While it's unclear what the long-term effects of rising interest rates will be for the stock market, the short-term impact is already being felt: rising volatility.
In recent polls, voters express almost as much unhappiness with the Democratic controlled Congress as they do with President Bush.
Some of the anger at Congress is deserved. The Democrats have been unable to move much of the agenda they talked about so earnestly in last year's campaign. Their rhetoric on the still disastrous war in Iraq has failed to produce much more than rhetoric.
At a dinner party this weekend, I was listening to a mother of two fret about how much tougher it was last year for her soon-to-be college freshman daughter to gain admission to a decent school than it would be next spring for her son, who will be a high school senior in the fall.
I've heard all the stories about second-tier liberal arts institutions tilting heavily female these days (to wit, "Where the Boys Aren't-Liberal Arts Schools"). But it wasn't until U.S. News & World Report ran this week's story "Admittedly Unequal" that the issue crystallized for me.
AP - U.S. and Iraqi forces launched attacks on Baghdad's northern and southern flanks to clear out Sunni insurgents, al-Qaida fighters and Shiite militiamen who had fled the capital and Anbar during a four-month-old security operation, military officials said Monday.
AP - E-mail records are missing for 51 of the 88 White House officials who had electronic message accounts with the Republican National Committee, the House Oversight Committee said Monday.
AP - Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama on Monday said his campaign made a "dumb mistake" when it circulated a memo criticizing rival Hillary Rodham Clinton's financial ties to India.
Despite the new Democratic congressional leadership's promise of "openness and transparency" in the budget process, a CNN survey of the House found it nearly impossible to get information on lawmakers' pet projects. Staffers for only 31 of the 435 members of the House contacted by CNN last week supplied a list of their earmark requests for Fiscal Year 2008.
A videotape supposedly showing a suicide bomber "graduation ceremony" at an al Qaeda-Taliban training camp is part of a propaganda campaign from the terrorist network and the former rulers of Afghanistan, a U.S. counterterrorism official said Monday.
Duke University has reached an undisclosed settlement with three former lacrosse players who were falsely accused of rape, the school announced Monday. The three students posted a statement on Duke's Web site saying: "We hope that today's resolution will begin to bring the Duke family back together again."
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