Ben Franklin may have been wiser than he knew. When he declared in 1789 that the only certainties in life were death and taxes, did he foresee that both would still be at the center of America's politics 230 years hence, in the guise of our seemingly interminable debate over health care reform?

Health care was a dominant theme in the six ...Read more

Sinclair Broadcast Group's decision last week to remove former Trump aide turned political analyst Boris Epshteyn from its airwaves is good news, no two ways about it. As of Friday, there are no more "Bottom Line with Boris" commentaries running on any of the group's 193 stations, nor will the media company be publishing Epshteyn's newsletter.

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Surprise, surprise, the U.S. government -- over the last three presidential administrations -- has lied to us about progress in the Afghan war, the longest conflict in American history. According to the Washington Post, which sued the government for the release of candid interviews with more than 400 officials -- generals, diplomats, aid workers...Read more

Although lawmakers and President Trump have talked a good game about bringing down prescription drug prices, they've managed to take few, if any, steps toward that goal. Trump's most dramatic proposals -- tying the price of certain Medicare drugs to their prices overseas and barring payments from drug manufacturers to middlemen -- have either ...Read more

Republican defenders of President Donald Trump on the House Judiciary Committee spent Thursday attempting to explain why he did not deserve to be impeached. They denied wrongdoing. They spoke of Ukraine government corruption. They cast the president as the victim of a partisan "witch hunt" or some such similar trope. But mostly they complained ...Read more

The biggest winners in the China trade deal announced Friday appear to be a key part of President Trump's voter base: U.S. farmers.

There's nothing wrong with that, because Trump's political interests coincide with U.S. national interests. On the other hand, consider the other big news coming out of Washington on Friday: the House Judiciary ...Read more

In the newspaper business, they say nothing beats shoe-leather reporting. That means getting out there on the scene. Knocking on doors. Pulling documents from the courthouse. Getting reluctant people in the know to talk.

A classic case of such shoe leather was my AJC colleague Bill Rankin's four-minute-and-45-second walk in August 1996 from a ...Read more

For months, it has been painfully clear that what House Republicans and Democrats both wanted – in the worst way – was to fight and win every little battle, every single day, in their ultra-ugly partisan war over whether to impeach President Donald Trump.

And they have just spent the autumn of 2019 showcasing America's democracy – in the ...Read more

The big winner of Thursday's election for the British House of Commons was obviously Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose Conservative Party secured a lopsided majority in Parliament that virtually ensures that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union at the end of next month.

The biggest loser was not Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, ...Read more

Boris Johnson dramatically altered the landscape of British politics on Thursday night, ending a period of debilitating parliamentary gridlock and three years of uncertainty over Brexit. In doing so, the U.K. prime minister gave himself what his predecessor Theresa May could never have: the political space to define his country's departure from ...Read more

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Movement conservatives have had an interesting year.

Aside from the more predictable battles with the political left, they've been engaged in a far more significant debate over their own political identity: Are conservatives really just classical liberals, whose focus should remain on maximizing individual autonomy? Or is ...Read more

A new report from the state Legislative Analyst's Office spotlights a dangerous incongruity in how California approaches two issues involving global warming: the push to reduce emissions of Earth-warming greenhouse gases and what to do about the already-rising seas. While the state has been an international leader on the former, it is woefully ...Read more

This week, the Supreme Court announced, without explanation, that it would not hear a challenge to Kentucky's so-called Ultrasound Informed Consent Act, which requires women to submit to a narrated ultrasound before receiving an abortion.

The court's inaction leaves a dangerous law on the books, one that endangers not only women's rights but ...Read more

Over three weeks starting Saturday, thousands of birders in the Western Hemisphere will take part in the annual, 119-year-old Audubon Christmas Bird Count. These tallies are conducted in prearranged circles within a seven-mile radius of a central point. At least 30 such circles exist in Southern California, and counts in each are held during a ...Read more

Stacey Abrams has it right, for right now. She lost her 2018 race to be the governor of Georgia to Republican Brian Kemp, who as secretary of state was in charge of the election, a situation that would not pass the sniff test in North Korea.

OK, that comparison is a little far-fetched, but only a little.

Since then, though, she's been plenty ...Read more

"Did you hear me screaming? ... I'm SO happy."

That was Coronado resident Kathy Soliozy Prout's reaction to a Congressional action that means military widows may soon get the benefits which she and many others insist they deserve.

For 14 years, Prout -- the widow of Navy Rear Adm. James "Jay" Prout, killed when a Navy jet in which he was ...Read more

On Wednesday, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, kicked off a hearing about the Trump-Russia probe by bewailing government surveillance.

He sounded like a downright radical.

He likened what the FBI did to poor Russia-connected Trump adviser Carter Page in 2016 to what J. Edgar Hoover's FBI did to Martin ...Read more

Anti-vaccination activists gave up on their misguided effort to repeal an important new state law -- Senate Bill 276 -- that will make it harder for parents to get their children bogus medical exemptions from mandatory vaccinations for measles and other dangerous infectious diseases.

The proponents failed to gather the 623,212 signatures ...Read more

Sinclair Broadcast Group is canceling its must-carry "Bottom Line with Boris" political commentary segments from Boris Epshteyn, a former communications and campaign aide to President Donald Trump, according to a report by NBC News.

A spokesman for Sinclair confirmed to The Baltimore Sun that Epshteyn's commentaries had been canceled.

The ...Read more