Head Start

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." — Thomas Jefferson My recent column on the challenges associated with the Social...

Regular readers of this column have heard me say it before, but I'll say it again: I'm often embarrassed by the questions my colleagues ask at White House briefings. This week was no exception. Among reporters inside the Beltway, the latest narrative,...

WASHINGTON -- The media love optics and no one understands this better than President Obama. Thus, he invited a gang of Republican senators to din-dins at the swank (and legendary) Jefferson Hotel, one of the city's more discreet (and expensive)...

"Read your article about early education of our children and all I have to say is bunk. I am glad I at 80 years old am ready to leave this insane world. Next you and the people in this administration will want to strap learning tapes on the mother's...

President Obama had the opportunity this week to make an irresponsible Congress face the consequences of its own dumb actions. For reasons I cannot fathom, he took a pass. Rather than use the veto pen that must be gathering dust in some Oval Office...

Diane Redleaf is an attorney who defends people accused of abusing or neglecting children. Her job makes a lot of folks wince. It's no wonder. When we think of child abuse cases, we think of high-profile predators such as convicted serial child...

The sequester, those $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts scheduled to hit the federal government on March 1, was designed to be stupid. In 2011, when President Obama proposed the scheme and both parties in Congress embraced it, their...

If aliens came to earth from outer space in search of intelligent life, Congress is the last place they would look for it. The Republican-led 112th Congress -- in a good week, in session no more than two and a half days -- let the Standard & Poor's credit...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama had the opportunity this week to make an irresponsible Congress face the consequences of its own dumb actions. For reasons I cannot fathom, he took a pass. Rather than use the veto pen that must be gathering dust in some...

Democrats and Republicans in Washington agree: It would be a disaster if the "sequester," with its more than $1 trillion of cuts to defense and domestic spending, takes effect March 1, as scheduled. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the reductions to...

SACRAMENTO — Speaker John Pérez wants voters to know something: Cash may be cascading into state coffers as it hasn't for years. Democrats may totally control the Assembly with a new supermajority. But they're not going to be drunken sailors....

When President Obama talked in his State of the Union speech about the importance of early childhood education, he offered my cue to complete the last in a series of columns. It began with a column about The Infant, Toddler and Family Center of the...