Blog Postings

The lights from the party boats on the Mon twinkled merrily off the water as the clocks ticked closer to the new year. It was merely cool at Point Park in Pittsburgh, far from the bone chilling of an 8:30 p.m. game at Heinz Field. In the other direction, in a luminary concert, were the

A few years after my arrival as a Washington reporter, it finally happened: the president of the United States called on me at a White House press conference in the East Room. Live on national television, the Great Communicator himself, Ronald Reagan, pointed at me and bade me to proceed. So I did. I asked

It was a fascinating campaign swing. There was “The Tonight Show” and Michael Bolton. There was a reception in a swank hotel where those attending stuffed food in their pockets and where two guys hired escorts to be their dates in order to appear classy. The next day, there was a museum event and a

The road doesn’t care if you are young or old, male or female, rich or poor. The road is there for you, to calm you and excite you, to take you back home and to familiar places to lead to new paths of adventure, discovery and joy. To let the explorer in you explore. When

As the plethora of presidential candidates continues to swell, sending debate planners into conniptions and launching heavy breathing over meaningless polls, the lineups of both parties feature what has become a political certainty: one-time presidential nomination hopefuls taking another shot to win it all. Or, as they are sometimes dubbed: bridesmaids. So let’s clear up

It was a clear morning when a 61-year-old Florida mail carrier named Doug Hughes decided to make public his protest regarding the heinous grip that money has on politics. So as he has professed to a few in advance, on Tax Day, Hughes flew his gyrocopter from Gettysburg, Pa., to Washington, D.C., and landed on

This is the time to worry about the world of Capitol Hill and its various political feeder networks. We had a snowstorm, a Friday the 13th, a historic “Pi” day, St. Patrick’s Day and of course the Ides of March. Beware indeed. Lots of planetary and humanistic epicenter tilts to trigger uncertain behavior under and

At the end of January, the lost remains of Miguel de Cervantes, best known to many as the author of Don Quixote, were found. In that great novel, Quixote is the self-imagined knight who sets out to restore chivalry to a modern world. The novel inspired the phrases “tilting at windmills” and “quixotic” for the knight’s

I had just found a much better word for the transition in another op-ed and was already leapfrogging to write a “wow” finish when I heard from outside my window “oh-oo-oor, oh-oo-oor, oh-oo-oor.” There on the ledge — as if it were summer — was Coco and some friends, my pigeon buddies. Their feathers buffeted

In the alternative universe of politics, Capitol Hill should be preparing to greet Matt Funiciello, who on paper and in deed was well-positioned to have won an open House seat in upstate New York. Funiciello was endorsed by the local newspapers, widely acclaimed as being the most in touch with voters, the only one who

One of the most certain things you can count on in the world of international relations is that almost every year, some group of people, some sector of geography, some suddenly wealthy enclave, will want to declare independence from its current nation-state and become the world’s newest entity. Today we are witnessing two vibrant examples

The U.N diplomat running the Syria peace talks in Geneva declared them over after two sessions. U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi felt the need to apologize to the Syrian people, saying he was “very, very sorry” that, despite two rounds of talks, “we haven’t done very much,” he told CNN and other media. Brahimi told CNN