Having praised President Obama's job performance in two recent columns, it is with regret that I now worry that he may be deepening what looks more and more like a depression and may engineer so much spending, debt, and government control of the economy as to leave most Americans permanently less prosperous and less free.
Other Obama-admiring centrists have expressed similar concerns. Like them, I would like to be proved wrong. After all, if this president fails, who will revive our economy? And when? And what kind of America will our children inherit?

The GOP's focus on social, cultural, and religious issues cost its candidates dearly among upscale voters.

by Charlie Cook

The implosion of America's most storied investment banks. The vanishing of more than a trillion dollars in stock-market wealth in a day. A $700 billion tab for U.S. taxpayers. The scale of the Wall Street crackup could scarcely be more gargantuan. Yet even as Americans ask why they're having to pay such mind-bending sums to prevent the economy from imploding, few are discussing a more intangible, yet potentially much greater cost to the United States—the damage that the financial meltdown is doing to America's "brand."

Senators Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota)  and Carl Levin (D-Michigan) deserve some credit for being smart enough to go to the GAO and ask a sensible question when they commissioned a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN1249465620080812">recent study</a> on why more than two thirds of foreign corporations and about half of the domestic companies doing business in the US get away with not paying corporate taxes in any given year.

Former Senator and McCain campaign advisor Phil Gramm has obviously spent too much time out of office and in the private sector, because this week he committed the ultimate political crime. He told the truth. In an interview with the Washington Times he is being quoted as having said: