Hikes in the debt ceiling - without any political demands from the opposition party - had been routine until President Obama took office.

The power of the silent filibuster to distort Senate politics is now accepted on Capitol Hill and by the press as normal and not worth mentioning. Let me be the skunk at this political garden party and say this stinks. Representative government was not designed to work this way by the Founding Fathers.

Alaska and Montana are not in the south but they definitely form part of the crimson tide of red states where Republicans are dominant.

Americans have a lower opinion of Congress than they do of the NFL replacement refs, head lice, traffic jams, cockroaches and even the group to which yours truly belongs - Washington political pundits.

Beyond budget fights, the Obama second-term agenda was supposed to be about passing comprehensive immigration reform.

Yesterday NPR fired me for telling the truth. The truth is that I worry when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims. This is not a bigoted statement. It is a statement of my feelings, my fears after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 by radical Muslims.

In black America there's such a thing as passing, the black people who are light skinned and they will pass for white.