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

The 2012 presidential campaign's turn away from the classic, straight-up, American election - where the candidate who gets the most votes nationwide wins - is another sad reminder of the extreme political polarization distorting today's politics. No one talks about a 50-state strategy for winning the presidency these days.

If you get the U.N. to say we're going to solve the Syrian problem, if you get the Russians involved in a productive posture, you are making progress, but the Republican core says no strategy or failed strategy.

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.

I support gun control. But speaking honestly about the combustible mix of race and guns may be more important to stopping the slaughter in minority communities than any new gun-control laws.

The FBI found Hillary Clinton to be extremely careless with classified information on her non-secured private e-mail server. While secretary of state. In addition to all we've been talking about, we're learning that Clinton actually lectured her own staff about the importance of cyber security back in 2010, telling them to do one thing while she herself was doing another thing.

Israel, in terms of Jewish values, and what I have been reading in Jewish papers, and hear from Jewish around the country, they are upset about Donald Trump.