The news for Obama fans continues to be bad this month. There may be a faint glimmer of a spark of hope in the numbers -- but that's about all I can promise here, sorry about that.

Sadly, Obama's speech to school children has become mired in manufactured controversy from the right, with typical sky-is-falling rhetoric about the evil, evil man who occupies the Oval Office.

Obama absolutely loves the phrase "everything's on the table." But the time for piling "everything" on "the table" is over. Everything being on the table means that no decisions have been made.

Stylistically, the speech was reminiscent of Obama on the campaign trail. But the bar for him is so high that this was only remarkable because it has been so absent of late from Obama.

Political discussions in America are fast becoming solely theological in nature.. Each side has their beliefs. Each has their tenets which they fervently defend. Much of this is done on faith.

The code words change over time (from "nullification" to "states' rights" to Pawlenty's "state sovereignty"), but the idea is the same -- we retain the right to ignore any laws we don't feel like following.

Baucus' was supposed to be the "bipartisan" bill, but the only way it can truly be referred to as such is in the growing bipartisan distaste for the bill.

How time flies. This column marks its second anniversary today, by the calendar if not the Volume number. For the second straight year, we only prod...

No so very long ago, Afghanistan was known as "the forgotten war." But these days, Afghanistan is hard to miss in the headlines. Obama needs to begin talking about our newly-forgotten war: Iraq.

The progressives and Blue Dogs are going to have a showdown. It is going to culminate not in statements to the press (or the lack thereof), not in some whispered whip count, but rather in a very public vote.

I encourage everyone, no matter what part of these United States you live in (or even if you live elsewhere), to take a "trip out West" at some point in your life. Get in a car, and go explore everything west of Denver.