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With Republicans moving ever further to the right and Democrats to the left — though not so far as Republicans are to the right — there really is a crying need for a centrist alternative. President Barack Obama hopes to win re-election with populist appeals for “fairness,” meaning raising taxes on the highest earners regardless…

Much has been written in recent months about the future of the Republican Party, as “conservative” Rick Santorum proved popular among many primary voters against “centrist” Mitt Romney. This centrist vs. conservative meme is an oversimplification of the primary fight between Romney and Santorum, but it is not new. For years, the media have been…

Congress is getting more serious about cyber-security. Cyber-security involves everything from a foreign power attacking our ability to control the national power grid, to a disgruntled employee hacking into the office computer and stealing proprietary corporate documents. I covered additional thoughts on national cyber security earlier. There is no national standard for cyber-security and no…

WHEN CONGRESS first considered allowing shareholders to cast a non-binding vote on executive compensation — “say on pay” — three years ago, we were skeptical. One of our concerns was that the votes would be meaningless if they were truly non-binding. The other concern was that “say on pay” might prove harmful if it empowered inexpert shareholders motivated…

Unemployment remains high, job growth is sluggish and millions of Americans have given up hope of ever finding work. So how do creative legislators propose to generate new hiring? Easy: Make it more expensive. That’s right. In Congress and several states, some lawmakers want to increase the legally mandated minimum wage. They think employers should…

“I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” — Barack Obama, on the constitutional challenge to his health-care law, April 2  “Unprecedented”? Judicial review has been the centerpiece of the American…

AS oil and gasoline prices rise, political pressure to tap the roughly 700 million barrels in the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve is building, including among some in Congress. The global oil market is fundamentally strained and suffering from an array of unwelcome but unremarkable problems. Yet the oil reserve is neither designed nor well equipped…

If there is one lesson from the financial crisis that should be indelible, it is that unregulated derivatives are prone to catastrophic failure. And yet, nearly four years after the crash, and nearly two years since the passage of the Dodd-Frank law, the multitrillion-dollar derivatives market is still dominated by a handful of big banks,…

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…

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…

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…

Who’d have thought that Rush Limbaugh would become the great Uniter in this divisive political season? Indeed, he has united decent people of all stripes and persuasions with his vile remarks about a Georgetown University law student. Perhaps by now you’ve heard of Sandra Fluke, who created a smallish tempest when she tried to testify…

The House intelligence committee used to be one of the meanest snake pits in Congress, a place where members were so busy sniping at each other that they failed to provide effective oversight of the intelligence community. It was a model of what was wrong with Washington. Amazingly enough, the committee has found its way…