Elena Kagan may be a brilliant constitutional scholar and first-rate legal mind — but if she is, she has done a mighty fine job of hiding her intellectual light under a bushel. She has left almost no paper trail and has made no significant, or even particularly notable, contributions to our understanding of law, legal

Those were the words of Pete Schoomaker, then chief of staff of the Army, to General David Petraeus, who at the time (2005) was commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The context of Schoomaker's remarks was that the war in Iraq, which had been going on for more than two years,

The April 2010 issue of Scientific American includes an article by Thomas Insel, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who is the director of the National Institute of Mental Health. In “Faulty Circuits,” Insel describes new findings in the neurocircuitry of mood disorders. Many illnesses previously defined as “mental” (like autism and schizophrenia) are now recognized to

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center is filled with bleak news for Democrats and the cause of liberalism. “By almost every conceivable measure Americans are less positive and more critical of government these days,” according to an overview of the Pew survey. It finds “a perfect storm of conditions associated with distrust of

James Davison Hunter, author of a new book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World, was recently the speaker at a conference on religion, politics, and public life, hosted by my Ethics and Public Policy Center colleague Michael Cromartie. Professor Hunter's motivation to write his book

President Obama is in the early stages of setting a political trap for the GOP — one he hopes will take one of his greatest weaknesses and turn it into a strength. The weakness Obama has is that he is viewed as fiscally reckless by much of the electorate, having engineered an unprecedented spending binge

Our major political parties have durable images, both positive and negative. Over the last several decades certain impressions — fairly or not — have taken hold, like barnacles on the hull of a ship. On the positive side for Republicans is that they have been widely seen as defenders of traditional values and institutions; strong

One of the core claims made by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign — a commitment absolutely central to his run for the presidency — is that he would change the political culture of Washington. He would, by the force and power of his personality, uproot old habits. He would elevate the national debate, usher

During this Holy Week, which encompasses the crucifixion of Jesus, I found myself thinking back to a remarkable 1980 “Firing Line” interview between journalist and author Malcolm Muggeridge and William F. Buckley Jr., on the topic of how does one find faith. Muggeridge — who himself became one of the the most eloquent defenders of

We are now a week out from the passage of ObamaCare, so it's worth considering what approach the Republican party might take in the months ahead. The first thing is to understand that, politically speaking, the GOP is in extremely good shape. President Obama succeeded in passing health care legislation — but he has not