Women's 'place' improves at White House and on job

The two photos serve as powerful visual bookends for any discussion of gender and the Obama White House.

Film on military sex assault has power in high places

Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering knew from the start that they weren't just making a movie.

Give kids psychic space to take a few considered risks

In this graduation season, I thought I'd share the best advice I ever received: You can't make a mistake before you're 30.

Claim that Obama is 'packing' court is nonsense

Is President Obama poised to "pack" the federal appeals court in Washington?

Analytical Obama speech falls short on answers

No doubt: Barack Obama has what it takes to be a terrific law student. It's less clear those are the ingredients of a successful president.

Jolie's decision spotlights gene-patent controversy

Angelina Jolie's genes threatened to kill her. But, for the time being anyway, she doesn't own them.

Scandals look bad, but let's keep some perspective

WASHINGTON

The other scandal: IRS failure to scrutinize political groups groups

Sputtering adjectives - outrageous, appalling, intolerable - can scarcely do justice to the fiasco involving the Internal Revenue Service's reported targeting of conservative groups.

General confused about 'assault' vs. 'consent'

Generals say the darndest things. Especially when it comes to issues of gender and sexual assault.

Plan B is about preventing teen pregnancy, nothing more

WASHINGTON

Obama's looking like a wussy substitute teacher

To be a good president requires the combined skills of chess master and middle-school teacher.

Jason Collins and the fading era of 'first-ness'

WASHINGTON

The kid who went to prom didn't look like a terrorist

The bomber went to prom. OK, alleged bomber. As to those who believe the definite article is missing from the sentence above - the prom - my teenaged daughters inform me that phrasing is irredeemably antiquated.

It's safe to talk about gun laws again but not to act

The way to stay sane in this city is never to expect too much.

There's no path to passage for Obama's budget

The conundrum of President Obama's budget is that he has produced a "come let us reason together" proposal aimed at a Republican Party that has demonstrated no interest in being reasonable.

On marriage rights, court shouldn't fret over backlash

If you think the problem with Roe v. Wade was that the Supreme Court short-circuited the evolving democratic process in the states, look at what that process has wrought.

Justices edgy about gay marriage, an issue that won't go away

Listening to the Supreme Court hear arguments in the same-sex marriage cases was like watching a novice diver inch to the edge of the high board for the first time.

Seize moment on expanded gun-sales checks

WASHINGTON -

Time to fully protect gays in hiring, the workplace

WASHINGTON -

Leadership means dealing with those who dislike you

When it comes to Republicans, President Obama sees himself as a kind of reverse Sally Field: They don't like him. They really, really, don't like him.

Tone-deafness on satire reflects partisan divide

The item was too delicious to resist: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, he of the don't-worry, be-happy approach to the federal deficit, had been forced to declare personal bankruptcy.

Barring working from home was real yahoo move

Marissa Mayer, bounding back to work after a two-week maternity leave, came up with a nifty solution for juggling work and family: The Yahoo chief brought her family to work.

How'd we get to sequester's doorstep? Ask GOP

The blame game is a dreary and generally unproductive exercise. But as Washington slouches toward the self-inflicted wound of the budget sequester, Republicans' determined effort to rewrite the history of debt reduction requires correcting.

Obama must not sit silent in gay-rights legal case

WASHINGTON

Ted Cruz's innuendoes about Chuck Hagel go too far

Ted Cruz is not going to win Senator Congeniality. Not that he cares. The newly arrived Texas Republican has come out, well, guns blazing - and not just on guns.

Richard III may yet receive most unkindest cut of all

Shakespeare would have loved this epilogue: The bones of his most reviled villain, Richard III, unearthed in a decidedly unkingly public parking lot.

Yes, GOP is bending, but no, there's no new Obama

WASHINGTON -

Sotomayor pens a brilliant, unguarded autobiography

WASHINGTON

'Chained' CPI could help keep us from cliff

The cliff talks have disintegrated, victim of the Crazy Caucus also known as the Republican House. But eventually they will resume, and with them discussion of a way to raise billions in tax revenue - an approach on which House Speaker John Boehner and President Obama agree but that liberals…

A super PAC to fight the NRA could tip the scales

Like so many other people these days, I regain my composure only to see it crumble in an instant. At the piercing sight of a photograph, Daniel Barden with his impish smile and missing front teeth. At the devastating power of a simple sentence, about Charlotte Bacon's Girl Scout troop: "Ther…

Rice's withdrawal was sorry reflection, too, on Obama

It is a strange world in which a person is compelled to announce her withdrawal from consideration for a position for which she has not been nominated.

Simple Medicare change yields complicated results

Raising the eligibility age for Medicare sounds like a fiscal no-brainer.

Democrats no better than GOP in 'fiscal cliff' talks

WASHINGTON

Compromise is crucial to avoiding the fiscal cliff

Washington

Obama team making high-stakes wager on taxes

As the debt ceiling loomed last year, President Obama believed Republicans had him over a barrel. They had won the midterm election. More important, calling the GOP's bluff seemed too big a bet: Defaulting on the debt risked plunging the global financial system into chaos.

Nothing against early voting, but I like the old way

The neighbors gathered in Sandy's drizzly aftermath, surveying the damage: tree limbs crushing the roof of a car, telephone poles snapped in half, power lines strewn across the street. It was, for all the unpleasant circumstances, a nice communal moment. And it made me think, oddly, about wh…

How will fiscal cliff get fixed? It depends on who wins

Betting on Congress to do something - anything - is, as Samuel Johnson said of second marriages, the triumph of hope over experience. Betting on a lame-duck Congress to do anything of consequence is even more foolhardy.

Here's a scorecard on the debates - and it isn't pretty

What we learned - and didn't - from the debates:

Keeping adolescents in solitary is unconscionable

"It's an awful thing, solitary," John McCain wrote of his time as a prisoner of war. "It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment."

Candidates' debate dialogue could be Mamet play

As I looked over the transcript of the vice presidential debate, the first thing that came to mind was David Mamet. The second was "Cupcake Wars."

Debaters skirt around the hard choices ahead

I was prepared, sorta, kinda, to defend Barack Obama's debate performance until I heard Obama adviser David Axelrod on television preening about how the president had spoken to viewers like adults. Oh, please. If only.

Tax hikes alone aren't enough to solve budget woes

This country is in the midst of its own Road Runner cartoon - and we are Wile E. Coyote, hurtling to the cliff.

Romney's views on economic mobility are skewed

In Mitt Romney's Fantasyland version of the American Dream, all it takes to succeed in this country is determination and hard work. Government merely needs to get out of the way, roust the Entitlement Society slackers, and let the Opportunity Society strivers go for it.

Candidates seek votes in unlikely, demeaning places

Behold the Snookization of American politics. The Middle East is in turmoil. The economy is struggling. Mitt Romney is on "Live! with Kelly and Michael," talking Snooki and his bedtime wear ("as little as possible").

Obama, Romney fail to answer many questions

In my dream presidential debate, the moderator would ask Mitt Romney which tax breaks, exactly, he'd eliminate to pay for his rate cut. The Republican nominee, if history serves, would dodge and demur. The moderator would try again - employer-sponsored health insurance? mortgage interest? ch…

Akin melee brims with reasons we hate politics

Missouri Republican Todd Akin's remarks about women not becoming pregnant from "legitimate rape" are so self-evidently offensive and ignorant they scarcely require a response. What merits more attention is what the episode exposes about the most fundamental of political instincts: self-prese…

New plan to contain health costs merits attention

If turning Medicare into a voucher program isn't the answer to controlling the program's growth, what is? This is the essential question about the federal budget.

On Medicare, lots of blood and blame to go around

The Republican National Committee chairman says President Obama has "blood on (his) hands" for cutting Medicare. Mitt Romney blasts the president for having "robbed" the program of $700 billion.