Washingtonpost.com

With Super Duper Tuesday looming on Feb. 5, the presidential horse race is about to move into its mid-game. At the end of this process, we may end up with the first president in history who is a woman, or an African American, or a former prisoner of war, or a Mormon or an ordained Southern Baptist minister.

Beyond the headlines and election results, when you lift up the hood of our nation's nominating process, you see a pretty gnarly… more

In the wake of infrastructure related tragedies that struck Minnesota and New Orleans, political leaders have demonstrated once again that they do not understand the benefits of public investment. Mistakenly seeing only the financial burden of public investment and ignoring the future returns, they have failed to allocate enough public funds to adequately repair America’s roads, bridges, railways and electric grids. As a consequence, America is stopped short of reaching its full economic potential.

The costs of our crumbling infrastructure include… more

One of the great fears that parents and church leaders have about their youth engaging in interfaith dialog is that they will lose their connection to their own religion and will end up rejecting and leaving their faith, maybe even converting to another religion as a result. My experience as a Christian pastor has been just the opposite -- I have watched young people become stronger in their own faith through exposure to other traditions.

Personal relationships matter a great deal… more

California is used to power grabs, as are other states of electoral significance, like Ohio and Florida. All three states have seen partisan attempts at redistricting reform, which treated them as pawns on the national political chessboard.

Now in California comes the latest power grab, an attempt to manipulate the Electoral College vote to help Republican candidates for president. GOP operatives are seeking to pass a ballot proposition that will award one electoral vote for each congressional district won by… more

Rising insecurity in the oil producing regions of the world along with rising carbon levels in the atmosphere are pushing Congress to update our nation’s energy policies. But far from providing a bold solution to our converging environmental, energy and security dilemmas, the bill that has come out of the Senate to gradually increase fuel efficiency standards relies on timid half-measures. Congress should instead consider a more effective and long-overdue step towards energy independence and environmental protection -- implementing a… more

Until a few years ago, America’s elementary and secondary schools generally escaped our national obsession with lists. Almost every week another ranking of best communities, most beautiful people or top hospitals is published.

But in 1998 Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post, began publishing a list of "The 100 Best High Schools in America." The ranking is based on "The Challenge Index," a measure developed by Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews. The list, published annually the past… more

Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and author of the taboo-busting Running a Hospital blog, wrote recently about a dilemma he faced involving the "da Vinci Surgical Robot." Levy has been advised that without purchasing a new da Vinci robot, the hospital’s prostate surgery volume will plummet because others will market this new treatment even if it’s not superior to current procedures -- and it might not be.

Last year, Levy reported that less invasive robotic… more

The initial round of presidential primary debates leaves no doubt that the presidential horserace has already broken from the gates. While some may lament the early departure -- given that votes will not be cast for another 8 months -- the absence of incumbents vying for each party’s nomination has created a wide open race, one where the stakes are remarkably high.

Although most of the press coverage to date has focused on the daily stream of polls, jibes, and behind-the-scenes… more

I arrived in Iraq before L. Paul Bremer arrived in May 2003 and stayed on long after his ignominious and furtive departure in June 2004 -- long enough to see the tragic consequences of his policies in Iraq. So I was disappointed by the indignant lack of repentance on full display in his Outlook article on Sunday.

In it, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority argues that he "was absolutely right to strip away the apparatus of a particularly… more

Islamabad and New York -- Five British citizens, four of whom are of Pakistani descent, were convicted Monday of planning to attack targets in the United Kingdom under orders from al Qaeda using fertilizer-based bombs. Their convictions underline the fact that from its Pakistani hub al Qaeda now has the capability not only to plan once-off attacks in the U.K., but is also able to plan a sustained campaign of terrorist operations against the United States’ closest ally. And the… more