The debate over fiscal responsibility has been muddled by the Great Recession; inevitably, perhaps, arguments over long-term fiscal problems have been conflated with debates over short-term recovery programs. Both debates have suffered terribly as a consequence.

As the economic news continued to show poor job growth, Rep. Buck McKeon, and defense contractor Lockheed-Martin saw a major opportunity to protect the defense budget and their bottom lines.

Remembering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alongside 9/11, tacitly justifying those conflicts, perverts our history.

John Bolton and Martin Peretz, in undermining America's core values of a big-tent approach to accommodating and absorbing other societies, are not performing a patriotic duty.

The internet today -- despite the occasional bouts of disinformation and invented scandal -- is far more of an effective and immediate marketplace of information than the world for which Bernard Kouchner seems to pine.

The problem here in Cheneyville is the Old Man's off his rocker. That's the way some folks are seeing it, anyway. He's lost his marbles, they say. His brain's turned into oatmeal. He doesn't know his --

If I were Dick Cheney I'd probably be doing exactly what Dick Cheney is doing. It beats going to prison.

Colin Powell and Robert McNamara exemplify the ever-loyal, unquestioning subordinate. McNamara self-righteously invoked Dean Acheson's quiet departure from the New Deal as his model, but Acheson's silence did not assure him a place at the World Bank. If McNamara had denounced the war, would it have made a difference? What if the very popular Colin Powell had expended some of his political capital and denounced the dubious rationalization for war against Iraq? Perhaps their dramatic gestures would have been wasted. But Archibald Cox's forceful stand against Nixon in October 1973 is instructive, showing that public resistance to a superior can make a difference.

You can't turn on your TV these days without seeing the former veep with his latest account of what they did back when they were in charge, why they did it and how wonderfully it all worked. What's up with that?

Governing has always been about choosing, about balancing competing interests. There's security -- but there's also liberty, and privacy, and commerce, and justice. Some things that we could be doing, we choose not to do, because of the time, the effort, the cost, the level of intrusion involved.

By Stanley Kutler President Barack Obama dramatically changed course twice on May 13 when he announced he would not release photos of American milita...

We need something like a truth commission in this country to explore how and why America became a nation that embraced torture at the highest levels of political office.

We've found one of Dick Cheney's new undisclosed locations: the Starbucks on Chain Bridge Road in McLean, Va. And while he may be dwelling on the "to...

My first reaction listening to the just one-notch-short-of-a-love-fest hearing was that Norm Coleman's absence has made a huge difference.

Obama should stop this torment that is being prepared for Kennedy by offering her the Court of St. James, the U.S. Ambassadorship to Great Britain.

"I feel very good about a lot of the things we've done in this administration," Cheney told Chris Wallace in a Fox News interview this past weekend.

The order is beyond audacious -- incumbent presidents decide and judge the nature of national security, not former presidents.

Obama should look to Cheney to understand how a pro -- even one who so damaged the interests of the nation -- managed power and purpose in government.

This debate over oil and energy policy disgusts me because both Obama and McCain are trying to force short term, knee jerk responses to a major policy challenge for the nation.