WASHINGTON – “I am a classically trained engineer,” says Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican, “and I firmly believe in regression to the mean.” Applying a concept from statistics to the randomness of today’s politics is problematic. In any case, Hurd, 42, is not waiting for the regression of …

One hears often lately about how America’s founders sought to assure that America’s president could not become a “king”— meaning someone not accountable to the rule of law.

If all we knew about Trump’s presidency was the manner in which he withdrew American forces from northern Syria, that would be enough for us all to know that something was terribly amiss. But there are two possible ways of interpreting what’s wrong.

WASHINGTON – With three polls showing her in the lead, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., may soon eclipse former vice president Joe Biden as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. That's great news for Republicans, because Warren has a problem: The central message of her …

WASHINGTON – Presidential aspirant Beto O'Rourke, thrashing about in an attempt to be noticed, says tax exemptions should be denied to churches and other institutions that oppose same-sex marriage. O'Rourke's suggestion, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's plan to tax the "excessive" e…

Twenty years ago, former U.S. Transportation Secretary, President of the Red Cross and future North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole was a decidedly long-shot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination – an honor her husband, former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole had won four years ea…

Say you invented something that became so popular more than a billion people around the globe used it. Wow! You'd be famous worldwide and one of the richest people on earth.

COLUMBIA, S.C. – As the world seems consumed by all things Ukraine, it's time once again to dust off the ever-popular, evergreen headline: Rudy, Rudy, Rudy.

I was maybe 10 years old when this happened.

WASHINGTON – Donald Trump, an ongoing eruption of self-refuting statements (“I’m a very stable genius” with “a very good brain”), is adding self-impeachment to his repertoire. Spiraling downward in a tightening gyre, his increasingly unhinged public performances (Google the one with Finland’…

Donald Trump is testing whether he can claim immunity from the rule of law. That's the plain meaning of the announcement that his administration will not cooperate in any way with the House impeachment inquiry.

In 2017, I published a piece here titled “The sacred space of lovers.” It discussed “the space that lovers can create to inhabit together – a space that, ideally, is one of open-hearted intimacy of body and soul, of romantic passion, of deep love and attachment.….”

My supermarket has a giant "international" food aisle dominated by Asian and Latino products. Which items end up in a section dedicated to a particular foreign culture's cuisine and not mixed in with the so-called American staples – Heinz, Campbell's, etc. – fascinates me. Why, for example, …

WASHINGTON – President Trump, having said he expects to be impeached, is now doing his best to see it happen. The White House has ordered administration officials to ignore all subpoenas for testimony from House committees in their impeachment inquiry, providing clear-cut grounds of obstruct…

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Joe Biden has said that in holding up vital military assistance to Ukraine, President Trump “used the power and resources of the United States to pressure a sovereign nation, a partner that is still under direct assault from Russia ... to subvert the rule o…

Here’s the thing about forgiveness.

This is not a column about impeaching our current president. This is a column about the impeachment process and the history of the legal route our nation is obliged to follow to oust a federal official.

Let's repeat it together three times: Preprimary polls testing would-be presidential nominees have all the permanence of numbers written with a stick in the wet sand at the ocean's edge just before the high tide comes in.

Celebrating 70 years of Communist Party rule, Chinese leader Xi Jinping stood in the open sunroof of a Red Flag limousine and shouted, “Greetings, comrades,” to the masses below. Xi wore a Mao-style suit to his giant military parade, which featured a missile that could carry 10 nuclear warhe…

SEOUL, South Korea – In 1950, when Han Sung-joo was 10, shrapnel from an artillery shell lodged in his hip. This happened as Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s troops, fresh from the bold Incheon landing, were retaking this city – it would be lost and retaken again – after North Korea’s June invasion.…

WASHINGTON — Let’s be clear: President Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not “beautiful” or “perfect.” Far from it. Trump should not have asked Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden or to cooperate with his private attorney Rudolph Giuliani’s investigation of the fo…

“If Democrats are successful in removing the president from office (which they never will be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.”

“History never looks like history when you are living through it,” wrote John Gardner. “It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable.”

This latest scandal – in which even materials released by the president show clearly that he sought to get the government of Ukraine to dig up (or more likely, manufacture) dirt on a major political opponent to help Trump win the 2020 presidential election – has finally broken the log jam th…

This week, those of us who never lost faith in Nancy Pelosi witnessed the confirmation of our trust.

Europeans are salivating about the prospect of President Trump being tried in the Senate under the impeachment procedures. They are going to be disappointed for the simple reason that if the Democrats think with their heads, they will eschew a Senate trial that as things stand now will not r…

Cats may be domesticated but they still give plenty of evidence of how natural selection crafted their wild ancestors. Which is how I’ve been thinking about my two adorable kittens, as I watch them do their thing while growing toward maturity.

One word best describes Donald Trump's environmental policy: sick. The president has an obsessive urge to ravage nature just for the heck of it. Exhibit A is his crusade to weaken environmental regulations against the very wishes of those being regulated.

TAIPEI, Taiwan – Now only 15 flags in the Foreign Ministry's foyer represent the nations that have not yet succumbed to Beijing's financial blandishments – targeted at governments and individual politicians – and other pressures to sever diplomatic relations with this island nation. There we…

He Walks Where He Chooses to Walk

WASHINGTON – Every good story needs a hero, and the saga of Brett Kavanaugh's rise to the Supreme Court has provided one: Leland Keyser.

WASHINGTON – It's fair to say at this juncture that America's Quid and Ukraine's Quo have been caught in bed together.

We live in a remarkably overregulated world. Yet, almost unbelievably, there are few hard-and-fast laws to protect those who want to create a baby the nontraditional way. When something goes wrong following a surrogate or in vitro arrangement, the aggrieved parties often find themselves in a…

A famous Greek myth recounts the tale of the diabolical King Sisyphus. He was punished for his many murderous actions by being forced to roll a huge boulder up a hill. No matter what method he used, each time Sisyphus neared the top of the hill, the boulder would crash back to the ground, en…

Nearly 50,000 General Motors workers are on strike to get what they see as their fair share of its profits and stop further layoffs. What’s happened to GM’s workers is a microcosm of what’s happened to the American worker.

WASHINGTON – The latest smear on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is a disaster for Democrats, and everyone seems to know it except the party’s presidential candidates.

Earlier this week, Sean Spicer, Donald Trump’s short-term press secretary with a long-term habit of sycophancy, made his debut on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.”

For life on Earth, humankind’s breakthrough into civilization was a step into uncharted territory. It’s not surprising, therefore, that it had disruptive consequences.

With apologies to Stevie Wonder, for whom it was once an album title, nothing is “hotter than July.” July was the hottest month.

The woman’s Facebook page reveals she is a high school graduate, fit and trim-looking and nicely dressed. She lives in small town in the southern U.S. and is a devoted Christian who loves animals. Each photograph shows her with a beaming, trusting smile. She is almost always seen standing al…

Then-Sen. John F Kennedy wrote admiringly in his 1955 book, “Profiles in Courage,” about Republican U.S. Sen. Edmund G. Ross of Kansas. In 1868, in a decision Ross knew would end his political career, he broke with his party to vote against the impeachment of then-President Andrew Johnson, t…

WASHINGTON — Watching the Democratic presidential debate Thursday night left one clear impression: Donald Trump won.

It was a wonderful birthday dinner, the kind we friends have come to expect whenever we arrive to celebrate the person who is about to blow out the candles. We leave feeling lucky to be alive, every last one of us.

Our subject today is a word.

HONG KONG – Physically diminutive, intellectually acerbic and with an eye for the ironic, Margaret Ng – lawyer, writer and former legislator – is, at 71, a member of the generation for which this city's youthful protesters have scant patience. They say the elders have been too patient about …

HONG KONG – Lee Cheuk-yan, unlike most Americans, remembers and reveres Lane Kirkland, a hero of the first Cold War. During 16 years as leader of the AFL-CIO, 1979-1995, Kirkland gave crucial support, both material and moral, to Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement in Poland, where it was…

I thought that too much was being made of Trump’s gaffe about Alabama being threatened by hurricane Dorian. OK, so Trump made a mistake. OK, so he often shows a level of ignorance and carelessness with information that we are not used to seeing in a president.

The chanceries of allied countries in Europe must have uncorked quite a few bottles of champagne over the sudden disappearance of John Bolton, the third national security adviser of a Trump administration in constant turmoil.

HONG KONG – The masked men who recently tossed firebombs at Jimmy Lai’s home targeted one of this city’s foremost democracy advocates. Lai, a 71-year-old media billionaire, calls this summer’s ongoing protest “a martyrdom movement” and “a last-straw movement.” It has an intensity and dynamic…

Back when Richard Nixon was president, a Washington saloon five minutes’ walk from the White House named the Class Reunion was the go-to watering hole where press, politicians and real people could rub and bend elbows. To be candid, I was a regular at “the CR,” as it was called, but frankly …