Court decision on DNA not in spirit of Constitution

The Supreme Court's recent ruling allowing police to compel DNA samples from persons arrested for serious offenses will solve cold cases around the country, putting dangerous criminals behind bars. But despite this clearly beneficial impact, the court's 5-4 ruling was wrong - and may be more…

Ask questions before we forget what privacy was

Someday, a young girl will look up into her father's eyes and ask, "Daddy, what was privacy?"

When will GOP stop acting juvenile and govern?

With budgetary tantrums in the Senate and investigative play-acting in the House, the Republican Party is proving once again that it simply cannot be taken seriously.

Even if alone, Obama must address climate change

President Obama should spend his remaining years in office making the United States part of the solution to climate change, not part of the problem. If Congress sticks to its policy of obstruction and willful ignorance, Obama should use his executive powers to the fullest extent. We are out …

Possibility of intervention in Syria raise all sorts of questions

WASHINGTON

Sequestration cuts are supposed to hurt, so let them

President Obama had the opportunity this week to make an irresponsible Congress face the consequences of its own dumb actions. For reasons I cannot fathom, he took a pass.

Stains on The Decider's legacy getting darker

In retrospect, George W. Bush's legacy doesn't look as bad as it did when he left office. It looks worse.

When we say 'never again,' we don't always mean it

The nation demonstrated again last week how resolute it can be when threatened by murderous terrorists - and how helpless when ordered to heel by smug lobbyists for the gun industry.

Eugene Robinson: Surely GOP's loony behavior is some kind of trick

I think I've figured it out. Republicans must be staging some kind of fiendishly clever plot to lure Democrats into a false sense of security.

Treating test scores like sales targets is a mistake

It is time to acknowledge that the fashionable theory of school reform - requiring that pay and job security for teachers, principals and administrators depend on their students' standardized test scores - is at best a well-intentioned mistake, and at worst nothing but a racket.

What price must we pay for 2nd Amendment?

The gunman in the Newtown massacre fired 154 bullets from his Bushmaster military-style rifle in less than five minutes, killing 20 first-graders and six adults. He brought with him 10 large-capacity magazines, each holding up to 30 rounds, which allowed him to reload quickly. He also carrie…

Let's hope court does right thing on gay marriage

WASHINGTON

Senate has moral duty to vote on assault weapons

Shame on Harry Reid for killing any prospect of an assault weapons ban. I understand why he did it, but that doesn't make it right.

Ryan is back with another disingenuous budget

WASHINGTON

Rand Paul's marathon 'talking' filibuster wasn't just hot air

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Why I hate the sequester: Let me count the ways

WASHINGTON

Grieving father's plea should be heard, heeded

Most of our top elected officials probably didn't notice - they were too busy making fools of themselves over an idiotic budget "crisis" of their own manufacture - but something worth remembering happened in Washington this week: A parent pleaded softly for a ban on military-style weapons li…

Obama must act to curb coal-power emissions

WASHINGTON

Why things are looking up for immigration reform

Republicans spent the weekend trumpeting shock and outrage over President Obama's leaked "backup plan" on immigration. In dysfunctional Washington, this means that prospects for comprehensive reform - including what amounts to an amnesty for the undocumented - are getting brighter.

Obama seeks to win argument, reshape future

In his bid to be remembered as a transformational leader, President Obama is following the playbook of an ideological opposite, Margaret Thatcher. First you win the argument, she used to say, then you win the vote.

Power to order drone hits on US citizens is wrong

If George W. Bush had told us that the "war on terror" gave him the right to execute an American citizen overseas with a missile fired from a drone aircraft, without due process or judicial review, I'd have gone ballistic. It makes no difference that the president making this chilling claim …

LaPierre: Single-handedly making pro-gun case seem nuts

The moment that most deserves to be remembered from Sunday's thrilling Super Bowl came before the game, when Jennifer Hudson joined students from the Sandy Hook Elementary School in singing "America the Beautiful." It was a heart-rending elegy for the fallen - and a stirring call to action.

DC tackling big problem - immigration - and may solve it

It was always clear that the 11 million people in this country without papers were not going to be rounded up and deported. The question was when our leaders would recognize this fact - which could only happen if Republicans decided that demonizing illegal immigrants was bad politics.

And a Democratic view: Republicans missed wider threat

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Seeing a black president re-elected is wondrous feeling

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Obama is right to go big in reforms to stem gun violence

Don't listen to those who say President Obama's bold plan to reduce gun violence - including an assault-weapons ban - has no chance in Congress. I seem to recall that health-care reform was deemed impossible, too. Until it happened.

GOP's debt-ceiling brinkmanship is destructive

WASHINGTON

Can we put climate change on the agenda? Please?

All right, now can we talk about climate change? After a year when the lower 48 states suffered the warmest temperatures, and the second-craziest weather, since record-keeping began?

Congress clowns around, averts trumped-up crisis

To say that Congress looked like a clown show this week is an insult to self-respecting clowns.

The truth: Everyone's guessing on 'cliff' negotiations

Are you as sick of the "fiscal cliff" as I am? Actually, that's a trick question. You couldn't possibly be.

Too many of the GOP's ideas verge on self-parody

The biggest problem the Republican Party faces is not uninspiring candidates or unsound tactics. It is unpopular ideas.

With Niemeyer, we lose his audacious, sensuous designs

Just this once, I wish I could write with pictures instead of words. That would make it easier to explain why the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who died Wednesday at 104, was one of my heroes.

In budget talks, Obama's holding the better hand

How dare he? President Obama, I mean: How dare he do what he promised during the campaign? How dare he insist on a "balanced approach" to fiscal policy that includes an teensy-weensy tax increase for the rich?

Obama must make global warming a top priority

WASHINGTON

Once fighting stops, talks on 2-state solution vital

The drama unfolding in Gaza seems numbingly familiar. This time, however, there's a big and potentially tragic difference: Not even the actors - Palestinians and Israelis - can possibly know how it will turn out.

GOP needs to leave echo chamber, start listening

I know it's early, but I have a sinking feeling the Republican Party is taking all the wrong lessons from last week's election. Short-term, that's a boon for Democrats. Long-term, it's a problem for the country.

The affair may be affair, but when it's spy chief ...

WASHINGTON

Election was decided by multihued, multicultural America

So much for voter suppression. So much for the enthusiasm gap. So much for the idea that smug, self-appointed arbiters of what is genuinely "American" were going to "take back" the country, as if it had somehow been stolen.

Sandy proves climate change is a national challenge

We've had two once-in-a-century storms within the span of a decade. Hurricane Sandy seems likely to be the second-costliest storm in U.S. history, behind Hurricane Katrina. Lower Manhattan is struggling to recover from an unprecedented flood and the New Jersey coast is smashed beyond recognition.

With Romney, disaster relief could take direct hit

Back when he was being "severely conservative," Mitt Romney suggested that responsibility for disaster relief should be taken from the big, bad federal government and given to the states, or perhaps even privatized. Hurricane Sandy would like to know if he'd care to reconsider.

Issues of race, power are in some ways stronger than in '08

This election is only tangentially a fight over policy. It is also a fight about meaning and identity - and that's one reason voters are so polarized. It's about who we are and who we aspire to be.

Obama must tell us how he'll make our lives better

First, he has to show up. Then, in his second debate with Mitt Romney, President Obama needs to offer not just history lessons and dire warnings, but also a hopeful vision for the next four years.

On foreign policy, Romney sounds just like Obama

Mitt Romney claims to disagree with President Obama on many aspects of foreign policy. We're still waiting to hear what those differences might be.

Lackluster night for Obama gives Romney hope

I would be careful about declaring the presidential contest "a whole new race" following Wednesday's debate. Polls show that most voters have made up their minds, and some, due to early voting, have already cast their ballots. One good night for Mitt Romney does not turn the world upside down.

Will debate finally reveal the real Romney?

Wednesday's presidential debate promises sharp contrasts. One candidate wants to repeal Obamacare; one candidate invented it. One opposed the auto industry bailout; one takes credit for it. One doubts the scientific consensus about climate change; one believes in it. One wants to "voucherize…

Why those 'conspiratorial' polls should worry GOP

Conservative activist circles are abuzz with a new conspiracy theory: Polls showing President Obama with a growing lead over Mitt Romney are deliberately being skewed by the Liberal Mainstream Media so that Republicans will be disheartened and stay home on Election Day.

No longer any doubt who's waging class warfare

Now, at least, there can be no doubt about who is waging class warfare in this presidential campaign. Mitt Romney would pit the winners against the "victims," the smug-and-rich against the down-on-their-luck, the wealthy tax avoiders against those too poor to owe income tax. He sees nearly h…

Romney's chest-thumping sounds frantic, weak

Once upon a time there was a silver-tongued president. His foreign policy must have been seen by enemies of the United States as weak and feckless, because these enemies became emboldened. Mideast terrorists staged a brutal, bloody attack in which innocent Americans were killed. The presiden…