Solomon Kleinsmith

So one wonders whether the GOP will eventually turn back, and begin to accept those who are tolerant and supportive of gay rights, or whether they'll continue to go off into eventual ...

It's a sad state of affairs for the GOP when the best thing they have going for them is that the American people don't trust the Democrats either. -Solomon Kleinsmith, It's A Free C...

For those of us who spend a lot of time listening to music on our computers or phones but don't have the money to pay for all the music we want to hear, online music streaming serv...

It's a shame that the real champions of this story aren't particularly powerful - another example of how moderates are losing clout. -Solomon Kleinsmith, It's A Free Country blogger.

How sad is it that the people the American people have sent to represent us in Congress are so out of touch with reality that they can't even come together to make big compromises whe...

The system isn't broken... it works exactly how those people want it to. It's a well-oiled, and insanely powerful; a corruption manufacturing machine. -Solomon Kleinsmith, It's A Fr...

It appears that the teachers unions are beginning to lose their grip on the Democrats. A bill making its way through the House Education and the Workforce Committee recently had supri...

I don’t agree with extremists like Dennis Kucinish and Ron Paul often, but they and seven other lawmakers are right on the money in the lawsuit they are bringing against the Obama adm...

One of the very few issues that is shifting somewhat quickly is gay marriage. If trends continue, we'll have a supermajority of the American people supporting gay marriage in the next decade or two. But while the public is moving in that direction, the Republican party is getting even more extreme. Not only are they against gay marriage, a position that just recently became the minority, but a growing number of them are for pushing for an amendment to the constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

While Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty and Herman Cain were in Manchester, New Hampshire, sharing the national stage from St. Anselm College and debating on CNN, another candidate, who had polled as high as some of those on that stage, was in a much less glamorous location.

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson was in Council Bluffs, Iowa. And so was I.

The logic supposedly behind the lock that Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada have on the early presidential calendar makes some sense. You have some smaller states in the beginning, which allows lesser known candidates to potentially catch up to bigger names without a huge bankroll. Then you have a southern state with a lot of black people, and then a western state with Latinos.

But it’s not that simple anymore.

Not very many politicians are willing to go this far, presenting a plan that puts their political capital where their ideological mouths have been. I’ll give Pawlenty credit for that,...

The media, who has always been obsessed with squeaky wheel groups that make a lot of noise, is convinced the Tea Party will harm the Republicans' chances of gaining seats next year. T...

Herman Cain - gotta love him, but he appears to be this year's Mike Gravel or Alan Keyes — the guy that is fun to watch in the debates, but is more of a cartoon of a particular belief...

Just like with all of the other major candidates in the running for the Republican presidential nomination, Jon Huntsman has a lot of hurdles he’s going to have to find a way to jump over to have a shot at making it to the big show against Obama. If Huntsman wants to win the Republican nomination, he will have to put up big numbers in open primary states, and not get clobbered elsewhere. This will mean working to appeal to independents and moderates - a group that Obama has soft support with - without alienating base voters too much.

Krugman is brilliant, but when you put a partisan agenda in his hands, he's just another spin doctor, using whatever voodoo math he can come up with to support his ideologically prede...

The Allies got a heck of a lot of useful information using torture in World War II, and if you don't think clandestine services use torture, you're really fooling yourself. -Solomon...

I hate using lines like, "if we do this, we're letting THEM win...", because this really isn't about THEM at all. This is about US. -Solomon Kleinsmith, on the balance between pers...

This is not how the president sold his reforms when he made them. The entire point of open government reforms is accountability, allowing watchdogs, and citizens of any kind really, t...

Had McCain won in 2008, we wouldn't be hearing about Obama's birth certificate. We'd be hearing wingnuts on the left jabbering on about how McCain's adopted daughter from Banghladesh ...