As Congress debates authorizing U.S. military strikes against Syria, it's worth remembering that President Obama has painted himself into a box with not one, but two red lines. After all, Obama didn't just casually announce that "a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being […]

During his press conference on Friday, President Obama pondered why the GOP's "number one priority, the one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don't have health care." But in attributing the 40 Affordable Care Act repeal votes, the threats to shut down the government over […]

In recent weeks, pollsters and pundits have been wrestling with a seeming contradiction at the heart of the country's abortion debate. On the one hand, the United States is a pro-choice nation, with consistent majorities of Americans voicing the belief for two decades that abortion should be legal in some or all cases. On the […]

This week, millions of Americans struggled to understand how an unarmed 17 year old African-American kid stalked by an overzealous community watch volunteer came to be blamed for his own murder. Millions more wondered what all the fuss was about. And like many Americans across the country, I naturally expected our President--who also happens to […]

Last week, former Bush Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt offered a very instructive look back at the rollout of the Medicare Part D prescription drug program. In what the Washington Post's health care reporter Sarah Kliff praised as a "great piece," Leavitt recounted the technical troubles, process pitfalls, rapid responses and lessons learned […]

As the carnage and chaos grow in Cairo, there are no easy answers for the United States in Egypt. But once upon a time, Republican leaders and their allies in the conservative commentariat had a simple answer indeed for the Middle East. Waiving their purple fingers in early 2005, the likes of David Brooks, Charles […]

As has been thoroughly documented, until 2011 no political party had both the votes and the intent to block an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling and thereby trigger both a U.S. default and a global economic catastrophe. Now, despite plummeting annual federal budget deficits, a stabilization of the debt as a percentage of the […]

In the wake of the twin revelations about the National Security Agency's dragnet of phone calls and online activity, polling suggests that a majority of Americans apparently remain comfortable with their civil liberties being compromised in the cause of preventing terror attacks. Probably just as predictable, a survey from Pew Research showed a fair amount […]

With Washington engulfed in scandals real and imagined over the Benghazi tragedy, the IRS' handling of applications by political groups for tax exempt status and the Justice Department's seizure of AP phone records, California Congressman Darrell Issa is enjoying his moment in the sun. For Republicans "energized" by the prospect of bludgeoning President Obama over […]

Revelations that the Justice Department authorized the seizure of Associated Press phone records have produced condemnation from Congressional Democrats and other Obama allies. But while Capitol Hill Democrats decried the tactics as "inexcusable" (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid), "troubling" (Senator Pat Leahy) and having "impaired the First Amendment" (Rep. Zoe Lofgren), Congressional Republicans have been […]