Daniel Stone

Keeping the publicity train moving swiftly, Sarah Palin sat on Jay Leno's couch last night. The interview didn't break any news, but it did raise both parties' boats, allowing Leno to show he can still attract the top guests while Palin proved she can handle a giggly late-night interview.

State and federal debates over which rivers and lakes should be regulated have left some bodies of water full of pollution, and with little hope of a mandate to clean them anytime soon.

The New York Times dropped a bombshell today that has not only turned Albany upside down, but leaves New York Gov. David Paterson in a tight spot. According to the piece, state officials are now investigating whether Paterson acted improperly in the handling of a domestic-violence incident involving one of his top aides.

It used to be a bumper sticker, but lately the phrase "You're entitled to your opinion but not your own facts" has become a mantra for partisans on health care, especially among Democrats accusing conservatives of twisting facts to support their priorities.

  Options are limited when you're in the minority, especially when the majority plans to use a budgeting maneuver to lower the vote threshold on health-care reform.

As the second coming of nuclear energy (or is it the third?) fills the air, the usual debate has begun to play out. It's immensely potent and greenhouse-gas efficient, but also highly risky and potentially deadly.

Sen. Joe Lieberman is a man who likes to parade his conscience. It's why he made such a splash last summer as he made demands that gutted large provisions of the Democrats health-care-reform bill.

Earlier this week, recognizing that climate science has lost considerable perceptive momentum, New York Times columnist Thomas Freidman called for a time-out.

As hard as the health-care fight has been for Democrats, the greater challenge may come if their bill is made into law. At issue is the "individual mandate," a statute that would require all Americans to buy insurance or face a penalty tax.

President Obama campaigned on bringing openness and transparency to the grotesque process of policymaking. And now, in his second year, he's certainly getting it.

President Bill Clinton has been hospitalized at New York-Presbyterian Hospital this afternoon after complaining of chest pains. The former president, who is 63, had checked himself in for a routine opening of a heart stent that was installed during an angioplasty surgery in 2004.

Has bringing home the bacon turned into a bad thing? Not if done right.

Ever wonder if your tax dollars are working for you? Then check out the Office of Personnel Management's Web site, which declares whether the federal government is open for business, or buried under four feet of blizzard snow.Inside the Beltway, this site is a big deal─by which I mean refreshed repeatedly, sometimes neurotically.

There are few places where money speaks louder than it does in electoral politics. And the latest fundraising numbers highlight a clear advantage for House Democrats, who so far have outraised their Republican counterparts nearly six to one.According to numbers released this morning, the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee (the electoral arm for the House GOP) raised $4.3 million in January for House races later this year, a substantial uptick from the $3.2 million it took in during...

Palin 2012 buzz is again in the air, this time after her punchy and oft-replayed address to the national Tea Party Convention on Saturday. The fallout from the speech has been predictable.

In what was Sarah Palin's highest-profile speech since her address to the Republican National Convention in 2008, the former veep candidate addressed the National Tea Party Convention Saturday evening in Nashville.

Tea partiers will be the first to tell you that they don't intend to start a third party. They're angry with Washington and with the behavior of both parties, but the way toward the nation's salvation is to hold current leaders more accountable, not sending new ones to fill the ranks of Congress. "We just don't have enough time to do that," says Joyce Smith, a retiree from Ellijay, Ga.

The only press conference open to all media at the Tea Party Convention just wrapped, and the newsiest component from it was the announced effort to incorporate the tea party into what organizer Mark Skoda said would be called the Ensuring Liberty Political Action Committee.

In the weeks leading up to this weekend's National Tea Party gathering, organizers caught flack for the choices they made about how to put on the movement's first-ever convention.

At one of this mornings breakout sessions at the tea-party convention in Nashville, a gentleman in the audience asked how such a relatively small and blooming movement can overcome big media organizations that he says are telling a different story.

Probably not. Some of the movement's detractors might argue that it hasn't even gone national in a formidable way. Yet as the debate stirs, there's a bit of surprising news at the national tea-party convention this week in Nashville.

The first-ever National Tea Party Convention is getting underway here in Nashville, where delegates plan to discuss and plan the future of the burgeoning movement.

Of all of the political buzz terms with unusually long half-lives, none has lingered quite so notoriously as President Bush's "axis of evil," a construction he used to describe Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as states that sponsor terrorism in his 2002 State of the Union address.

Washington lately has been abuzz with the advent of question time in America. It makes for great TV by teasing out pent-up partisan tension. But it also just makes democracy better.

Numbers abound in the fiscal-year 2011 budget released by the White House this morning. The full package runs just over $3.8 trillion for next year, which includes a 6 percent increase in education spending, an additional $160 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the $300 in tax cuts over the next decade that President Obama foreshadowed in his State of the Union address last week.

Walking through the Capitol the evening of President Obama's big speech is a bit like trying to casually stroll through Fort Knox. Security checkpoints every 10 steps, and gaggles of reporters flanking members as they file into the chamber.

It wasn't so long ago that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the budget-breaking governor of California, used his star power to win the state's top job. He had no experience as a top executive, really, nor as a politician, but everyone knew him as the rock solid man-bot from The Terminator, not to mention the world's first pregnant man in Junior.

In advance of President Obama's State of the Union Message tonight, NEWSWEEK partnered with YouTube to launch discussions with four experts in their various fields on the most pressing issues facing America: education, national security, the economy, and the climate crisis.

Here's NYU economist Nouriel Roubini, also known as "Dr. Doom" for his often bleak economic outlook. Of all the options on how to address a still-sagging economy, Roubini sees no good choices.

In advance of President Obama's State of the Union Message tonight, NEWSWEEK partnered with YouTube.com to launch discussions with four experts in their various fields on the most pressing issues facing America: education, national security, the economy, and the climate crisis.