Bob Geiger

"We don't shake hands, we hug,"says Karen Meredith as she pulls a new member of "Team Ken" into her warm embrace. "We're family."

Team Ken is the group of people who meet every Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the life of...

Kristen Fenty knows a thing or two about pain and struggle.

Like all Gold Star Wives -- women whose spouses have died or been killed while on active duty in the U.S. military -- she has learned to live with the grief of losing her life partner, the...

Megan Leavey wanted her dog back. No, she wasn't running around posting flyers on neighborhood bulletin boards and telephone poles -- because her dog was not lost. The dog lover is a former U.S. Marine Corporal and the dog she wanted back is Sergeant Rex, the bomb-sniffing german shepherd she...

"There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs." ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

At 3 a.m. on Sunday, an American soldier walked off his base about a mile from a cluster of villages in the Panjwai district of Afghanistan's Kandahar Province, and went on a shooting spree, killing 16...

When former Governor Mitt Romney signed the landmark Massachusetts health care reform legislation in 2006, he provided health insurance to almost all of his state's citizens. At this point, over 98 percent of all Bay State residents are insured. Of course, this moment of -- gasp! -- demonstrating...

It's safe to say that anyone surprised at National Rifle Association (NRA) hypocrisy on gun violence needs to rethink their belief in the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and Republican bipartisanism. But the statement they released in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords assassination attempt takes the cake.

"Our thoughts...

NEW YORK - In the wake of the foiled terror attack on Northwest Airlines flight 253 in December of 2009, federal officials imposed new restrictions on travelers, including requiring them to remain in their seats for the last hour of a flight without any personal items on their laps.

I stopped publicly answering reader mail quite some time ago -- I generally only did it years ago to make fun of right-wingers sending me hate mail -- but I got a note from Michael Rapaport of Brooklyn, New York who had some interesting comments on me and much of...

Even through my utter euphoria at Barack Obama being elected president, I knew there would be times in the coming years when I would disagree with certain decisions and policy stances taken by our new Democratic president. That's a natural thing -- I just didn't think one of those moments...

President-elect Barack Obama talked in his Saturday radio/web address about the bold national-infrastructure initiative he will send to the new Congress as soon as it convenes next month. It's a plan that the new president believes will boost the economy, provide millions of new jobs during the current recession, while...

There's a giant gray area in how the United States Senate operates and, as someone who covers that body, I'm aware of that and try not to react too quickly when I see something I don't like. Maybe my proximity has made me too sympathetic, but I'm aware that there's...

When I made my Senate-race predictions at the end of October, I guessed that Georgia would be heading to a mandatory run-off election on December 2nd -- if neither Republican Saxby Chambliss or Democratic challenger Jim Martin...

The United States Senate is a relatively small legislative body where members typically enjoy long tenure and develop deep political bonds and personal friendships. So I understand that it must be incredibly difficult for Senate Democrats to do what they must and deny Senator Joe Lieberman further chairmanship of the...

You thought we were done for the year, didn't you?

We saw Barack Obama run the McCain-Palin slime gauntlet for months, while watching him called a terrorist and a socialist on a daily basis and witnessed a bottomless pit of ads for Congressional races in...

Being from a distinctly lower middle-class family in central Nebraska, I grew up in a house where we never wanted for food or shelter, but where there was no money for luxuries and where members of my immediate and...

In part one of my Senate predictions yesterday, I described the races that are almost a foregone conclusion, which took us to Democrats retaining the 51 seats currently in their caucus and looking to the 13 contests we...

Every two years, roughly one-third of the United States Senate comes up for reelection and in 2008 the number of seats up for grabs goes to 35 because of appointed Republican Senators in Wyoming and Mississippi who must now...

When I heard last week that Barack Obama would be leaving the campaign trail on Thursday and Friday to visit his gravely ill grandmother in Hawaii, I have to admit that my first thoughts were not of Obama and...

While the McCain-Palin campaign has officially begun their 30-day, swift-boating plan for Barack Obama by saying he likes to "pal around with terrorists," I'm somewhat sure they'll stop just short of Photoshopping Obama attending an al Qaeda planning meeting...

Imagine you're on your way home from a family vacation or business trip and some border agent or Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screener stops you or a family member at airport security and insists that you turn on your...