DES MOINES—Here in the heartland, much of the news coverage and commentary about the Iowa caucuses remains doggedly oblivious to the fact that their outcome will be determined by the religious right, which is at the controls of the Iowa Republican Party. Indeed, about the only ones who routinely acknowledge the dominance of the religious [...]

At the height of the recent budget impasse, Republican cries of “Shut it down! Shut it down!” filled the air. Call them the voices of the anarchist wing of the GOP. Anarchism: the doctrine urging the abolition of government. If that sounds extreme, it is, but none other than than the patron saint of the [...]

Franklin Graham is no different from many sons who insist that dad’s style is not for them. While the evangelist has followed the same calling as his famous father, the Rev. Billy Graham, he has tried to do it his way. Reviews are mixed, at best. Over the weekend, Franklin Graham visited tornado-ravaged Alabama representing [...]

Republicans who endorsed the party’s plan to undo Medicare got an earful when they met with constituents during the recent congressional recess. If the lawmakers paid attention, they learned that Medicare isn’t just an impersonal government insurance program. When seniors talk about “my Medicare,” they express a sense of kinship based on warm feelings usually [...]

We may have bested them in the Revolutionary War, but are we more like the English than we care to admit? It was a bit of a shock to be greeted by wall-to-wall breathless coverage of William and Kate when I flipped on my TV Friday morning, though the build-up should have prepared me. I [...]

Paul Ryan, the GOP budget guru, argues tirelessly that Medicare costs are unsustainable and must be reined in. Not all of his objections to Medicare are fiscal. A piece Ryan wrote last year for the New York Times shows a deep dislike for government-run health care in general and for Medicare in particular. To Ryan, [...]


If you’re a fan of Hans Christian Andersen and his fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes, you’ll feel right at home with the Iowa Republican caucuses this time around. It’s all a fairy tale in which the likes of expert bankruptcy tycoon Donald Trump and Rep. Dingaling, aka Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), are viewed as [...]

Used to be, partisanship in foreign policy was kept moderate, civil. The expression was, “Politics stops at the water’s edge.” Republicans and Democrats in Washington were happy to use the phrase; it implied they cared more about what’s good for America than politics. Those days are gone. For the Republican leadership the goal since Jan. [...]

Jane Mayer’s piece in the Aug. 30 New Yorker, “Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama,” has continued to generate an unusual amount of buzz. It turned the under-the radar bothers, Charles and David Koch, and their privately held conglomerate, Koch Industries, into familiar names synonymous with how super-rich ideologues [...]

If Harry S. Truman were with us today, would his opinions of commentators such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh be printable? I was led to wonder about that on reading a letter he sent to his good friend Dean Acheson, the former Secretary of State, after leaving the White House. “Well, I have the [...]