Opinion - RealClearPolitics.com

When the Clinton administration prosecuted the blind cleric, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, and nine co-defendants in federal court in New York for their roles in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, much less was known about al-Qaeda and the risks of using ordinary criminal process for terror suspects. Part of the legacy of that trial was the disclosure of information to the lawyers for the defendants that wound up promptly in the hands of al-Qaeda members who eventually would plan and execute the next attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The information, which revealed some of what our government knew about international terrorism and how we knew it, helped shield some of the terror enterprise's deadly planning from those trying earnestly to monitor and stop terrorism. No one will ever know how to apportion responsibility, but there should be no doubt that this was one of many contributing factors to the loss of nearly 3,000 innocent lives in the horrific attacks of 9/11.

By a razor-thin margin, lawmakers approved the trillion-dollar health reform package proposed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi late Saturday evening. Proponents of the measure claim that it will eventually pay for itself -- and even lower the nation's healthcare costs and the federal deficit.

John Judis and Ruy Teixeira's well-regarded 2002 work The Emerging Democratic Majority begins with a vignette set in Virginia. They tell the story of a telecom executive named Mark Warner, who runs a moderate campaign that appeals to upper-middle class suburbanites and working class rural voters, and manages to put together a winning coalition that, if imitated in other states, might put the Democrats in power for decades to come.

This week, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, told reporters the GOP offers a "back-of-the-hand treatment to women." Later she said two conservative female representatives only serve to further "repulse women." You see, Schultz said on MSNBC, Republicans "don't really get very many women when it comes to elections."