columns

Baring some unforeseen circumstances, the presidential nomination contests are over. Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump will be the respective nominees o...

WASHINGTON — Transparency is not the natural instinct of the politician. The political mind tends to think: What voters don't know can't hurt you. Wha...

WASHINGTON — "Hell," said Alabama's Democratic Gov. George Wallace before roiling the 1968 presidential race, "we got too much dignity in government n...

WASHINGTON — It is the great, democratic virtue of presidential campaigns that they subject candidates to every kind of stress, eventually revealing t...

When the presidential primaries began more than a year ago, the two leading candidates were Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democrats and Jeb Bush for ...

FLORENCE, S.C. — If Donald Trump speaks for disenfranchised whites, Hillary Clinton speaks mostly to blacks who feel the same. But the differences in ...

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump's distinctive rhetorical style — think of a drunk with a bullhorn reading aloud James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" under water —...

Political uncertainty isn't the only threat to the Affordable Care Act's future. Cracks also are spreading through a major pillar supporting the law H...

As the budget stalemate continues in Harrisburg, I know the hard-working constituents who reside in my Senatorial District are growing frustrated with...

The other day my brother brought me some old sports books he had found in our parents’ house. Jerry had no use for them as what he knows about sports ...

Sometimes you discover you’ve locked a few feelings away, and they’ll creep up so that you have to deal with them. This week, news of the release of J...

WASHINGTON — The main focus of Donald Trump's media coverage has been his populist disdain for elites. But his main focus has often been a strident ve...

BEIRUT (AP) — After five years of carnage, the Syrian civil war can seem poised to go on indefinitely. But the "cessation of hostilities" engineered b...

WASHINGTON — The judicial wars threaten to engulf us in ceaseless cycles of partisan warfare and recriminations. Herewith, two modest (read: unlikely)...

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." —Newton's Third Law of Motion WASHINGTON — Notice the Newtonian physics of America's Madi...

WASHINGTON —The judicial wars threaten to engulf us in ceaseless cycles of partisan warfare and recriminations. Herewith, two modest (read: unlikely) ...

WASHINGTON — At a time when politics has veered toward division and exclusion, it is somehow fitting that Harper Lee, the apostle of empathy, made her...

WASHINGTON — In this depressingly unserious campaign season, it's time — past time — to take Donald Trump seriously. In particular, to take seriously ...

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The popular wisdom that opposites attract is true in both romance and politics. But rarely do adages prove so profoundly — and absurd...

WASHINGTON — Lyndon Johnson simply was exasperated. Barack Obama's mischief was methodical. Four days before the 1966 congressional elections, Johnson...