A.B. Stoddard

The Pentagon's decision to permit women in combat is drawing strong reactions from advocates and critics, with few conflicted voices stepping to the fore. For something involving the capability, safety and efficacy of our armed forces, this is surprising.

Most importantly, this decision has not come suddenly, not out of the blue. It was reached collectively, because commanders were convinced – by further integration of women throughout the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this last decade — that they are fit for some combat operations. Though it is historic, because it makes the military more inclusive, it has come after decades in which many women have not only served and been held back from promotion, but have died as well.

After a fierce response to House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) decision to delay consideration of relief legislation for victims of Hurricane Sandy, the House went ahead and voted Friday on the bill to raise the borrowing authority of the National Flood Insurance Program so it could continue paying the 140,000 claims it has received but has yet to complete. What the vote showed, despite its easy passage 354-67, was just how emergencies are not only no longer bipartisan, but how they are dividing conservatives.

There was an agonizing irony to the frenzy on Capitol Hill yesterday as the late Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda and GOP leaders scurried about trying unsuccessfully to scrounge up the votes to pass a bill to avoid the fiscal cliff. Inouye, a pillar of patience and practicality, represents a time gone by — when Congress wouldn't think of coming so close to an avoidable economic disaster because members feared losing their jobs in primary challenges. Sure, some Republicans did not, and refused to budge on their tax-lowering principles to vote for a tax increase for those making more than $1 million per year simply because they were opposed, but many members conceded their vote could not pass muster in safe GOP districts with the purists in the grass roots who would surely come after them.

You all know how much I crave bipartisanship. As Sean Spicer, communications director at the Republican National Committee, is preparing to pay for his election wager by shaving his head — something Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse agreed to do for the other in the event of their party's defeat — Woodhouse has decided to jump in and shave his own victorious head in solidarity.

It's almost certain that President Obama released his agenda, titled "The New Economic Patriotism," the night before a Donald Trump blockbuster announcement designed to derail Obama's reelection. He had to have been hoping dearly the Trump stink-bomb would take all the oxygen away from any second-day stories about the "plan for jobs and middle-class security" the campaign published. It's not just that the plan is the first voters have heard of any Obama has for his second term — two weeks before Election Day — but that the brochure is about as cheesy a cheap shot as they come.

President Obama’s reelection campaign is busy spinning the latest job report, showing unemployment below 8 percent for the first time in nearly four years, trying to move past his dismal debate performance and busily plotting an effective barrage for Mitt Romney when he next debates Obama on Oct. 16. Romney, having finally stopped the bleeding with a stellar debate Wednesday, tried flip-flopping on his infamous comments about not having to “worry” about 47 percent of Americans who are “entitled” moochers, stating suddenly on Thursday that those comments were “completely wrong.”

When Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan as his running mate in August, Democrats couldn't wait to attack Ryan on Medicare, and Ryan couldn't wait to fight back. Everyone — myself included — said Romney's choice of Ryan signaled his intention to run a campaign of contrasts, to be bold and, yes, to be specific. But at least at this point, that isn't happening.

North Carolina?

We all know Mitt Romney is behind in the key battlegrounds, with every recent poll showing President Obama leading where it takes to win and even some national surveys putting his approval at the key 50 percent mark. But a new NBC-Marist poll, released Thursday evening, shows Romney is behind not only in New Hampshire and Nevada, but in North Carolina as well. Sure, it is only by 2 points, but behind in North Carolina — a state Obama won by 14,000 in a historic wave?

The buzz over whom Mitt Romney will pick as his running mate has all but consumed Washington, and the suspense is killing me — but the suspense in the political universe of Rick Santorum is not. Turns out Santorum is actually waiting to be given a speaking slot in Tampa at the Republican National Convention. As the list of speakers trickles out — leading to speculation that any names left off the roster remain on the shortlist for vice presidential contention — Santorum (perhaps the last Republican next to Newt Gingrich on the planet to be selected as a running mate) is waiting for his speaking invitation.

In politics, a damning report is in the eye of the beholder. The Washington Post published an account this week about a report former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge released that warns the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing jobs has put the nation's security at risk and made the United States more vulnerable not only to terrorist attack but to natural disasters as well.