Six months into a second term and the Obama White House is on the defensive and floundering: Benghazi, the IRS's investigations of right-wing groups, the Justice Department's snooping into journalists' phone records, Obamacare behind schedule, the Administration's push for gun control ending in failure.

Should the blame fall mainly on...

Many of you soon-to-be college graduates are determined to make the world a better place. Some of you are choosing careers in public service or joining nonprofits or volunteering in your communities.

But many of you are cynical about politics. You see the system as inherently corrupt. You doubt real...

After years of repeated reports of sexual assaults -- and years of promises to prevent them, and then years of studies and commissions to find the best way of doing so -- a Defense Department study released Tuesday estimates that some 26,000 people in the military were sexually...

The West, Texas chemical and fertilizer plant where at least 15 were killed and more than 200 injured a few weeks ago hadn't been fully inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1985. (A partial inspection in 2011 had resulted in $5,250 in fines.)

OSHA and its state...

We remain in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. The Labor Department reports that 165,000 new jobs were created in April -- below the average gains of 183,000 in the previous three months.

We can't achieve escape velocity. Since mid-2010, the three-month rolling average of job gains hasn't dipped...

The Fed's policy of keeping interest rates near zero is another form of trickle-down economics.

For evidence, look no further than Apple's decision to borrow a whopping $17 billion and turn it over to its investors in the form of dividends and stock buy-backs.

Apple is...

In the election of 1952 my father voted for Dwight Eisenhower. When I asked him why he explained that "FDR's debt" was still burdening the economy -- and that I and my children and my grandchildren would be paying it down for as long as we lived.

I was...

Economic forecasters exist to make astrologers look good. Most had forecast growth of at least 3 percent (on an annualized basis) in the first quarter. But we learned this morning (in the Commerce Department's report) it grew only 2.5 percent.

That's better than the 2 percent growth last...

The xenophobia has already begun.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today urged him to reconsider immigration legislation because of the bombings in Boston. "The facts emerging in the Boston Marathon bombing have exposed a weakness in our current system," Paul...

My first reaction on hearing of the Senate's failure to get 60 votes for even modest measures to regulate the flow of guns into the hands of people who shouldn't have them, such as background checks supported by 90 percent of Americans, was to be furious at the spinelessness of...

We come together as Americans when confronting common disasters and common threats, such as occurred in Boston on Monday, but we continue to split apart economically.

Anyone who wants to understand the dis-uniting of America needs to see how dramatically we're segregating geographically by income and wealth. Today I'm giving...

The biggest economic debate is between Keynesians (who want more government spending and lower interest rates in order to fuel demand) and supply-side "austerics" (who want lower taxes on the wealthy and on corporations to boost incentives to hire and invest, and who see government deficits crowding out private investment).

John Boehner, Speaker of the House, revealed why it's politically naive for the president to offer up cuts in Social Security in the hope of getting Republicans to close some tax loopholes for the rich. "If the president believes these modest entitlement savings are needed to help shore up these...

So far, the much-dreaded "sequester" -- some $85 billion in federal spending cuts between March and September 30 -- hasn't been evident to most Americans.

The dire warnings that had issued from the White House beforehand -- threatening that Social Security checks would be delayed, airport security checks would be...

Bad news on the economy. It added only 88,000 jobs in March -- the slowest pace of job growth in nine months.

While the jobless rate fell to 7.6 percent, much of the drop was due to the labor force shrinking by almost a half million people. If you're not...

The White House and prominent Democrats are talking about reducing future Social Security payments by using a formula for adjusting for inflation that's stingier than the current one. It'scalled the "Chained CPI." I did this video so you can understand it -- and understand why it's so wrongheaded.

Even...

Their agreement on is very preliminary and hasn't yet even been blessed by the so-called Gang of Eight senators working on immigration reform, but the mere fact that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Chamber of Commerce President Thomas J. Donohue agreed on anything is remarkable.

The question is whether...

Who says American politics is gridlocked? A tidal wave of politicians from both sides of the aisle who just a few years ago opposed same-sex marriage are now coming around to support it. Even if the Supreme Court were decide to do nothing about California's Proposition 8 or DOMA, it...

We're still legislating and regulating private morality, while at the same time ignoring the much larger crisis of public morality in America.

In recent weeks Republican state legislators have decided to thwart the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which gave women the right to have an abortion...

Prominent Democrats -- including the President and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi -- are openly suggesting that Medicare be means-tested and Social Security payments be reduced by applying a lower adjustment for inflation.

This is even before they've started budget negotiations with Republicans -- who still refuse to raise...