WASHINGTON — Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is a gooey confection of seasonal sentiment. It also is an economic manifesto that Dickens hoped would hit with “twenty … more

WASHINGTON — The budget feud on Capitol Hill is looking like those Vietnam War peace talks when negotiators bickered over the shape of the table.House Republicans, after howling for years about … more

WASHINGTON — You know you’re in trouble when you can’t even get your walk-back story straight. Stung by the worldwide derision that met President Obama’s fudging and fumbling … more

The report from the Arlington, Va., Police Department is, on its face, hardly newsworthy:“SEXUAL BATTERY, 05/05/13, 500 block of S. 23rd Street. On May 5 at 12:35 am, a drunken male subject … more

WASHINGTON — Thirty-one months ago Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell affronted the media and other custodians of propriety by saying something common-sensical. On Oct. 23, 2010, he said: … more

You know a corner’s been turned when someone in a legion of foreign sweatshop workers is given a face. That’s happened in Bangladesh, home of hideous factory conditions — as seen in … more

Enough with this “enough” business.Latest to the question of whether a person is sufficiently identifiable as belonging to a particular demographic is Ted Cruz — the conservative … more

Most Americans — even those who are legislators — know very little about the details of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, so-called Obamacare. Next year, when it goes into … more

Many loud voices in the debate over immigration have been insisting that effective border enforcement must precede any steps that legalize the status of current illegal immigrants.Some analysts, … more

WASHINGTON — President Obama said once again last week that Syria’s “use of chemical weapons would be a game-changer.”The president had played this game many times before. … more