I recently attended Netroots Nation, the annual gathering of America’s liberal bloggers, to see how they were reacting to the first 200 days of the Obama administration and Democratic dominance of Congress. As I wandered the hallways of the cavernous…

GROWING UP IN SAN FRANCISCO, I met Nancy Pelosi when I was a young reporter. She was then chair of the California Democratic Party, and I will always remember her gracious manner and patience toward me. But that “gentle lady”…

Bartle Bull couldn’t believe his eyes. The former civil rights lawyer had been arrested in the South during the 1960s. He once forced local officials in Mississippi to remove nooses that were hanging from tree branches outside polling places. But…

Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg once said of Arlen Specter: “He’s an intimidating senator and very successful at any game of ‘Survivor.’” Indeed, Arlen Specter might as well have been born to be champion of that reality show. He’s beaten cancer,…

Politico.com opened a rich vein of controversy in March when it reported that “President Obama doesn’t go anywhere without his teleprompter.… No other president has used one so consistently and at so many events, large and small.” Indeed, I have…

The census—the supposedly objective counting of every inhabitant of a country—has always had politics lurking in the background. Jesus was born in Bethlehem because the Romans insisted Joseph and Mary go back to the town of their birth to be…

Barack Obama made a campaign pledge to appoint Republicans to his cabinet in order to transcend old political divisions. In retaining Defense Secretary Bob Gates, a registered independent who has  served GOP presidents, Mr. Obama picked a skilled technocrat. His…

LONDON — When a couple years ago I met Vladimir Bukovsky, the former Soviet dissident who spent a decade in the Gulag before being released in 1976, I asked him how he liked living in Britain. He said he loved…

BARACK OBAMA HAS APPOINTED Chicago congressman Rahm Emanuel as his new White House chief of staff. Emanuel, a bruising partisan street fighter, has the kind of blunt- talking tough-guy persona that Obama clearly doesn’t possess but would like to call…

PAT ROONEY was a special kind of businessman. He did far more than merely provide jobs for employees and services for his customers, as important as those goals are. He helped change the course of public policy in our country…