Mike Edwards's Blog

There are three “scandals” supposedly “rocking” the White House this week. Really, I think it just goes to show how silly we all are.

The first, and oldest, of these scandals is Benghazi. Four Americans were killed, including the Ambassador to Libya, when an Al Qaeda affiliate attacked a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya in September, 2012. Since then, the conservative media has been pushing twoseparatelines of inquiry, seemingly in the hopes of embarrassing the president. The first, and t...

Apparently I have something in common with the nation’s latest terrorist; we both love going to the Midwest Grill, aBrazilianBBQ Restaurant in my (our?) neighborhood. We were also both captains of our respective high school wrestling teams and members of the National Honor Society. His friends from high school talked about him going out of his way to help out, giving rides home, and coming back to his high school to help out for wrestling practice after he had graduated–all things I can relat...

In a blog post today, Washington Postcolumnist Richard Cohen says that the problem with former Congressman Anthony Weiner is that he’s not more like Margaret Thatcher. Actually, I would say he has that backwards; the problem with modern politics is that too many people want Margaret Thatcher, when they should want Anthony Weiner.

Weiner is the subject of a fascinating New York Times Magazine piece, along with his wife, Huma Abedin, who was Hillary Clinton’s right-hand woman during her time as...

People have already started pondering who will run for president in 2016. And why not? It’s a great parlor game. But any game needs rules; and in this case, history has provided us with a lot ton of precedent to determine who actually has a legitimate shot at becoming the next commander-in-chief, and who is just a much-ballyhooed pretender. So what are those rules?

Rule #1: You don’t become president if you’ve completed a full term in the senate. Only one man has ever done it: LBJ, and he had...

One of the problems with the social sciences is that just because you know what something is, doesn’t mean that you can count it. The classic case of this is pornography: we all know what pornography is, but defining it precisely enough to legislate it or to measure it is extremely difficult. Which is why a Supreme Court justice once said about pornography that, while it may be hard to define, ”I know it when I see it.”

It’s not just pornography. Justice, democracy, freedom, oppression, tyrann...

If you want to know why American politics looks the way it does right now, you first need to understand three basic facts of life about the current American political scene:

1) In general, voters prefer politicians who look, sound, and act like stereotypical Republicans. The median American voter is white, middle-aged, has above-average income and education, and in all of those cases is more likely to vote for a person who is like themselves than someone who is not like themselves. The median...

Virginia lawmakers are playing with fire. If they aren’t careful, not only could they burn themselves, they could set the whole place ablaze.

Their first step towards pyromania came on Jan 20, Obama’s inaugurationday. The Virginia State Senate is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, although Republicans control the chamber because the Lt. Governor is also Republican and holds the tie-breaking vote. But on inauguration day, one of the Democrats went to Washington to watch the proce...

Doctors who have been studying Junior Seau’s brain, just discovered clear signs of CTE–essentially a degenerative brain condition that is related to getting hit in the head. Seau, in case you don’t know, is one of the great NFL linebackers of all time, who played for the San Diego Chargers and New England Patriots. A few years ago, after his retirement, his friends and family noted some dramatic changes in his mood and behavior, which culminated in his suicide last year. All of that is associ...

The CALM Act went into effect at midnight last night, reminding us all what good that government is capable of doing when it puts its mind to it.

The CALM Act requires that the volume of television commercials be no louder than the average loudness of the television program during which they are run, and it allows the FCC to fine television stations that violate that rule. (If you see a commercial you think is too loud you can go to the FCC’s Complaint Webite to file a complaint.)

Previously, t...

Elections aren’t about whose policies benefit the most people. Elections are about which candidate voters feel like is “on their side.” So with that in mind, here is a choice quote from one of Romney’s top campaign strategistsabout the election, in a op-ed that appeared yesterday on WashingtonPost.com:

On Nov. 6, Romney carried the majority of every economic group except those with less than $50,000 a year in household income. That means he carried the majority of middle-class voters.

Just to p...