“Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory… will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” – Lincoln’s first inaugural address, March 4, 1861 Regular readers know that the majority of my commentaries stick to...

After being sworn in as the 54th Speaker of the House last week, Paul Ryan talked about the elephant in the room. “The House is broken. We are not solving problems. We are adding to them. And I am not interested in laying blame. We are not settling scores. We are wiping the slate clean. Neither the members nor the...

When Kansas City Royals starting pitcher Edinson Volquez took the mound for the first game of the World Series between the Royals and the New York Mets on Tuesday, serious discussions were underway at FOX Sports. While the team of announcers went through line-ups and backgrounds on starting pitchers, what appeared to be known throughout Twitter and other social media...

That’s what a reader asked me recently. Searching my site, I found four commentaries in the last four months: Running on Empty (June 19); The Ethical Take (July 23); Birdman: or (The Unexpected Virtuoso of Ignorance) (Sept. 8); The Scorpion and the Frog (Oct. 1); and a Let’s Be Honest graphic,  » Read more about: “What is your obsession with Donald...

No sooner had The House Select Committee on Benghazi concluded an intense, 11-hour Q&A of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton then journalists rushed to interview Committee Chair Trey Gowdy asking a very basic question: “What new things did you learn today?” Totally flat-footed, Gowdy said, “Uh… I think some of Jimmy Jordan’s questioning — well, when you say new...

Less than two weeks after he essentially said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” to running for House Speaker, Representative Paul Ryan put his finger on the precise problem with Republicans in general and the Freedom Caucus in particular. “We have become the problem. If my colleagues entrust me to be the speaker, I want us to become the solution.” In making...

On Face the Nation Sunday (Oct. 19), the Chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Trey Gowdy, defended his committee’s work despite two House Republicans who publicly stated that the purpose of the panel was to place blame on former Secretary of State and current Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her actions or in-actions regarding the attacks leading...

On the CBS news program Face the Nation Sunday (Oct. 20), Trey Gowdy was asked about the credibility of The House Select Committee on Benghazi in light of two Republican colleagues and a former investigator calling the committee politically motivated. “Why would all these people say that?” journalist John Dickerson asked the committee chairman. “I guess because they don’t have...

On Monday I talked about the Freedom Caucus – a group of about 40 unyielding House Republicans whom Republican strategist Frank Luntz says “…believes that it is better to blow-up the process than it is to fix it.” But there is another group in the House. The Liberty Caucus, a group of about 36 members, was founded in 2011 by...

Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards sat before the House Committee on Oversight to answer questions about funding and more specifically, respond to a widely circulated video purportedly showing an aborted fetus being prepped for organ harvesting by a Planned Parenthood sponsored medical facility. The video has been debunked by a variety of fact-checking organizations. Nevertheless, that did not stop House...