WASHINGTON -- A wise man once said that love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
No one who managed to get through the torture of South Carolina Gov. Mark...
WASHINGTON -- Every revolution needs a unifying symbol, and members of Iran's opposition movement now have theirs.
That was one dumb sniper who took out the young woman...
WASHINGTON -- Rusty DePass, the South Carolina Republican activist who infamously "joked" that an escaped zoo gorilla was probably an ancestor of Michelle Obama's, has...
WASHINGTON -- There's a "new" old name suddenly in circulation that is both filled with ancient history and ripe with a revolutionary spirit for today's game-changing...
WASHINGTON -- One thing we can conclude from David Letterman's bad jokes about Sarah Palin: He hasn't flown commercial in a while.
Letterman's "slutty flight attendant"...
WASHINGTON -- Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and GOP "It" girl, can warm up the Republican base like a hot toddy in a duck blind. But further inside the party...
WASHINGTON -- If it ain't broke, the saying goes, don't fix it. And so it was that the Muslim world got to hear the 2009 version of Barack Obama's 2004 Democratic...
WASHINGTON -- Prior to recent events, I intended to write about the GOP's message problem with the headline: "Shoot the Messenger."
Sunday's murder of abortion doctor...
First came the breaking-news e-mail alert: President Obama would appoint Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Within minutes, a dozen other e-mails tumbled through...
WASHINGTON -- Freud recognized that human beings have a sex drive and even a death drive. Is it possible that we also have an aphorism drive?
We do seem attracted to pat...
Listening to President Obama and former Vice President Cheney give their respective national security speeches Thursday put me in mind of John Gray, author of "Men Are...
It's not yet clear how the one-armed midget demographic is shaping up, but everybody else seems to be bailing on the GOP.
Begging the forgiveness of one-armed midgets,...
WASHINGTON -- It is supremely surreal to find oneself sipping sparkling water in a sunny hotel courtyard, dispassionately discussing the legalities of torture.
Yet,...
WASHINGTON -- There's nothing un-funnier than Saturday night's jokes reviewed by the caffeinated light of Monday morning.
Which is why we probably shouldn't quarterback...
KEY WEST, Fla. -- If only William Jennings Bryan had known Francis Collins.
Maybe Bryan, who died just five days after leading the prosecution in the Scopes monkey...
IN THE MIAMI AIRPORT -- Against the advice our vice president, I have braved the germ-infested world, forced into transit by prior commitments and surrounded by...
WASHINGTON -- Once a cause such as hate crime legislation becomes associated with something as emotionally devastating as the 1998 savage murder of Matthew Shepard, it...
WASHINGTON -- Here on planet "What About Me," principled people are so rare as to be oddities. Thus, it was a head-swiveling moment Monday when former Vatican Ambassador...
WASHINGTON -- Several years ago, I asked a veteran journalist for advice.
"I'm trying to figure out if I have an ethical conflict," I began.
"If you have to ask, you...
WASHINGTON -- Racial and ethnic diversity is the key to happiness, success in the global marketplace and, not least, an interesting life.
So we are told in a batch of...
Both of which, in fact, George W. Bush did while president. The left went wild over les faux pas du George. Now, it seems, it's the right's turn to display equal...
Verily, spoken like men. What they're really asking is: Did Obama do justice to the fire hydrant? Call me a mother of boys. Or call Freud, if you must. But...
The older generation represented by such icons as James Dobson, who recently retired as head of Focus on the Family, has compromised too much, according to a...
The market's up! The Dow plunges! Obama fired the GM CEO! Greta's husband helped Palin!! OMG, Obama's taking 500 people to Europe and Merkel doesn't like his new deal...
No one ever said the multimillionaire isn't idiosyncratic. In a rare interview Thursday, Ahmanson shared some of his thoughts about why he switched parties. In...
McCain, just 24, is one smart cookie. In a matter of weeks, she has created a brand, presenting herself as a fresh face of her daddy's party and a voice for young...
That cliche is awfully busy these days. Most presidents doubtless have to pinch themselves for a while after arriving at the White House. The campaign over, Mr....
There's little profit in criticizing a move to make life better for the fairer sex. Still, one does have to suppress a chortle as we pretend that the First Father's...
There is surely room for media criticism, and a few bad actors in recent years have badly frayed public trust. And, yes, some newspapers are more liberal than their...
Unfortunately, the stem cell debate has been characterized as a conflict between science (as though science is always right) and religious "kooks" (as though...
It's all a gamble. The Republican attempts to "starve the beast" -- slash taxes and force government spending cuts -- didn't work because spending never got cut. So...
Oh wait, that's right, Barack Obama is the messiah. I get confused sometimes, what with so much deification going on. Limbaugh's 85-minute speech at last weekend's...
I know Bobby Jindal, and that guy wasn't Bobby Jindal. The real Jindal is the intellectual equivalent of a nuclear power plant. The real Jindal has actually...
If you don't get it, there's a good reason. It was a bad cartoon. It didn't work. The connection between the two events simply wasn't organic enough to evoke the...
Obama learned about J.V. Martin, built in 1896, from Ferillo's 2005 documentary, "Corridor of Shame," about crumbling schools along South Carolina's I-95 corridor....
"What does catastrophe look like?" I asked. With characteristic calm, Obama described what happened in Japan in the 1990s, when core problems in the banking...
The silliness of our laws -- and the hypocrisy of our selective attitudes toward mood enhancers -- needs no further elaboration. Even so, things are getting sillier...
Absent is maturity -- that grown-up quality of leadership that is palpable when the real deal enters a room. There's a reason why elders are respected. They have...
If you're thinking you might find yourself in some remote hollow of, say, South Sudan or Kyrgyzstan, you might be right. But you'd be helping save the world, so hang...