MANCHESTER, N.H. — “Assume the position!” CNN’s John King ordered the candidates as they approached their lecterns just before airtime for Monday night’s debate .  The Republican presidential contenders did as the moderator told them.  Mitt Romney assumed the position of the capa...

When historians look back at how Barack Obama lost the 2012 election - or won it only because the Republicans nominated a certifiable space case - they will doubtless focus on his first few months in office and ponder why he didn’t do more to stanch the recession and arrest the downward mobility o...

What to do with a washed-up dictator? Like revolutionaries before them, the protagonists of the Arab Spring are discovering that there are no good options for disposing of the corrupt strongmen they are pushing out of office....

WASHINGTON — Most of us don’t begin the summer by crashing the annual Memorial Day weekend gathering of bikers at Rolling Thunder, a Washington event to honor veterans. But most of us are not Sarah Palin. While Republican presidential contenders Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty are hol...

It is fashionable among conservative pundits and GOP operatives to bemoan the state of the Republican presidential primary race. But even without a Paul Ryan, Wis., or a New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in the race, there is still a good shot at beating President Obama — the best shot at upsetting a...

WASHINGTON — If history, as Mark Twain supposedly said, does not repeat itself, this must be one of those times when it rhymes in unusually precise pentameter.   On Wednesday morning (May 25), Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., author of the House Republicans’ plan to end the Medicare guarantee, ...

NEW YORK — In a slender essay titled “Here Is New York,” E.B. White wrote about the implausibility of the great city, mentioning among other things the millions of gallons of water needed each day just so people could brush their teeth. That was in 1948. Since then, the implausibility factor h...

 WASHINGTON — First there was the claim that global warming was a hoax. Then came the assertion that President Obama’s Hawaiian birth was a fiction. And now we are hearing that the prospect of a U.S. government default is, likewise, a fantasy.  Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says that...

wlenty’s moment of truth. Actually, several moments of truth.  “We’re going to have to look the American people in the eye and tell them the truth, and that’s what I’ll be talking about,” the former Minnesota governor proclaimed to Erica Hill on CBS’ “Early Show” on Monday as ...

NEW YORK — Once upon a time, Ma would say: “Sit up and eat your vegetables.” Pa said: “Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Other common utterances included: “Go outside and play.” And, “After you finish your chores.” Families may not have been happier — and family dinners may hav...