Politics

On Monday the Supreme Court began three days of oral arguments concerning possible — actually, probable and various — constitutional infirmities in Obamacare. The justices have received many amicus briefs, one of which merits special attention because of the elegant scholarship and logic with which it addresses an issue that has not been as central…

They were born on August days 15 years apart, at opposite ends of the baby-boom generation, Bill Clinton in 1946 and Barack Obama in 1961. Both came into the world under circumstances that made it surpassingly unlikely either boy would grow up to be president of the United States. It is hard to imagine two…

Florida’s now-infamous “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law may not, in the end, protect the man who killed an unarmed teenager in a shooting last month that has sparked national outrage. That would be the most just outcome, given the mounting evidence that George Zimmerman followed and confronted 17-year-old Trayvon Martin before shooting him as he…

The inescapable foreign policy issue for U.S. presidential candidates this year is whether American power is declining and, if so, what to do about it. This strategic conundrum lies behind every challenge the United States faces, from Egypt to Afghanistan to China. For your election-year reading table, I recommend three new books that tee up…

THE Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently set off a ruckus when he attacked America’s colleges as “indoctrination mills” from which God-fearing Americans should keep their distance. Calling President Obama a “snob” for urging all Americans to go to college, he joined a long tradition that runs from Andrew Carnegie, who more than a century…

The 2012 major party presidential candidates have put forward a variety of ideas and plans to deal with our huge deficits and mounting debt. All four of the GOP presidential candidates have proposed plans with varying degrees of specificity, and President Barack Obama set out his plan in his recently proposed budget. Unfortunately, all the…

As the Republican primaries continue to follow a long dream sequence imagined by David Plouffe — another muddled weekend, but more signs of Santorum strength — it’s worth keeping an eye on what the White House is doing. The people there aren’t twiddling their thumbs or using them to high-five each other in glee over…

The new Post-ABC poll shows that “46 percent approve of the way Obama is handling his job; 50 percent disapprove. That’s a mirror image of his 50 to 46 positive split in early February. The downshift is particularly notable among independents — 57 percent of whom now disapprove — and among white people without college…

The other day, David Bernstein argued that there’s been an “important tipping point” where many national media figures have come to understand that “in the Romney campaign, they are dealing with something unlike the normal spin and hyperbole.” Bernstein suggested they are realizing Romney has crossed into groundbreaking levels of dishonesty. I wish I were…

The rate of sexual assaults on American women serving in the military remains intolerably high. While an estimated 17 percent of women in the general population become victims at some point in their lives, a 2006 study of female veterans financed by the Department of Veterans Affairs estimated that between 23 percent and 33 percent…

For centuries, the best and brightest from around the world have come to America seeking a better life and economic opportunity. They come to study in our universities and work at our companies. We take this “brain drain” to the United States for granted, but times are changing and other countries are catching on to…

Separation of Church, State. Did Rick Santorum sleep through constitutional law? Separation between church and state is part of the foundation that made the U.S. great. Just observe the many punitive theocracies in the world. Santorum doesn’t respect the separation between church and state and his regressive views on contraception, abortion, gay people and disdain…

Two policies of the Obama administration illustrate an axiom: As government expands, its lawfulness contracts. Consider the administration’s desire to continue funding UNESCO and to develop a national curriculum for primary and secondary education. In 1994, Congress stipulated that no U.S. funds shall go to “any affiliated organization” of the United Nations that “grants full…

So Greece has officially defaulted on its debt to private lenders. It was an “orderly” default, negotiated rather than simply announced, which I guess is a good thing. Still, the story is far from over. Even with this debt relief, Greece – like other European nations forced to impose austerity in a depressed economy –…