The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans.

Remember the picture of the president in the classroom, being told of the attack by chief of staff Andy Card? The American people thought they were seeing a man suddenly thrust into a grave challenge no one could have anticipated.

The notion of a neutral, mainstream national media gained dominance only in World War II and in its aftermath, when what turned out to be a temporary moderate consensus came to govern the country.

If Rand Paul is going to go anywhere, he is going to have to expand it beyond merely this argument about where we put troops and don`t put troops and make it both a generational argument and a change argument. And he`s got a chance to do that.

There's a very healthy tradition in America of skepticism of centralized power. If we ever lose the skepticism of centralized power, we'll lose the essence of the country.

A purely objective viewpoint does not exist in the cosmos or in politics.

Gov. Scott Walker, a Tea Party-tinged Republican, is the advance guard of a new GOP push to dismantle public-sector unions as an electoral force.