The nine august justices of the United States Supreme Court — or at least the five conservative Republicans — chose the wrong time to make a sea change in constitutional law, admitting the Second Amendment to our pantheon of civil liberties.

What are the politics of the housing meltdown? Foreclosure agony is undoubtedly a campaign issue, but the political question remains: What do the voters want their leader to do about it? Then there's the economic question: What can a president do about it -- other than ask taxpayers to bail out people who took on more debt than they could handle?

Despite all the feigned outrage fanned by the mainstream media and the right-wing noisemakers, Wesley Clark -- retired four-star general, former Supreme Commander of NATO, wounded and highly decorated veteran of ground combat in Vietnam and a military man to his core -- assuredly did not denigrate the war record of John McCain when he talked about the Republican candidate on television last Sunday.

Yousuf Raza Gilani, prime minister of Pakistan, will lunch with George W. Bush in the White House on Monday, July 28. That will not be merely another of the president's routine meetings with foreign leaders. As Pakistan's democratically elected government and U.S. diplomats understand, the lunch symbolizes a turn away from Washington's attachment to military rule under the discredited Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

President Bush was on message Wednesday in a Rose Garden news conference, when he kept up the pressure on his a drill, drill, drill offensive. He said he knows Americans are worried about gasoline prices and wants them "to understand fully that we have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home in environmentally friendly ways."

Barack Obama yesterday kicked off a week of patriotic speeches. It's much more than the normal politician's July 4 oration - it's Obama's answer to a crucial test.

Should John McCain have to "defend" his military record? Of course not. But the fact that he served in the military, with distinction, does not mean he's qualified to be president.

After months of claiming insufficient information to express an opinion on the District of Columbia gun law, Barack Obama noted with apparent approval Thursday that the Supreme Court ruled the 32-year ban on handguns "went too far."

Why is the president of the United States entertaining Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince, Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, at Camp David when his own State Department has singled out the Sheik’s homeland, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), for its continuing violations of human rights?

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has appealed to Senate Democratic leaders to confirm President Bush's long-pending nominations to fill two empty chairs as Fed governors, enabling a fully staffed central bank to handle the current financial crisis. He did not receive a favorable response from Sen. Christopher Dodd, Senate Banking Committee chairman.