On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a new comprehensive immigration reform bill with a bipartisan vote. It isn't perfect, but the key elements that many of us have been fighting for are intact. That really is a triumph of the common good.

Underlying the sharp divisions over fundamental questions is the widening fissure between the two parties. It's fashionable to describe this development as the result of a more or less symmetrical shift -- with Democrats moving to the left while Republicans move to the right. That conclusion is just plain wrong.

So what is No Labels foreshadowing? Perhaps in this era of the breakdown of effective party leadership and process a new 'thing' is emerging to take up the banner and slack in looking after the public interest.

That this travesty of process is a resounding failure on all sides is a burden we all bear with appropriate shame. But the way forward is not through escalating antagonism -- if further escalation is even possible at this point.

WASHINGTON — A filibuster averted. A likely accord on immigration reform. A former Republican presidential candidate thanked – publicly! &...

Obama is prepared to lose a few battles in order to win the war. That is not being weak or a turncoat. It is being pragmatic and smart. It is also being presidential.

We are told that Obama's budget will trade "modest entitlement savings" for immediate tax hikes on the corporate rich. If that is so, the trade that will be proposed tomorrow will reflect poor judgment -- poor moral judgment, poor economic judgment and poor political judgment.

It may be hard to pass climate change legislation by working with conservatives, but it will be nearly impossible to do so without them. That leaves us two choices: act without Congress, or move towards an approach that can get widespread support.

There's a growing national consensus that fighting to the death doesn't meet the needs of modern America. Only a president can instruct the nation on the need for a re-thinking of our political values.

Much as the U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan eventually became like the medieval holy warriors they fought, so too have the countries' political systems converged in terms of their polarization.

Please, Mr. President: no grand bargains with the defeated. No toleration of their scorched-earth policies. Stop inviting Republicans to dinner. Start eating them for lunch. Democratic charm-offensives focused on Republican lawmakers can come at too high a price.

WASHINGTON -- A pair of Democratic trackers didn't seem too disappointed last summer when they couldn't find Rep. Allen West at a venue on the outskir...

As long as both parties go into negotiations determined to make each other side look bad, they have about as much chance of reaching a meaningful bipartisan agreement as a non-floater has of beating Michael Phelps across the pool.

The world watches this absurd show of impotence with incredulity. So, the most important country in the world and a model of democracy (or at least we believe so) are unable to have a serious dialogue on a measure that they accepted over a year ago and knew they had to fix?

The two-party system has a long history in America, but is no longer serving the interests of our country.

Rhetorical manipulation clouds reality. We aren't debating the facts anymore, but how the facts are delivered.

Well, here's one for David Brooks' class on humility. In his most recent piece, the New York Times columnist moves a bit beyond his previous "I made t...

One of the only subjects that Democrats and Republicans agree on right now is that our political process is broken.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's creation of an independent Presidential Commission on Election Administration to address voting problems has sp...

How quickly would you work to achieve a goal with an uncertain deadline if missing the deadline in question could prove fatal?

WASHINGTON -- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), in a speech designed to boost his reelection this year and a possible 2016 presidential candidacy, t...

As the Republican Party agonizes over its ideological future and the Democratic Party wrangles over its commitment to progressivism, two exemplary Mid-Atlantic governors have emerged to set the tone for a possible consensus mode of governance.