Historically speaking, President Barack Obama’s inauguration yesterday completed America’s journey from the exhilaration of 2008 to the confirmation of 2012. His reelection proved that this country is absolutely great enough to get beyond our recent past of segregation not only to elect, but also...

President Barack Obama walked into the East Room of the White House on Monday for his final press conference of his first administration and forcefully threw down the gauntlet at the feet of Republicans in Congress. With strength in his voice, Obama said, “We are not a deadbeat nation.” Obama pointed...

President Obama has nominated Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska who served two terms in the U.S. Senate (1997-2009), to replace Leon Panetta as his next Secretary of Defense.  In nominating a Republican to serve in his cabinet, Obama said, “Chuck Hagel represents a bipartisan tradition that...

Happy New Year! While most people were watching the ball drop in Times Square, I was watching a ball of a different kind being dropped in Washington: the “fiscal cliff” ball. Somehow, despite the fact that in every corner of our great country Americans knew just how enormous the fiscal cliff stakes...

Happy Holidays, everyone! For those of you who join me in celebrating Christmas, I hope you awoke this morning to everything you wanted, and then some. I’m writing this week’s column from my hometown of Reading, Penn., where the extended Zaring clan has gathered at the home of my 83-year-young mother...

“Our hearts are broken,” President Barack Obama said Friday after the horrific massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. With those four simple worlds, our president gave voice to what many parents across the country, if not the world, were feeling. America’s latest gun tragedy was just...

Congratulations, Washington, you achieved nothing this past week. Again. Here’s a recap of things so far. Last week, President Barack Obama’s offer to avoid the fiscal cliff was laughed at by Republican leaders. Then, the GOP countered with its own solution. Well, sort of. All they said was, extend...

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the so-called Fiscal Cliff, which refers to the possibility of yet another financial crisis caused by a double-whammy of tax increases and spending cuts mandated to take effect Jan. 1 unless the 112th U.S. Congress, which returned for its lame-duck, 36-day session...