When I retired from my tenure as a columnist last year, my daughter relayed the news to my grandson, who promptly picked up the phone and, in his most serious 7-year-old voice, said: "Grandma, I hear you're tired." Well, not exactly. My daughter and I struggled to hide our amusement from a misunders...

I wouldn't blame you for dismissing the Midwest. Even we Midwesterners are finding it hard to feel important - and not just because of our Garrison Keilloresque self-deprecation. Back in Michigan this week, I noticed locals talking in survival terms: "Oh, sure, St. Joseph-Benton Harbor is still ther...

U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson's ruling that forcing people to buy health insurance (or pay a fine) is unconstitutional may be the death knell for President Barack Obama's plan to cover the nation's uninsured. Talk about literal interpretation of the Constitution. Had the health-care law used diff...

Ten years ago, George W. Bush came to Washington as the first new president in a generation or more who had deep personal convictions about immigration policy and some plans for where he wanted to go with it. He wasn’t alone. Lots of people in lots of places were ready to work on the issue: Republ...

In July 2008, my wife Linde was diagnosed with advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity. Her subsequent treatment has led me to view U.S. medical care from a different perspective.  What Linde and I have learned over the past two years has broadened my fundamental beliefs about medic...

When a woman volunteers for the military, she gives up the comfort, safety and freedom of civilian life. This she expects, as do men. Serving her country shouldn’t mean doubling her likelihood of being sexually assaulted, or, if she is, lowering the chance that the offender will be punished. But t...

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia declared the federal health insurance mandate and its penalty unconstitutional. The next day, Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius published an op-ed in The Washington Post arguing that the...

Every American president must take on a defining challenge to mobilize the American spirit and advance the American story. The too-brief presidency of John F. Kennedy is remembered for a commitment to land a man on the moon within a decade. And this we did. Ronald Reagan declared that a resolute Ame...

America is choking on laws of our own making. Once a law is in place in the United States, it's almost impossible to dislodge. Our political class assumes that, after a law is forged in the crucible of democracy, it should be honored as if it's one of the Ten Commandments - except it's more like one...

NEW YORK -Thanks to WikiLeaks, even Vlad the Putin can raise an eyebrow and presume to know more about founding American principles, democracy and free speech. It is convenient to blame poor little Julian Assange, the cyberkind who published the leaks that someone stole. He is now a martyr to the br...