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."

WASHINGTON -- The president of the United States takes to the airwaves to urgently persuade the nation to pause before doing something it has no desire to do in the first place.

WASHINGTON -- Having leaked to the world, and thus to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a detailed briefing of the coming U.S. air attack on Syria -- (1) the source (offshore warships and perhaps a bomber or two), (2) the weapon (cruise missiles), (3) the duration (two or three days), (4) the purpose (punishment, not "regime change") -- perhaps we should be publishing the exact time the bombs will fall, lest we disrupt dinner in Damascus.

WASHINGTON -- Egypt today is a zero-sum game. We'd have preferred there be a democratic alternative. Unfortunately, there is none. The choice is binary: the country will be ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood or by the military.

WASHINGTON -- As a reaction to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, many federal drug laws carry strict mandatory sentences. This has stirred unease in Congress and sparked a bipartisan effort to revise and relax some of the more draconian laws.

WASHINGTON -- A combination of early presidential maneuvering and internal policy debate is feeding yet another iteration of that media perennial: the great Republican crackup. This time it's tea party insurgents versus get-along establishment fogies fighting principally over two things: (a) national security and (b) Obamacare.

WASHINGTON -- If there's an iron rule in economics, it is Stein's Law (named after Herb, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers): "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."

WASHINGTON -- The economy stagnates. Syria burns. Scandals lap at his feet. China and Russia mock him, even as a "29-year-old hacker" revealed his nation's spy secrets to the world. How does President Obama respond? With a grandiloquent speech on climate change.

WASHINGTON -- Under the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government does not recognize same-sex marriages even in states that have legalized it. This week, the Supreme Court ruled DOMA unconstitutional.

WASHINGTON -- On Wednesday, Qusair fell to the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.