"This war, like all wars, must end. That's what history advises ..."

WASHINGTON -- "Horrible customer service." That's what the newly fired IRS commissioner averred was the agency's only sin in singling out conservative political groups for discriminatory treatment.

WASHINGTON -- You know you're in trouble when you can't even get your walk-back story straight.

WASHINGTON -- Fate is fickle, power cyclical, and nothing is new under the sun.

WASHINGTON -- Terrorism is speech -- speech that gathers its audience by killing innocents as theatrically as possible.

WASHINGTON -- Well, at least we're starting to get the procedure right. Washington has rediscovered the beauty of the boring. It's called "regular order," using the normal, routine, constitutional process to arrive at, for example, a budget.

WASHINGTON -- Is a bipartisan immigration deal at hand? It's close.

"I honestly believe that if any Israeli parent sat down with those [Palestinian] kids, they'd say I want these kids to succeed."

-- Barack Obama, in Jerusalem, March 21

WASHINGTON -- Very true. But how does the other side feel about Israeli kids?

Consider that the most revered parent in Palestinian society is Mariam Farhat of Gaza. Her distinction? Three of her sons died in various stages of trying to kill Israelis -- one in a suicide attack, shooting up and hurling grenades in a room full of Jewish students.

WASHINGTON -- In choice of both topic and foil, Rand Paul's now legendary Senate filibuster was a stroke of political genius.

WASHINGTON -- The president suggested he would hold off introducing his own immigration bill as long as bipartisan Senate negotiations were proceeding apace -- until his own immigration bill mysteriously leaked precisely as bipartisan Senate negotiations were proceeding apace.