I was just about to submit this week’s column – yet another rant about continued Republican intransigence in the House on gun control and immigration reform – when news of the explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon filled my Twitter feed. Like many others, I quickly found a television...

Pardon the pun, but President Barack Obama pulled out the big guns on Tuesday to try to move some sort of gun safety legislation through the U.S. Senate. He flew a group of the families of the children and educators killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., to Washington, D.C., on Air Force...

Paul Ryan released his “Path to Prosperity” budget last week, and his third annual performance of smoke and mirrors is, at best, a pathway to hypocrisy.  In the previous two years, Ryan’s budgets were brutally imbalanced if not mathematically impossible, but this year he has managed to cross into...

The February jobs report was released Friday, showing that 236,000 jobs were added, which means unemployment has fallen to its lowest level since 2008. That number would have been even better if the economy hadn’t seen a forced loss of 10,000 public sector jobs, and if the recovery weren’t...

If you are a regular reader of The Rational Center, you’re likely a member of my family (hi mom!) or a friend. If you are neither, then you must be a political junkie like me. Why else would anyone but a masochist invest even one minute to follow the ridiculousness underway in our nation’s capitol? Washington,...

With a near party-line vote Tuesday of 58-41, former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel was finally confirmed by the U.S. Senate to succeed Leon Panetta as the United States’ next defense secretary. In the end, only four of Hagel’s 47 fellow Republican colleagues voted for his confirmation, so essentially...

I’d like to take a break from politics this week to memorialize a legend lost. On Monday, Dr. Jerry Buss, who bought the Los Angeles Lakers in 1979 for 30 percent less than the cost of this year’s $110 million player payroll, died at age 80 after a months-long battle with cancer. With his passing,...

At some point this week, the Senate will vote on President Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel from Nebraska.   As defense secretary, Hagel will be in charge of the largest and arguably most important sector of the federal government, which is why the...

In Minneapolis on Monday, surrounded by law enforcement officers, President Barack Obama said, “The only way we can reduce gun violence in this country is if the American people decide it’s important. If you decide it’s important. If parents and teachers, police officers and pastors, hunters and...

Hey, we’re going to get some immigration reform! Woot, woot! Outside of the economy, President Barack Obama has made comprehensive immigration reform his No. 1 domestic priority, and he’s made it clear he expects to win on this issue. Americans long ago accepted the need to change our immigration...