Columns

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies," said Winston Churchill. What is the truth behind the Beltway lies about these crazy Republicans crashing our government?

It is astonishing how admittance to the ruling class can change someone.

WASHINGTON -- Ask most people on Capitol Hill and they'll say: 50-50. Those are the odds they give for a government shutdown.

The Republican Party has experienced a calamity -- the re-election of Barack Obama -- and some parts of the party are behaving like an animal in a trap, chewing off a foot in an effort to cope with it.

After his narrow defeat by Gerald Ford at the Kansas City convention in 1976, Ronald Reagan was seen as a has-been.

America has gone back to isolationism, many commentators are saying. Not just the dovish Democrats, but also Republicans who were so hawkish a decade ago are turning away from the world.

Florida, by statute, both enables and endorses failure. Florida Statute 1003.21 provides that any student who attains the age of 16 years during the school year is not subject to compulsory school attendance beyond the date upon which he or she attains that age

Why are liberals in so much denial about liberal bias in the news? Why do they think they're bending over backward to be "objective" doing that which Republicans see as partisan activism?

This has been the worst time, politically, for President Barack Obama since he took office. Recent polls reveal that public confidence in both his domestic and foreign policies has been falling, amid revelations about their defects and dangers. Even people who once supported and defended him have now turned against him.

WASHINGTON -- In January 1938, Rep. Louis Ludlow, an Indiana Democrat, proposed a constitutional amendment strongly supported by the public: "Except in the event of an invasion of the United States or its territorial possessions and attack upon its citizens residing therein, the authority of Congress to declare war shall not become effective until confirmed by a majority of all votes cast thereon in a nationwide referendum."

Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck is sometimes credited with the proverb, "God has a special providence for fools, drunks and the United States of America."

WASHINGTON -- In the liberal remake of "Casablanca," the police captain comes upon the scene of the shooting and orders his men to "round up the usual weapons."

With the noble and lofty goal of improving education in America, a group of educators and leaders in the education reform movement came together to develop a national set of standards in the hope that our educational system in the various states would meet a common standard and impart a common base of knowledge for all children in America.

President Obama barely noticed, but there was a horrific mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday.

WASHINGTON -- About 30 years ago as a young reporter in Florida, I was assigned a series on gun control in response to gun violence, which had peaked in the U.S. in 1980.