts at Brown and the author, most recently, of “Briefs.”

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Gail Collins
10/7/2010

Collins looks at the political situation in Connecticut, where Republicans hope to win a 51st Senate seat. She looks at the credentials of businesswoman Republican Linda McMahon, who helped build her family’s World Wrestling Entertainment business into a sports empire but cannot make a political stand, and Democrat Richard Blumenthal, the state attorney general there who has demonstrated a commitment to job creation. Collins also looks at the recent debate there and what the candidates have promised.

Collins is a New York Times columnist.

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George F. Will
10/7/2010

Representative Jeb Hensarling is serving on Obama’s Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and its 18 members are approaching their fiscal goals rather like Sumo wrestlers: with a lot of mutual staring but no contact as yet. Budget-balancing (excluding debt service) and finding ways to “meaningfully improve the long-run fiscal outlook” are the commission’s main goals. But Hensarling says this creates a harmful distraction from the real problem: long-term debt incurred from Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. A record number of American citizens are concerned about deficits. Thus, when the commission gives its report in December, Congress will be populated with members potentially emboldened–but not legitimized–by their lack of political future.

Will is a twice-weekly columnist for The Post, writing about foreign and domestic politics and policy.

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Daniel Gross
10/6/2010

Despite stories about consumer savings on the rise, the nation’s total indebtedness has also continued to rise, as have some measures of consumer debt. Gross points out that any decline in personal debt is “driven less by Americans giving up on credit cards than on credit card issuers giving up on Americans.” Lenders are writing off some debt as uncollectable. Still, the recovery is maturing, powered not merely by government stimulus and business investment, but also by increasing total consumer credit. This will be the root of our short-term salvation from the recession.

Gross, author of  “Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation”, is the economics editor and columnist at Yahoo! Finance.

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John Bartels, Peter Bensinger, Francis Mullen, Jack Lawn, Robert Bonner and Tom Constantine
10/6/2010

The authors consider the implications of California’s initiative to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. The “Pot Initiative” would violate federal law and nobody is going to be paying state taxes on marijuana when doing so would be a confession to a federal felony. Each of the authors, upon becoming administrators of the DEA, swore to uphold and defend the Constitution. It is in this spirit that they call on the Department of Justice (DoJ) to provide a legal position on California’s ballot initiative and to do so before the November election. They conclude that it would be helpful if the DoJ made it clear that if Proposition 19 passes, it will violate federal law and the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

The writers served as administrators of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration from its inception in July 1973 through November 2007.

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