Cheri Jacobus

I’ve often been a staunch defender of Sarah Palin when it seemed she was being unfairly criticized or when the piling-on by the media and others seemed gratuitously sexist.

If President Obama proposed in his upcoming State of the Union speech that inner-city kids get paid to be janitors in their own schools, Democrats in Congress would give him a standing ovation — led by the members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

It’s almost as painful to watch someone unravel who doesn’t know it’s time to go as it is exhilarating to watch someone who needs to go, announce he is, indeed, going. We saw both this week.

That Newt Gingrich’s detractors and the media are doing their level best to find fault and scandal in his advisory role with Freddie Mac is good news.

Too often, so-called “conventional wisdom” in politics is neither conventional nor wise.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign reboot got off to a good start as he sat down with Chris Wallace over the weekend.

When the news of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s death broke, a thoughtful friend posed a question for Facebook discussion. She, a recovering reporter, instantly recognized a difficult journalistic-ethics dilemma, and wondered how the decision to show the graphic images of his demise was arrived at in various newsrooms:

The liberal attempt to paint Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as having a conflict of interest due to his wife’s work with a Tea Party group partisan Democrats hate is a bit too uncomfortable even for the best of the left — that is, retired Justice John Paul Stevens and current Justice Stephen Breyer. 

Slick Willy does it again! He has now managed the fancy footwork of both agreeing and disagreeing with President Obama at the same time, but on just one issue. In this case, Obama made it easy. 

Alas, that love, so gentle in his view/ Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!
—William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, Act 1, Scene 1

It’s gotta hurt. President Obama now sports the lowest approval numbers in California since becoming president, where less than half — only 46 percent — approve — an eight-point drop since June, according to a new Field poll. Fifty-four percent disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy. He’s starting to lose seniors and African-Americans, along with Democrats and Independents. Unemployment in California is at 12 percent, three points higher than the rest of the nation. When a lefty president is on shaky ground in California, you know he’s in trouble. Despite his failures on multiple fronts, Californians still seem to like Obama personally, however, to the tune of 55 percent.

Perhaps that’s why he is making the impassioned plea for support for his tax hikes/jobs bill a personal matter, imploring supporters for help, saying at a North Carolina rally this week, "If you love me, you’ve got to help me pass this bill!” (This sounds suspiciously similar to an equally urgent line young teenage girls are warned about emanating from young teenage boys.)