There’s a school of political thought that divided government is the government that governs best.

Step away from Twitter. Stop doom-scrolling.

Just as it’s a waste of time for Republicans to refight the results of the 2020 election, it certainly does no good for anti-MAGAs to refight what happened in the previous race.

My wife of 45 years died six months ago this week.

Families in Michigan will set an empty place at the table this holiday season in the wake of the mass shooting at Oxford High School that left four children dead and seven more injured.

It all piled up this week. COVID hospitalizations and deaths are up.

As a Democrat from a staunchly Republican state, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is a vanishing breed, not only in contemporary American politics, but in a Democratic Party that is steadily tacking to the left.

The end of this sad, strange, historic and transformative year is almost upon us.

When one of the Pennsylvania Legislature’s most conservative members announced her desire to pass “Second Amendment Sanctuary” ordinances that defy state and federal gun laws, the temptation at first was to laugh and shake your head in disbelief.

It didn’t take long for “World War III” to become a trending topic on Twitter in the hours after news broke that a drone strike by U.S. forces resulted in the death of a top Iranian military commander.

If you’re celebrating a recent federal appellate court ruling that overturned language in the Affordable Care Act requiring you to have health insurance or pay a penalty, you may want to put away the party favors.

With a made-for-TV voice filled to the brim with gravitas, the West Point grad and career public servant Bill Taylor was the living embodiment of everything we hope for from our government employees.

Maybe they thought they were standing up for principle.

The explosive release of a federal whistleblower complaint alleging that President Donald Trump abused the power of his office, and that “unidentified White House officials” then attempted to cover it up, is sending shockwaves throughout Washington.

Fighting back tears, her voice cracking, Jackie Bieber had a simple message for anyone who’s thinking about taking their own life:

I ended a recent column observing that American taxpayers, not the government of Mexico or anyone else, was going to end up footing the bill for President Donald Trump’s border wall.

Politics, the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck famously said, “is the art of the possible, the attainable – the art of the next best.”

Given this administration’s gold-plated predisposition to the 1% (its faux populist posturing notwithstanding), describing this proposed cut as “cruel” and “heartless” doesn’t really do it justice.

The next time a Republican tries to tell you that he or she is an heir to the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, remind them that in 2019, when the GOP had a chance to stand up to the worst kind of bigotry and un-American behavior, the self-styled “Party of Lincoln” was conspicuously and shamefully silent.

If you cover enough of President Donald Trump's campaign rallies – and I've covered a bunch – you know you can count on a few things.

As is the case elsewhere in the country, refugee resettlement slowed in Erie under the Trump White House.

The Trump administration is upping the ante in its war on undocumented immigrants with a new proposal to boot them from public housing – all in the name of helping “the most vulnerable” Americans.

If you’re like me, you’re probably going to sit down on Sunday night, popcorn and adult beverage in hand, to watch the start of the final season of “Game of Thrones.”

What do most Americans know about science? If a March 28 Pew Research Center poll is to be believed – not nearly enough. And at a time when knowledge and facts are under assault as they have not been in recent memory, that’s a problem.

Six days. That’s how long it took New Zealand’s parliament, led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern with the support of opposition leaders, to ban military-style assault weapons in the wake of a deadly rampage at two mosques in Christchurch that claimed the lives of 50 people.

The conservative Family Research Council is out with its latest congressional scorecard. Shocking no one, it’s yet another reminder that the conservative organization’s overwhelming interest in promoting families extends little further than a woman’s womb.

Locked in a tight re-election race, Toomey made disapproving noises in the direction of the Republican nominee, feeling like a “no,” only to announce, at the final second, that he’d voted for Trump anyway.

Last week, two Pennsylvania state lawmakers – both Republicans – fired the opening rounds of the 2019 culture war, announcing plans to reintroduce legislation that would ban abortion based on a diagnosis of Down syndrome.

Here’s another reminder that, when it comes to the Trump administration, it’s more important to watch what the White House does, rather than what it says

The news this week that President Donald Trump’s handlers may have digitally altered his photographs to make him appear not only slimmer and younger, but with… wait for it… longer fingers, is the perfect metaphor for a White House the repeatedly bends the truth to suit its own ends.

If you passed Max Acuna on the street or on your way to work, or any one of those hundreds of places where people cross paths every day, you wouldn’t give the smartly dressed 30-year-old a second look.

“Mr. President, please don’t characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory.” Pelosi said, deftly shutting down some mansplaining from Trump, who, seconds earlier, patronizingly suggested that the California Democrat was “in a situation where it’s not easy for her to talk right now.”

What got into Lindsey Graham? Maybe it was the wave of nostalgia for an old school Washington brought on by the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush this week.

John E. Jones III doesn’t look or sound much like a rebel. Like a lot of federal judges, he’s given to sober suits, long pauses, and thoughtful and deliberative sentences.

A friend who works in campaigns recently joked that there ought to be a mandatory, two-week respite from any kind of political talk immediately after Election Day.

So what do Crystal City, Va., and Long Island City, N.Y., have that your city or state doesn’t? Well, everything, as it turns out.

With his second U.S. Supreme Court confirmation in the bag, President Donald Trump took a victory lap around this city by the lake on Wednesday night, skewering “radical” Capitol Hill Democrats and the “dishonest” media, even as he exhorted supporters to vote in next month’s midterm election.

Back in October 2016, when she was asked to explain how it was that then-candidate Donald Trump managed to overcome his fantastic wealth and connect with lunch-pail voters in Rust Belt America, Vanity Fair contributing editor Fran Lebowitz came up with an aphorism to beat a campaign filled with aphorisms.

Donald Trump Jr. had a pretty simple message for the Republican faithful who filled a hotel ballroom here on the final night of summer 2018.

We have been informed, twice now this week, that there are alleged “adults” in Donald Trump’s White House who are supposedly acting as a hedge against the 45th president’s worst impulses.And this, in some weird way, is both weirdly comforting and profoundly depressing.

Dougherty, who lives about 90 minutes west of Pittsburgh, was among the more than 1,000 victims who suffered unspeakable suffering at the hands of more than 300 priests across Pennsylvania, with the oldest incidents dating to the 1940s.

The golf clubs in the laundry room at the rear of Dwight Eisenhower’s farmhouse here are perched and ready, as if the 34th president of the United States might come and fetch them at any moment. Eisenhower was a passionate golfer. His valet, Sergeant John Moaney, would be tasked with cleaning them after Eisenhower returned from one of his frequent rounds at the nearby Gettysburg Country Club.

SOMEWHERE ALONG LONG ISLAND SOUND – From my beach chair, there’s a strong wind blowing in from across the water, rippling the pages of my book, as moisture slowly condenses on the beer bottle at my side.

The rest of official Washington might be in free-fall over President Donald Trump’s Bizzaro-World press conference in Helsinki with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin on Monday. But not Jeffrey Lord.

You may not have noticed it amid the White House’s bluster on NATO this week, but Congress utterly face-planted in its effort to rein in President Donald Trump’s ever-escalating global trade war.

Local news outlets are a reflection of their community – the entire community, irrespective of skin color, political beliefs or creeds.

You’d think a pan-seared pork chop wouldn’t come freighted with political baggage. But politics, and that pork chop ($28, with Wades Mill Goat cheese grits, caramelized Sunflower Flats onions and a Dijon Jus) were most definitely on the menu at the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., over the weekend.

Earlier this week, U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., thought reports of children being brutally separated from their parents at the United States’ southern border with Mexico were “greatly exaggerated.”

Even as he cozied up to an evil dictator who routinely murders, starves and imprisons his own people, President Donald Trump’s White House made its own brutal tweak to America’s immigration policy.

What we say to each other, how we treat each other matters. There are basic norms of civilized behavior, outside the realm of politics, beyond the reach of cable network news, that we should all be able to agree upon.

For a man who likes to brag about what a big builder he is, President Donald Trump spends a lot of time burning stuff down.

U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, a Republican who hails from northeastern Pennsylvania’s coal country, likes to brag about the fact he was one of his state’s earliest supporters of President Donald Trump.

Not too long ago, an anonymous commenter on one of my columns concluded that I took my stance on a particular issue because I “hate conservatives.”

As I watched Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg go head-to-head with members of Congress, I couldn’t help but have the same reaction I have when I get a pointless chain email from an elderly relative.

There’s been a lot of talk this week about the script that news anchors, at stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, have been forced to read decrying “fake stories” and “biased reporting,” by their corporate overlords in Baltimore County, Md.

On Monday, the U.S. Commerce Dept. announced something that sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do: It will include a question about citizenship on the 2020 Census.

If Democrats do manage to retake the House this fall, they might have to send a thank-you card to the chambers of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

Donald Trump, who thrives on the love of the crowd, who listens to the last person to successfully worm their way into his ear and who cannot endure even the most minor of slights, is systematically building an administration of yes-men.

When Maddie Levy saw the students fleeing Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last month, she saw something familiar.

Donald Trump, the man who needs a cue-card to feign basic human empathy, is serious about gun control? Yeah, right. This is still the same president whose promises far outperform his actual ability to carry them out.

Our system is reliant on the belief that we’re equally accountable in the eyes of the law. And that no one – not even the president of the United States – stands above it.

"Thoughts and Prayers" don't mean anything anymore

On one level, the horror perpetrated Sunday night by lone wolf gunman Stephen Paddock, who indiscriminately sprayed gunfire across a country music festival in Las Vegas, defies belief.

Senate Republicans better get ready for some fireworks. Their July 4 recess is going to be a hot one.