One of the few issues on which opinion has moved left over the last few years is same-sex marriage.

Pundits lately have been comparing Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter, suggesting he is a likely loser in 2012.

Never before has there been a televised presidential candidates debate so short a time before the Iowa Republicans' Ames straw poll.

Why Iowa? It was the 29th state to be admitted to the Union, it is the 30th state in population, it has given the nation Grant Wood's "American Gothic" and Meredith Willson's "The Music Man."

Why aren't voters moving to the left, toward parties favoring bigger government, during what increasingly looks like an economic depression?

"Leading from behind." That's what an unnamed White House aide told the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza that Barack Obama was doing on Libya.

Those who consider themselves constitutional conservatives should take care to consider not only the powers that the Constitution confers on the different branches of government and reserves to the states and the people, but also the schedule that the Constitution sets up for sharp changes and reversals of public policy.

When governments want to encourage what they believe is beneficial behavior, they subsidize it. Sounds like good public policy.

It's hard to keep up with all the arguments and proposals in the debt-limit struggle. But what's at stake is fundamental.

The United States is a country that has been peopled largely by vast surges of migration -- from the British Isles in the 18th century, from Ireland and Germany in the 19th century, from Eastern and Southern Europe in the early 20th century, and from Latin America and Asia in the last three decades.

Some of us called it the man-cession. In the deep recession that lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, many more men than women lost their jobs.

It's racially discriminatory to prohibit racial discrimination.

What's the fair way to run a large organization? That's a question that is squarely, and interestingly, raised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissenting opinion in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, a Supreme Court case decided last week.

Which past leader does Barack Obama most closely resemble? His admirers, not all of them liberals, used to compare him to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

When I was growing up, it was widely believed that colleges and universities were the part of our society with the widest scope for free expression and free speech.