Chuck Schumer

President Obama pleaded with Congress last week to remember the victims of December's schoolhouse shootings in Connecticut and tighten the nation's gun laws. "Shame on us if we've forgotten," he said. "Don't get squishy." But four months after the...

Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is a real-life Murray Blum. Blum, played by Charles Grodin, is the president's accountant in the comedy "Dave," which I think of every time we have one of these spending dramas in Washington. In my favorite scene...

During the early years of the Republic, Chief Justice John Marshall noted that, "The power to tax is the power to destroy." He might have added that it's also the power to manipulate behavior, punish political enemies and reward political friends. Indeed,...

OK, so Congress hasn't managed to pass a budget, fix the tax code or avert the automatic spending cuts of the dreaded "sequester." Are they getting anything done on Capitol Hill? Yes, and you'll probably be surprised to hear where progress is being...

Ever since Mitt Romney lost the presidential election, there's been a lot of talk about how the Republican Party needs to "rebrand" itself. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal wants, among other things, for the GOP to stop being "the stupid party." Rep. Paul...

WASHINGTON — Immigration reform is coming. Let's get it right. What counts as getting it wrong? The 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act, signed by President Ronald Reagan. It granted amnesty to the then 3 million illegal immigrants and promised border...

WASHINGTON -- Immigration reform is coming. Let's get it right. What counts as getting it wrong? The 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act, signed by President Reagan. It granted amnesty to the then 3 million illegal immigrants and promised border enforcement....

Yes, good things still happen in this country. They just don't happen overnight. That lesson was brought home to me again on Current TV this week when I interviewed Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, about Defense Secretary...

Can Republicans find a way out of the political dead end they marched into during the 2012 campaign? Can President Obama make his second term more productive than the final gridlocked years of his first? Can Democrats and Republicans in Congress relearn...

WASHINGTON — Eric Holder is in a mess of his own making. Two weeks ago, the attorney general testified to the House Judiciary Committee in categorical terms: "With regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, that...

WASHINGTON -- Marco Rubio was a bundle of nervous energy as he waited his turn to speak about the bipartisan immigration plan he had helped to draft. The Republican senator from Florida clasped his hands in front, then in back, then in front again. He...

WASHINGTON -- There are some who call it a betrayal most fowl. And yet there is poultry evidence of wrongdoing. However you bill it, this is a quacking good controversy. Our tale begins at Monday's inauguration lunch in Statuary Hall in the Capitol....