WASHINGTON – President Trump’s detractors are trying to play down the significance of the U.S.-Mexico immigration deal, saying it is largely comprised of actions that Mexico had already agreed to many months ago.

WASHINGTON – “It is a great advantage to a president,” said the 30th of them, “and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know he is not a great man.” Or, Calvin Coolidge would say today, a great woman. While today’s incumbent advertises himself as an “extremely stable genius” a…

Dear Mr. Mueller. I don’t get it.

Seven out of 10 voters rate their health insurance coverage and the medical care they receive as good or excellent. Despite that, only 34% give our nation’s health care system positive reviews. Not surprisingly, therefore, health care reform has consistently been a top voter concern election…

WASHINGTON – In Alabama, where a new law denies abortion to women even in cases of incest or rape, a rapist may still pursue custody rights of a child conceived during his assault.

The idea holding together the conservative movement since the 1960s was called “fusionism.” The concept, which always worked better as an organizing principle than a philosophical one, was that freedom and virtue were inextricably linked. Virtue not freely chosen wasn’t virtuous. Or as Frank…

Earlier today, I was talking to a friend I’ve known for more than two decades when, twice, she prefaced her opinion with, “I feel.” The third time she shared an opinion, she began with, “I think.”

WASHINGTON – Randolph Bourne (1886-1918) said, “War is the health of the state.” James Madison said, “War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement,” and the executive almost is the American state, Congress now being more theatrical than actual. Advocates of an ever-larger state,…

WASHINGTON — For decades, Catholic Democratic politicians have been justifying their pro-choice position by telling us that they were personally opposed to abortion but could not impose their religious view on others. For most, the argument was a fig leaf to justify their shameful failure to…

Clarity of thought and expression about moral issues is not a core competency of CEOs.

A tiny French mountain village with a long name, L’Hospitalet-pres-l’Andorre, has lost half its population over three decades, according to the French newspaper Le Monde. Its name in English would be “The Hospital Near Andorra.” (Andorra is a small principality shoehorned between France and Spain.)

Alexis de Tocqueville was a Frenchman who became an astute and enthusiastic observer of American culture and government in the first half of the 19th Century. He was particularly struck by the tendency of Americans to voluntarily come together for different causes and purposes. He wrote, “Ev…

Beneath the perfectly manicured lawns and under the pines and elm trees at the Normandy cemetery lie 9,388 Americans who died during D-Day or in the liberation of France that followed. Among them is a most unlikely combatant, a 56-year-old Army officer who was a wounded veteran of World War …

WASHINGTON – The abortion issue is more divisive than ever, thanks to extreme anti-abortion legislation recently passed in some states and, lately, to Democratic presidential candidates seemingly vying to be the most pro-choicest.

The intellectual right is in the middle of a huge brouhaha, as some prominent right-wing commentators celebrate what they believe is the end of the “conservative consensus” around classical liberalism – free markets, limited government, the sovereignty of the individual and even in some case…

“I’m amused,” Attorney General William Barr told CBS News’ Jan Crawford, “by these people who make a living by disclosing classified information, including the names of intelligence operatives, wringing their hands about whether I’m going to be responsible in protecting intelligence sources …

It’s a story that will lacerate your heart.

For me, the most memorable scene in the memorable 1972 film Cabaret takes place somewhere in the German countryside. The time is the mid-1930s.

The most bracing pieces are sometimes the least defensible.

Many pundits have this unfortunate habit of framing what they want as what the American people want. I’ve been guilty of this at times. After all, what is more gratifying than the idea that the American masses are marching behind your band?

For more than a generation, James Carville’s campaign maxim, “It’s the economy, stupid,” has been held up as an essential truth of American politics.

Elmo Cook knew nothing about it.

”By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

WASHINGTON – President Trump is understandably frustrated by the crisis at the border. Anyone who watched the video of more than 1,000 illegal migrants sneaking through a hole in a fence near El Paso, Texas – the largest single breach of our border ever recorded – and still says we don’t nee…

Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas is, once again, under attack.

Uber just filed its first quarterly report as a publicly traded company. Although the company lost $1 billion, investors may still do well because the losses appear to be declining.

That was a pretty stunning story about the White House asking some Navy officials to move the warship USS John McCain “out of sight” during President Donald Trump’s recent visit to Japan. The obvious fear was that sharing any stage with the war hero would unhinge the president. McCain died l…

Breaking news: Some guy posted a doctored video of Nancy Pelosi.

How is it that someone accused of dozens of criminal acts can throw millions of dollars at a problem and pay his way out of trouble?

The guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain, “Big Bad John,” was christened in 1992 in honor of the U.S. Navy’s first father-son duo of four-star admirals, “Slew” and Jack. On July 12, 2018, their son and grandson respectively, retired Navy captain and U.S. Sen. John S. McCain III was ad…

CAMDEN, S.C. – Eulogies, it has always seemed to me, are best delivered while the subject is living and can enjoy hearing the best version of him- or herself.

WASHINGTON – If congressional Democrats will temper their enthusiasm for impeachment with lucidity about the nation’s needs and their political self-interest, they will understand the self-defeating nature of a foredoomed attempt to remove a president for aesthetic reasons. Such reasons are …