Newsday

Confession is good for the soul -- even here in Washington, D.C. How do I know? Because many here confess, albeit in the circuitous style of the Beltway.

We all know of cases in which the malefactor just blurts out his guilt years after the crime; that seems to be what’s happening, in stages, to O.J. Simpson. But Washingtonians, who excel in the sneaky arts of manipulation, confess in their own Machiavellian manner, with one eye on the camera and the… more

So George W. Bush has come back from his trip to Latin America with a newfound determination to open up the U.S.-Mexican border. Oops, I mean, he wants "comprehensive immigration reform."

One big hint about his intentions came clear Tuesday afternoon in Mérida, Mexico, when the American president began his joint remarks alongside Mexican President Felipe Calderón by telling his counterpart, "Perhaps the biggest single issue concerning your country is the issue of migration."

Note that last word. The more precise term… more

Are we serious about homeland security? If so, we should not allow the unionization of homeland securitizers. Indeed, homeland security should be militarized, not unionized.

Yet, at the same time, the status quo is not acceptable either. Big change is needed truly to safeguard the homeland -- although sadly, at the rate we are going, that change won’t come till after an American city is nuked.

Unionization atop bureaucratization is no way to get anything done, as the Postal Service or the… more

Ready for a war with Iran? Hollywood is, at least in the form of a new movie, 300.

The film is a wildly inventive, comic-book-y feast of ancient history, bloody swordplay and patriotic rhetoric, ringing with the politics of today. Spawned by graphic novelist Frank Miller -- who penned The Dark Knight Returns, reviving the Batman franchise in the ‘80s, and who also created Sin City -- 300 shows the Spartan good guys defeating the Persian bad guys at Thermopylae in… more

Will we know the two parties’ nominees in less than a year, after a February "national primary"? It’s quite possible. But, along the path to such an early nomination decision, new pitfalls will undoubtedly be discovered -- and fallen into.

It looks increasingly likely that a bunch of big states, including California and New York, will move their presidential primary to Feb. 5, 2008. So that day -- call it Super-Super Tuesday -- could prove decisive for all Republican and Democratic… more

Inside the mind of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

I sure showed them on Tuesday. While poor Dick Cheney was being bombed in Afghanistan, I dropped a bombshell of my own on Capitol Hill: The United States will talk, publicly, with Iran and Syria. I’ll be participating, in Baghdad, probably in April.

Yeah, OK, I know what folks are thinking: The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, which pushed such negotiations back in December, has finally prevailed. Well, obviously the president wasn’t just going… more

Rudy’s up, and Hillary’s down.

Still, it’s possible that New York could enjoy its first "subway series" presidential election -- two New Yorkers leading the national party tickets -- since Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt faced off against Republican Thomas E. Dewey in 1944.

Rudy Giuliani is on the cover of New York magazine this week, featured in a mostly positive profile, but the big GOP nomination news concerns the implosion of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the one Republican who was ahead of… more

Why are we good -- even if we have the power not to be? If we have the power to enslave or kill someone, why don’t we? Who, or what, restrains us?

One answer comes from a new movie, Amazing Grace, telling the story of William Wilberforce (1759-1833), the British activist-politician who ended the slave trade. The film, starring Ioan Gruffudd -- that’s John Griffith if you’re not Welsh -- opens tomorrow; it’s undeniably a message movie.

And what message is that?… more

Clint Eastwood is "growing" as a movie director. And we know what that means -- he is going to the politically correct left. And that has led him to some strange conclusions, which are worth addressing.

The onetime archetypal tough guy -- his "Dirty Harry" cop character took wrathful justice into his own hands decades before Jack 24 Bauer -- has been sliding over to liberalism for the past 15 years. And, of course, equally predictably, he has been showered with… more

Mitt Romney wants transformation. How do we know? The former Massachusetts Republican governor used the word "transform" or a variant no fewer than 13 times in his presidential announcement Tuesday.

Of course, so far at least, the greatest object of transformation in Romney’s life is -- Romney. And maybe that’s not so bad. Because, while some might wish for a president who is locked into predictable orthodoxy, right or left, America desperately needs a president who can learn and adapt --… more