In the 1980s, Harvard Law School was known as "Beirut on the Charles." Professors waged bitter tenure battles; students argued over issues like affirmative action. That infighting found its way into Gannett House, home of the Harvard Law Review. In the 1985-86 year, its members were a fairly outspoken group: Jeffrey Toobin, the legal analyst; Miguel Estrada, a conservative lawyer whose federal judicial nomination would be blocked by Democrats in 2003 — and Elena Kagan. While many debated in a second-floor ...

It was inevitable that Barack Obama's decision to draw down 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of next summer would be controversial. Most Democrats — as well as a growing cohort of Republicans and, according to the polls, a majority of Americans — were looking for a bigger, faster pullout. The Pentagon was hoping for something slower. General David Petraeus, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, must be particularly disappointed that the counterinsurgency strategy that ...

It was a delicious inside bit of politics: Bill Clinton and Congressman Paul Ryan having a private, backstage chat about Medicare, captured by an ABC News camera. Clinton says he's happy that the Democrats won the House special election in New York, but hopes his party doesn't use it as an excuse to "do nothing on Medicare." Ryan suspects that's exactly what is going to happen: "It's going to sink into paralysis." Clinton invites Ryan to give ...

Republicans and Democrats deny that they want to see a government shutdown, but both parties accuse each other of secretly rooting for one. With the federal government perilously close to shuttering on March 4 if an agreement on spending cuts cannot be reached in Congress, neither side appears prepared to make serious concessions. And while a shutdown looms, it has become increasingly apparent that conditions are very different from the last time the government shut down over ...

With an assist from Duarte, Reagan reassures Congress and critics The Reagan Administration wants to give billions of dollars to Central America, it says, to support liberty and political pluralism. Yet democracy in Central America is a patchy business at best. From among the few authentic democrats in the region, the U.S. has staked most of its money and hopes on Jos Napolen Duarte, who will assume El Salvador's presidency on Friday. Last week he came to Washington for four ...

Leaders of democracies, like bear wranglers at the circus, must be experts at reading moods. Most of the time, the leaders of our two major parties seem to have much the same sense of the voters' basic concerns. But for the past two years, the parties have been operating under very different understandings of the public temper. Democrats believed that the economic crisis made the electorate yearn for security, thereby creating an openness to large public programs. They enacted a gargantuan stimulus bill, expensive ...

Wonkbook: Health-care challenge boosted; helping homeowners; House looks at Social Security supplement In Florida, Judge Roger Vinson has decided to let the case against health-care reform go forward. His ruling was only about whether the states have the "standing" to bring the case to court, but he also admonished the Obama administration for calling the individual mandate a "tax," rather than a "penalty." Since that was core to their argument, they'll now need to come back with a different constitutional justification. Last ...

Half of U.S. pays no federal income tax Credits for low- and middle-income families exempt many Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it's simply somebody else's problem. About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization. Most people still ...

Obama's 8-Month Nightmare Could Begin Tomorrow For months now, the pundits have predicted doom and gloom for Barack Obama and the Democrats come November. But we're not totally convinced. A very likely storyline goes something like this (as we've already written): Healthcare passes. On Friday, April 2 at 8:30 AM the March jobs numbers come in, and they show for the first time decisive job growth (very possible). Finally Case-Shiller shows the housing rebound that stalled out over the winter, and voila, the ...

The House ethics committee on Thursday announced separate investigations into whether Rep. Laura Richardson and Rep. Maxine Waters, both Democrats from California, violated rules of conduct.