First-time author Carol Ross Joynt, a disarming, dishy denizen of Georgetown in the heart of the nation's capital, is a woman in full. I heard her say so at a Ritz-Carlton lunch during an interview on her captivating memoir, Innocent Spouse, about running afoul of the IRS when...

Oprah, who knew you have a great Friend in American history?

Her name is Lucretia Mott, and she also has a glow that could light a ship's way to shore. The common language between thee, Oprah, and a famed Quaker lady from Philadelphia -- the early champion...

Read it and weep, Sophocles.

The war in Vietnam is the American tragedy of our lifetimes. The saddest part of the story is that it's not over yet. Long after the last bombs dropped and the shooting stopped, the war we lost has profoundly influenced American foreign policy....

In images of the uprising in Egypt -- the multitudes of rock-throwers, street worshipers, bloody and bandaged faces with eyes that burn through the lens -- many were missing. You don't have to be a foreign policy expert to see that.

The women and girls of Cairo were nowhere...

Washington must write Hollywood a thank you note for bringing back the bad old days of the Plame affair in the new movie Fair Game. Finally, art has brought more truth to life in telling this hauntingly familiar tale of our times.

In a compelling portrait of the spy...

by Jamie Stiehm (with apologies to Lewis Carroll)

Down, down, down a Fox News hole Christine O'Donnell of Delaware went, a passage that turned into a long dark fall. On this autumn day of the unpredictable adventure that was her life, Christine planned to visit the land of Oz...

"Conservative" is way too good a word for the Tea Party. (Note to reader: I continue this theme on USNews.com/Opinion, in a piece published Friday 7/23/2010.)

"Conservative" is frankly too good a word for Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which recently ran an...

An August Encomium -- I heard Edward Moore Kennedy sing that song once, leading everyone at his holiday party through the Woody Guthrie verses with unforgettable joie de vivre, while dressed in a lion's costume.

Senator Kennedy dearly loved to laugh, even at himself as the last liberal lion...

Robert and I have been trying to lunch together since June. He works in Georgetown, which isn't far, but this isn't a matter of miles.

Alas, the art of lunching seems to be getting lost in Washington among my set -- let's say around Obama's age, 48 and under....

President Barack Obama isn't the only 40-something Abraham Lincoln admirer in Washington, D.C. We each love his way with words and his prairie populist provenance, but let's just say the 16th president is my historical boyfriend. Let me explain how this crush is blooming like a cherry blossom.

In...

The first time we beheld Michelle Obama and her husband as a vision in black and white was on January 20, 2009, the evening of all the Inaugural Balls.

They looked charmed, as if like they could dance all night at each affair. But what was truly smashing was...

For a girl growing up in Wisconsin, Abraham Lincoln was the president next door, the one whose corner house we went to see in Springfield.

Like so many who fell under his spell since he was born 200 years ago today, I feel that to know Lincoln is to...

Tom Daschle was the man with a plan for dealing with the health care crisis. He is also a man of the people, despite the wave of popular anger that caught him on his way to becoming President Obama's Cabinet Secretary of Health and Human Services.

This Washington drama...

Political history is coming round again, an almost eerie replay of a new Democratic president's struggles to reach across the aisle to Republicans in Congress. Sixteen years since summer 1993, President Obama is getting the same results President Clinton achieved on bipartisanship: too much of nothing.

And I mean...

Even with a shiny new Barack Obama glow emanating out of the White House, I can't shake the passing strange sensation that a trio of governors we've gotten to know lately on the national stage have been as truly weird as the three witches in MacBeth.

Consider the evidence:...

Even with a new Barack Obama presidential glow emanating out of the White House, I can't shake the disturbing sensation that the trio of governors we've gotten to know lately on the national stage have been as truly weird as the three witches in MacBeth.

Consider the evidence: Governors...

What a difference a president makes to a free people.

What Milton, the poet of Paradise Lost, might write about our fall from light to dark between 2000 and 2008.

What a price we paid for the other half of the American electorate supporting George W. Bush: not...

The Pilgrims Were America's First Community Organizers

As Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) chirped on-camera while a wriggling turkey was beheaded in the background, one could only feel a sense of thanksgiving that this sprightly but unschooled woman will not be the next Vice President of the United States....

Let Barack Obama's open Illinois Senate seat go to Jesse L. Jackson -- Senior.

He has talked a lot of talk, to be sure, but also walked the walk for 40 years. Serving two years in the U.S. Senate would be a fitting benediction for a remarkable career anchored...

The death of Barack Obama's grandmother the day before the presidential election is like the crushing of a glass at a Jewish wedding: a reminder of the bitter with the sweet that life serves up even on the happiest of days.

Their parting also has a profound lesson for...