About 10,000 men and women have served in the United States Congress. Robert C. Byrd, who died Monday at age 92, served longer than all the rest -- more than 57 years, with six in the House and 51 in the Senate.
Republicans are encountering some speed bumps on what they hope is the road to victory in the November elections. Their candidates for Republican open Senate seats in Ohio and Missouri are running no better than even in recent polls. The independent candidacy of Gov. Charlie Crist is threatening Marco Rubio's bid to hold the Republican Senate seat in Florida.
Laments about polarization are filling the air -- or at least that part of the air in which friends and family members have political discussions. It has been widely noted that every Republican member of Congress has a voting record to the right of every Democrat and every Democrat is to the left of every Republican. There is no partisan overlap anymore.
If you want to watch someone squirm, take a look at the two-minute videotape of Attorney General Eric Holder dodging Republican Rep. Lamar Smith's question of whether "radical Islam" motivated the Times Square bomber.
LONDON -- We Americans may have declared our independence from Britain in 1776, but there are still similar rhythms in British and American politics. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan both came to power amid the ruins of the 1970s and restored their nations' economies and spirits in the 1980s.
Left parties are in trouble in the Anglosphere. Here in America, Democrats are doing worse in the polls than at any time in the last 50 years. In Britain, the Labor Party is on the brink of finishing third, behind both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, in the election next Thursday.
Setting legislative priorities has been one of the chief tasks of American presidents for the past century. Sometimes, they concentrate on changing public policy. At other times, they highlight issues for political reasons, with an eye to the next election.
Almost a year ago, in a Washington Examiner column on the Chrysler bailout, I reflected on the Obama administration's decision to force bondholders to accept 33 cents on the dollar on secured debts while giving United Auto Worker retirees 50 cents on the dollar on unsecured debts.
This was a clear violation of the ordinary bankruptcy rule that secured creditors are fully paid off before unsecured creditors get anything.
The retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens means that in coming months we'll have another hearing on a Supreme Court nominee. But it's not likely to be the sort of hearing we got used to in the two decades after Edward Kennedy declared war on Robert Bork in 1987.
Over the last two decades, the United States has intervened militarily in several countries to protect human rights. Now, writes historian Mark Mazower in World Affairs, "the concept of humanitarian intervention is dying if not dead." And a good thing, too, he concludes.
