WASHINGTON -- Note to GOP re Benghazi: Stop calling it Watergate, Iran-contra, bigger than both, etc. First, it might well be, but we don't know. History will judge. Second, overhyping will only diminish the importance of the scandal if it doesn't...

WASHINGTON -- You know you're in trouble when you can't even get your walk-back story straight. Stung by the worldwide derision that met President Obama's fudging and fumbling of his chemical-weapons red line in Syria, the White House leaked to ...

WASHINGTON -- Fate is fickle, power cyclical, and nothing is new under the sun. Especially in Washington, where after every election the losing party is sagely instructed to confess sin, rend garments and rethink its principles lest it go the way ...

WASHINGTON -- Clare Boothe Luce liked to say that "a great man is one sentence." Presidents, in particular. The most common "one sentence" for George W. Bush (whose legacy is being reassessed as his presidential library opens) is: "He kept us safe...

WASHINGTON -- Terrorism is speech -- speech that gathers its audience by killing innocents as theatrically as possible. The 19th-century anarchist Paul Brousse called it "propaganda by deed." Accordingly, the Boston Marathon attack, the first ...

WASHINGTON -- Well, at least we're starting to get the procedure right. Washington has rediscovered the beauty of the boring. It's called "regular order," using the normal, routine, constitutional process to arrive at, for example, a budget.

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