WASHINGTON -- Maybe Bob Dole has more clout in the Republican Party than we think. He suggested on Sunday that the party put up a "closed for repairs" sign for the rest of the year. Then along comes Michele Bachmann declaring on Wednesday that she...

WASHINGTON -- You wonder if President Obama sometimes finds himself singing a variant on Kermit the Frog's anthem about the burdens of being green: It's not easy being Barack Obama.

This is not simply or even primarily a matter of color, although...

WASHINGTON -- While listening to an NPR report out of Moore, Okla., this week, I was genuinely shocked. Not by the scale of the devastation or the tenacity of people who have grown stoically accustomed to the damage tornados can do, but by a ...

WASHINGTON -- We know American politics are dysfunctional. But after a week of scandal obsession during which the nation's capital and the media virtually ignored the problems most voters care about -- jobs, incomes, growth, opportunity, education...

WASHINGTON -- "What if the government starts enforcing the espionage statute whenever there's a leak?" Steve Roberts, a former New York Times journalist who teaches at George Washington University, observed to The Baltimore Sun. "It's going to ...

MILWAUKEE -- Public officials are very selective about when violence and death matter.

Massacres and terrorist incidents cannot be ignored, but the day-to-day toll from gun violence is often swept aside. Politicians who tout themselves as ...