WASHINGTON -- The biggest obstacle to the Obama administration's push for tighter gun control may be its own best argument: Newtown.

The striking juxtaposition of the preternaturally perfect Angelina Jolie, waifish and wispy in a ghostly gown, and the scrappy Pakistani schoolgirl Malala, her face cruelly misshapen by the effects of a Taliban bullet to the head, captures the confluence of feminine power assembled here to "lean on" the world to save women and girls.

CAMDEN, S.C. -- It isn't often that one gets to hear both the strains of "Dixie" and an African drum concert in the same public square. Nor, usually, are statue unveilings the riveting stuff of storytelling.

That is, unless one happens to be in the oldest inland city, population 7,000, of one of the oddest little states in a nation of oddness.

WASHINGTON -- No matter what Barack Obama does, he cannot escape the shadow of his former political opponent.

NEW YORK -- The recent rape conviction of two teenagers, one of whom also distributed a photo and sent cruel text messages about their victim, has captured the "bystander effect" in graphic and nauseating detail.

WASHINGTON -- The media love optics and no one understands this better than President Obama.

WASHINGTON -- Excuse me while I roll my eyes over the latest "mommy war."

WASHINGTON -- If second-term presidents feel liberated by re-election to pursue bolder agendas, first ladies often become more comfortable to be their own person.

WASHINGTON -- RINO-hunting, the long-popular political sport that morphed in 2008 into a sort of hysteria-driven obsession, lately has become a suicide mission.

WASHINGTON -- We may never know exactly what happened in Benghazi the night Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed, but it's becoming increasingly clear that our response was short of optimum.