Nina Easton

The fierce battles between New Democrat centrists and old-style liberals that defined the Democratic Party in the 1990s are long gone, with the party unified behind Barack Obama's economic agenda of universal health care, expensive federal programs and more regulation of the financial markets.

Main Street versus Wall Street was the 2008 economic mantra of Democrat Barack Obama.

We know that inflation distorts economic behavior. In the 1970s, a combination of high tax rates and inflation prompted investors to flee production in favor of protection.

Anyone who has been around Washington politics long enough can't avoid this truism: Election-year money is like a rushing river that invariably finds cracks in any dam the reformers erect.

Our pride is tied up in being right. We tend to favor data that confirm our beliefs, so we don't see alternatives. Too often, leaders practice defense routines that become self-reinforcing.

Fame legitimizes. Being conspicuous gets confused with being illustrious.

Unless engineers can stop southern Louisiana from sinking into the Gulf - the Mississippi Delta is the fastest-disappearing land on the planet - even post-Katrina's modernized levees will be overwhelmed.

If you like Obama, if you like a Washington that offers free stuff and taxing the rich, that's what you get. I don't see him evolving as a president.

I think the danger with the liberal Left is seeing the Republican Party as a monolith.

Globalization is stirring widespread economic anxiety, and middle class incomes have stagnated while a class of super-rich has emerged.

Message to all you crazed parents desperately hiring tutors and padding your kid's thin resume: Chillax. Attending an elite college is no guarantee of leadership, life success, or earnings potential.

Sea World's killer whale collection needs constant replenishing. The average life span of the animals in captivity is less than half the average for killer whales in the ocean.