I don't know how many times I've seen liberal commentators look back with nostalgia to the days when a young man fresh out of high school or military service could get a well-paying job on an assembly line at a unionized auto factory that could carry him through to a comfortable retirement.

How much will Obamacare -- call it the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act if you like -- cost over the next 10 years?

Time for a postmortem on the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

"I don't worry about the Constitution," said Rep. Phil Hare, Democrat of Illinois, at a town hall meeting where voters questioned his support of the legislation that became Obamacare. You can find the clip on youtube.com, where it has 462,084 hits.

"I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."

President Barack Obama's 17-minute video, "The Road We've Traveled," gives us an idea of how he wants to frame the issues in the fall election.

As I listened to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan describe his latest budget plan in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute this week, I couldn't help thinking how different things will be in Britain when Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne steps out of No. 11 Downing St. with a battered red briefcase holding his budget for the forthcoming year.

The 2012 congressional redistricting cycle following the 2010 Census is just about over and done with. And it seems likely to make much less difference than many of us expected.

In the cold, gray numbers of election returns and exit poll percentages, a reader with some imagination can find clues to people's deep feelings, their hopes and fears, their self-images and moral values.

Few social scientists, and even fewer political scientists, have done as much to improve American life as James Q. Wilson, who died last week at age 80.