This year, the U.S. Supreme Court will take up three issues that would be important at any time in the nation’s history: health care reform, immigration enforcement and determinations of geographical boundaries of legislative districts.

If you can’t be optimistic at the start of a new year, you probably won’t get much opportunity later.

The one thing every passenger rightly expects from an airline flight is a pilot who has had enough rest and break time to do the best job possible guiding the aircraft.

Last year ended with a display of remarkable understatement.

For three days beginning March 26, the U.S. Supreme Court will set aside an extraordinary 51/2 hours for arguments on the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s health care law. Court watchers point out that this is the most time devoted to a single case since the 1960s, and a signal of the importance the court assigns to the case.

With only two days to go until the Iowa caucuses and a little more than a week until the New Hampshire primary, political junkies in the other 48 states are supposed to be consumed with jealousy.

Seventy-three years ago, a Boy Scout from Rye, N.Y., got separated from his hiking group on Mount Katahdin.

At the end of World War II, returning servicemen avoided a glutted labor market by going to college in unprecedented numbers and acquired new skills. A few years later, the result was a cycle of sustained economic expansion and opportunity and the creation of a greatly expanded and durable middle class.

Mitt Romney is zero for two when it comes to transparency in campaigning.

Just as cold weather struck the Northeast, the White House and Congress put people in danger by cutting low-income heating assistance.