Not long after I landed in Iowa in the early 1950s I trekked to the state house to listen to a debate about a proposed loyalty oath for public employees. Senator Joseph McCarthy was riding high in those days and an epidemic of loyalty oaths had swept the country. I figured Iowa would be next; [...]

Des Moines–As readers probably know, the seven-member Iowa Supreme Court on Friday found unconstitutional a 1998 state law that defined marriage as a union of man and woman. The unanimous decision said that law violated the equal protection clause of the state constitution. Given that the decision will have social and political ramifications for years [...]

Standard dictionary synonyms for “conservative”—cautious, constant, controlled, conventional, middle-of-the-road, not extreme, sober, stable, traditional—are a poor fit for the many public figures who claim to be conservatives but are in fact radicals or opportunists. Newt Gingrich is a prominent example. Look at what he said on Feb. 29: The New York Times this morning said, [...]

Sometimes you need to draw a distinction between “the changing of the guard” and what might be called “the end of the guard.” That’s the case with the announcement that David Yepsen, the political columnist for the Des Moines Register, will leave the paper in April to become director of the Paul Simon Public Policy [...]

It was just a small item in The Washington Post: California’s Republican Party voted to deny party funds for the 2010 election to six GOP lawmakers who broke ranks with the party to support a tax increase. The increase was desperately needed to pass a state budget facing a $42 billion shortfall. The party’s decision [...]

As you likely have been told, time and again, Thursday, Feb. 12, marks the bicentennial of the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin — two men who “changed the world forever,” as Smithsonian magazine notes. The National Geographic joins in with a tribute just to Darwin. Let’s focus on Darwin. The February issues of [...]

No wonder President Obama is showing signs of frustration. He’s tried everything – kindness, cookies, sweet reason – and the Republicans, the ones who lost the last election, refuse to play the game. They refuse even to acknowledge that the game, courtesy of a majority of the voters and the economic crisis, has changed at [...]

Michael Steele, former lieutenant governor of Maryland, was elected chairman of the Republican National Committee Jan. 30. He won on the sixth ballot in voting that a Washington Post writer said “displayed a level of drama rarely seen in national politics.” A question reporters might ask Steele is how he feels about a plank in [...]

Barely two days after Barack Obama is sworn in as President, the naysayers are turning out in force. Two of the angriest have landed on the Op-Ed page of The Washington Post. Former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich is deeply disturbed by Obama’s suggestion that “The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.” [...]

The spectacle of Roland Burris marched out of the Capitol by police guards is embarrassing – but not for Senate Democrats who turned him away. It is Burris himself who is to blame for the situation. When the nefarious Illinois governor asked Burris to accept the appointment, Burris had a choice, and he made the [...]