Officers are taught to use all the tricks and lies that courts permit within the scope of the Fifth Amendment's shield against self-incrimination.

If you stand with the Customs and Border Protection officers who staff the passport booths at Dulles airport near the nation's capital, their task seems daunting.

If you have never been tortured, or locked up and verbally threatened, you may find it hard to believe that anyone would confess to something he had not done. Intuition holds that the innocent do not make false confessions.

Affairs of state tend to drive most presidents toward the center on both foreign and domestic policy, no matter where on the political spectrum they begin, and especially so in the areas of intelligence and law enforcement.

Obama behaves like a centrist who leans tentatively left on certain social programs but boldly right on military force and civil liberties.

Jerusalem is a festival and a lamentation. Its song is a sigh across the ages, a delicate, robust, mournful psalm at the great junction of spiritual cultures.

Officers are taught to use all the tricks and lies that courts permit within the scope of the Fifth Amendment's shield against self-incrimination.