WASHINGTON -- Nothing is what it seems in Washington at the moment you see it. A triple witching hour of scandal has Republicans bursting with bloodlust. But they should be careful what they wish for, because they may get it.

For now, the evidence is obvious and overwhelming that the...

WASHINGTON -- Five years ago this spring, I was in Philadelphia watching candidate Barack Obama defuse a dangerous controversy over race in American life. It was masterful.

Five years later here in Washington, I have just watched President Barack Obama do just the opposite: He failed to tamp down the...

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Darrell Issa, who made a fortune in car alarms, is now blaring his sirens before the start of a Wednesday hearing on the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. The California Republican and his staff are promising a parade of whistle-blowers, who they say will expose inconsistencies,...

WASHINGTON -- The sunny, confident President Barack Obama who was the master of all that he surveyed at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last Saturday night was nowhere in sight at the podium in the White House press room Tuesday morning. In his place was a glum character, whose gloomy...

WASHINGTON -- Lord help me, but I like Katy Perry. She had that one album of pop as perfectly synthetic as Cheez Whiz and as hooky as Neil Sedaka in his prime: sunny, mindless California.

So when I spotted her hurrying past me in a hotel corridor before the White...

WASHINGTON -- In the winter of 1996, forest fires were raging across a tinder-dry Texas. Then-Gov. George W. Bush met the press to outline the state's response.

He told reporters assembled in an ornate meeting room in the capitol that he was, of course, on top of the situation,...

WASHINGTON -- For President Barack Obama, immigration reform can't come soon enough. His political brand is all about inclusivity and civil rights. Yet he is derided as the "Deporter-in-Chief," thousands of people are languishing in deportation holding cells, and his administration is on the way to setting a record for...

WASHINGTON -- George Will is a thoughtful guy, but he and other conservatives are wrong to accuse President Barack Obama of manipulating sequestration to make its cuts more dire and dramatic.

If you read the relevant laws and the sober-minded technical analyses, you know that it is Congress, starting in...

WASHINGTON -- Did you know where Chechnya was? You probably do now. Do you know who Tamerlane was? Maybe you should look him up; the now-dead "Man in the Black Hat" was named after the 14th century Mongol conqueror.

In ways we never could have imagined, terrorists with roots in...

WASHINGTON -- I saw Vice President Joe Biden in the Senate late last week and asked him about the chances of passing the gun reform legislation expanding background checks. Usually the soul of confidence and good cheer, Biden gave me a weary smile. "I've got my fingers crossed," he said.

Les cris sont une douce musique aux oreilles des terroristes, une bande-son qu'ils ont besoin d'entendre lorsqu'ils mettent en scène leurs doléances en assassinant des innocents.

Ce sont les rois du chaos et les ennemis de la liberté, car leur seul objectif est de rendre la société esclave de la...

WASHINGTON -- Screams are sweet music to terrorists, the soundtrack they need to hear as they dramatize their grievances by murdering innocents.

They are the kings of chaos and the enemies of freedom, because their only true aim is to shackle society in the chains of fear.

But Monday was...

WASHINGTON -- Kentucky Democrats, you need to get your act together. Nature abhors a vacuum. So does politics. And right now you're all getting sucked into the void.

In the absence of a serious candidate to challenge Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2014, flummoxed Democrats in Kentucky are...

WASHINGTON -- As is often the case, we've been burying the lead as we dissect the leaked recording of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's private whack-a-mole strategy session.

Most of the talk, on the recording and in the media, has been about the cold-blooded, ruthless assessment of the...

David Keene, president of the National Rifle Association, expressed pleasure that the new gun control compromise had moved in the NRA's direction -- but he declined to say that it had moved far enough. In fact, he told The Huffington Post that the group remains opposed to any...

WASHINGTON -- Let's hear a round of applause for the Founding Fathers, those dead white men whom conservatives love to lionize. Had it not been for the founders, there would be no relief from the spectacle of a U.S. Congress bound and gagged by the National Rifle Association and the...

ST. LOUIS -- Of all the blinkered buzz-saw cuts in this year’s $85 billion spending sequestration, perhaps none is as counterproductive -- or as flat-out boneheaded -- as the one now hitting medical research under way in a refurbished industrial expanse of central St. Louis.

Sequester cuts to the rapidly...

WASHINGTON -- Former Sen. Wendell H. Ford is 88 years old, but still in full possession not only of his faculties but also of his role as the godfather of the Democratic Party in Kentucky. His conversation earlier this year with Ashley Judd may, in the end, have helped change...

WASHINGTON -- We are watching a social revolution hit the Supreme Court. The only question is whether the justices slow it down a bit or accelerate it when they render their decisions.

After throwing out hints over two days of arguments, this is where the court appears to be on...

WASHINGTON -- "We had to change the subject," said David Keene, as if making an obvious, unobjectionable point.

We were sitting at the back table of his favorite Italian restaurant. Keene, the 67-year-old president of the National Rifle Association, exuded a satisfied calm. His thick white hair was combed in...