August 1, 2012  |   We had a friendly disagreement at our morning planning meeting Tuesday about what the television program's lead story should be. It's a conversation we have every morning, but this particular day it went on a little longer than usual....

July 25, 2012  |   Robert Lambert, a blind worker at Blind Industries and Services of Maryland, carries fabric that has been cut into pieces for military uniforms in Baltimore, M.D., in Jan. 2012. Photo by Jay Mallin/ Bloomberg/ Getty Images. As the United...

July 19, 2012  |   You can find inspiration when you're not even looking for it. I was reminded of this Wednesday as I spent time with one of the many groups of young people who flock to Washington during our hot summers. This was...

July 11, 2012  |   Tourists use umbrellas for shade as they tour the U.S. Capitol grounds. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Update, 4:30 p.m. For the second time since the Affordable Care act was passed in 2010, the House has voted to repeal...

June 27, 2012  |   The new magazine article in The Atlantic by Anne-Marie Slaughter on how hard it really is for women to manage both a demanding career and a family, and why social policies need to change for things to get better,...

June 20, 2012  |   When I interviewed the senior senator from Arizona last week, I was struck again by how much he still cares about getting money out of politics. So much so, I decided to highlight what he said - again. For...

June 13, 2012  |   Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win" ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War Perhaps the most over-quoted figure in American politics is not Huey Long,...

June 7, 2012  |   Two different worlds. It wasn't so long ago that rapper LL Cool J did his own version of a song by that name. But the one I remember best goes back to my college years, when a popular number with...

June 1, 2012  |   Seeing the pictures from Syria this week of the bodies of women and children murdered - many at close range - reminds us again of the inhumanity of war. As hard as we try to put horrible images like...

May 24, 2012  |   President Obama campaigns in Virginia. Photo by Sara D. Davis/Getty Images. With a little more than five months to go until Election Day, Memorial Day about to signal the start of summer, and polls showing the presidential race very...

May 10, 2012  |   Tea Party protest in Laguna Beach, Calif. File photo/Getty Images. It's hard to miss one of the main messages of this week's primary votes, and it has to do with the current gridlock in Washington. It is that many...

May 2, 2012  |   As much as I know women are not all alike, that they can differ dramatically from one another in their thinking about politics , I keep coming back to this "non bloc" of voters for...

April 25, 2012  |   As someone who has long loved covering politics and the people who practice it, I should be on the edge of my seat as the presidential campaign kicks into higher gear and the focus unambiguously settles on Obama vs. Romney....

April 12, 2012  |   At a time when women have become an issue in the presidential campaign, it was fascinating to sit in on the first-ever public program involving all three current women members of the U.S. Supreme Court and the only female former...

April 6, 2012  |   With the release of a USA Today/Gallup battleground states poll this week showing President Obama running 18 points better than Mitt Romney among women voters, there's even more interest than usual in figuring out what matters most to this giant...

March 29, 2012  |   There's a mini war going on right now over the much observed "Millennial" generation -- those young people born after 1980, who are roughly between the ages of 10 and 30. It all started with a study published this month...

March 22, 2012  |   We throw around the words "courage" and "honor" so much that it's easy not to recognize when one is in the presence of the real thing. But I was without doubt face-to-face Wednesday night with some of the most courageous...

March 15, 2012  |   As the mother of a son with disabilities, I try to keep an eye out for news that affects people in the large community of which he is a part. Today, I spotted two that can potentially spell positive news...

March 7, 2012  |   Watching Super Tuesday results come in last night, one couldn't help but ask, what is it that's preventing Republican voters from showing more enthusiasm for Mitt Romney? Yes, he won six of the 10 states, but in only three states...

February 29, 2012  |   Photo by Darren McCollester/Getty Images There's a lot of talk thrown around in every election about the influence of independents -- voters who are registered as neither Democrat nor Republican or who swing back and forth. To listen to...

February 22, 2012  |   It's a life few of us can imagine: traveling to the most dangerous places on Earth, bearing witness to the worst of man's inhumanity. But that was the life of journalist Marie Colvin, who was killed Wednesday in Homs, Syria,...

February 15, 2012  |   Newt Gingrich proves again he has a way with words when he compares the Republican presidential nominating contest to Space Mountain, the popular Disney roller coaster rides that rise into the air, then send visitors hurtling through twists and drops...

February 8, 2012  |   Photo by David McNew/Getty Images. Amid all the worry about how long it will take the economic recovery to kick into high gear, there's a little-noticed sector that's doing very well, thank you: American agriculture. Overlooked by many of...

January 29, 2012  |   NAPLES, Fla. | Even with the hot lights of the national news media pointed in their direction, the majority of Florida's 18 or so million residents are managing not to focus on next Tuesday's Republican primary. From our vantage point,...

January 26, 2012  |   DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. | Florida Republicans seem to sense the heavy responsibility on their shoulders. Unlike December, when there were seven or eight candidates still in the presidential race, it's down to four, and one of those -- Ron Paul...

January 20, 2012  |   The numbers are depressing, and surprising, considering it's 2012. Only 17 percent of the U.S. Senate is made up of women. Only 16 percent of the House of Representatives. And only 12 percent of governors. An astonishing 90 other countries...

January 11, 2012  |   Overnight, Mitt Romney drew much closer to grabbing the GOP brass ring for 2012. He made history by becoming the first Republican non-incumbent to win both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire...

January 5, 2012  |   Mitt Romney greets supporters during a Thursday town hall meeting in Salem, N.H.; photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images After spending six days in Iowa covering the first-in-the-nation presidential Caucuses of the 2012 election, I have many questions, but two...

January 2, 2012  |   Whatever voters think of the political views of Republican presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, they have to be struck by how much each has learned on the campaign trail in Iowa over the past year. Both have run...

December 30, 2011  |   Presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul greets supporters during a campaign event Thursday in Atlantic, Iowa; photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images ATLANTIC, Iowa | First stop after arriving Thursday in Iowa to cover the Republican presidential Caucuses: Atlantic, a small...

December 29, 2011  |   As I head to Iowa to cover my tenth round of primary caucuses in the Hawkeye State, I'm every bit as excited as I was in late 1975, when I first flew to Des Moines to follow around...

December 21, 2011  |   With Washington proving yet again this week it's immune not only to the spirit of Christmas, but to any other effort at achieving good will, it was refreshing to pick up a book by a politician who counsels respect and...

December 15, 2011  |   Some remarkable things have been happening to the institution of marriage in the United States -- and far fewer people are jumping into it. Among young people aged 18 to 24, only 9 percent were married in 2010, plummeting from...

December 8, 2011  |   The contest for the Republican nomination for president in 2012 has suddenly grown a lot more unpredictable. With Newt Gingrich's emergence in November as a favorite among conservative voters, Mitt Romney is facing his toughest challenger yet. Confirming other recent...

December 2, 2011  |   Former President Bill Clinton is incapable of giving a dull interview. So when his latest book came out, a 196-page "short" look, in his words, at why government needs to be involved to get the economy moving again, I didn't...

November 16, 2011  |   As much as I love living and working in Washington, D.C., I've always believed you can't really know how the country's doing unless you spend time with people who don't live here. Right now, we in the national capital region...

November 10, 2011  |   Rick Perry did Herman Cain a favor in the Michigan GOP debate. By failing to remember the name of the third federal agency he intended to shut down if elected president, he claimed unflattering next-day headlines that might have...

October 27, 2011  |   For the past 21 years, I've been privileged to be part of an amazing organization called the International Women's Media Foundation. A group of women reporters and I came together to get it off the ground in 1990. With democracy...

October 19, 2011  |   As entertainment goes, Tuesday night's GOP presidential debate in Las Vegas gave the casinos a run for their money. We heard former Godfather's Pizza executive Herman Cain repeatedly try to deflect attacks on his 9-9-9 tax plan by saying his...

October 12, 2011  |   This week's Republican presidential candidate debate focusing on the economy was the latest reminder that American voters will have a clear choice to make when they go to the polls next year. One by one, each of the eight GOP...

October 5, 2011  |   Fair or not, I keep comparing this week's protests on Wall Street and against corporate interests across the country with the tea party movement that first gained national attention in late 2008 and early 2009. We watched back in...

September 28, 2011  |   This week's cries for New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie to jump into the race for president are just the latest in a long strand of entreaties to prominent political figures to "save" their party, and even the country, by...

September 22, 2011  |   My blog post last week raised questions about whether most journalists understand what life is like for the tens of millions of Americans who are living in poverty. It provoked quite a few comments. I had started thinking about this...

September 14, 2011  |   Updated Sept. 15, 11:45 a.m. ET Arriving for a short visit on the iconic campus of Ole Miss -- the University of Mississippi in Oxford -- I'm struck by how quiet things are, how un-frenzied life seems on the surface....

August 23, 2011  |   I hadn't been to China since 1995, so I wasn't prepared for the explosive growth in this sprawling mega-city on China's east coast. For all I had read and heard about how "China has changed," this...

August 17, 2011  |   Knowing the PBS NewsHour was planning a series of reports on income inequality in America, launched with economics correspondent Paul Solman's excellent report on Tuesday , my ears have been attuned lately...

August 12, 2011  |   If there was ever a time Americans would be justified in throwing their shoe -- or something a lot heavier -- at the TV set, radio or whatever device brings them the latest news from Washington or the stock market,...

August 5, 2011  |   It's possible we'll look back on this period at some distant time in the future and smile, but right now, that's hard to imagine. With the stock market plummeting a drop of 1,200 points in the Dow Industrials in...

July 27, 2011  |   From almost any vantage point, Washington looks pretty dysfunctional right now. I spent the first part of this week in Clovis, Calif., next door to Fresno in that state's fertile Central Valley, working on a story to air on the...

July 20, 2011  |   What a difference four years make. As I sat down Wednesday morning to interview Ron Paul, the 75-year-old Texas congressman making his third run for president, I kept thinking back to the interview I...

July 13, 2011  |   You often hear it said these days that there's no way the "next" generation will have it as good as their parents did. In fact, public opinion surveys have been showing since as long ago as 2005, well before the...

July 6, 2011  |   I came away from my interview with Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas on Tuesday's NewsHour still curious about the answer to this question: Why aren't employers hiring more people? Discussing the budget and debt ceiling showdown gripping Washington, I...

June 29, 2011  |   A remarkable thing happened in California this past weekend. Voters who are Democrats, Republicans and everything in between came together to talk about how to get their state government back on track. Notably, there was little yelling -- mostly they...

May 26, 2011  |   In the spectacular oceanside city of Monterey, Calif., this week, I spent several fascinating hours with two former U.S. senators who told fond stories about Congress but decried the lack of civility in the place where they spent a collective...

May 19, 2011  |   Every day we in the news media have to make judgment calls. They come in all shapes and sizes, some obviously more difficult than others. One of the most sensitive is how to handle the private lives of public figures,...

May 13, 2011  |   Watching all the anticipation Thursday night over how the wife of Indiana governor Mitch Daniels would handle herself in front of a large Republican party crowd reminded me of so many political campaigns, when all eyes are on the candidate's...

May 6, 2011  |   In the age of instant news, when headlines last at most a few hours before being replaced by the next "big story," the death of Osama Bin Laden has unusual staying power. Ever since word started to leak late...

April 21, 2011  |   Editor's note: This entry has been revised and updated from its original posting. Our co-founder Robert MacNeil's reports this week on autism are drawing a large response from NewsHour viewers, reminding us of the power of effective story-telling and the...

April 6, 2011  |   There is in Chinese philosophy, the concept we know as yin and yang: dark and light, cold and hot, male and female. Very simply put, the idea that opposites only exist in relation to each other. It takes a little...

March 30, 2011  |   Normally I keep the word "I" out of my reporting. That's what we were taught as journalists in the early 1970s. But if there's one episode that caused me to break with that precedent, it's what happened 30 years ago...

March 23, 2011  |   If there is an army girding to do battle against government spending on medical research, that army is laying low for now. Last week, I looked at the defense being mounted by the medical research community against efforts to cut...

March 16, 2011  |   For all their efforts, movie stars/Oscar hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco weren't enough to lift the TV viewing audience for the Academy Awards this year over what they were in 2010. An average of 37 million Americans watched, versus...

March 9, 2011  |   People often ask me if I like doing television interviews. They follow up with: Are they hard to do? My answer is that I love doing them, and that every single one is a challenge. As a reporter, I want...

February 24, 2011  |   Crowd inside Wisconsin Capitol on Feb. 17; Flickr Creative Commons photo courtesy Peter Patau The standoff in Wisconsin between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and a combination of state workers and Democratic state lawmakers over cutting the rights of public...

February 17, 2011  |   It's just beginning to emerge in public - with hints from a handful of senators about entitlement cuts - but something does appear to be taking shape that would address the debt monster looming over Washington. This week, the air's...

February 9, 2011  |   Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner expressed confidence Wednesday that Congress will vote to raise the ceiling on the national debt. Members of Congress know it is "unthinkable," he told a town hall meeting sponsored by Atlantic Magazine and Microsoft, that the...

February 7, 2011  |   It had all the trappings of a White House event: the U.S. Marine Band, a military color guard, a thunderous 21-cannon salute. But the first lady who presided over it all was the widow of the president who took...

February 2, 2011  |   As we approach the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth on Feb. 6, 1911, there will be some re-thinking of his presidency and the role he played in history. But no examination of him is complete without a careful...

January 26, 2011  |   No matter what the conversation, for Republicans, all roads seem to lead back to government spending. GOP'ers believe there's way too much of it. President Obama and most Democrats agree, but argue it's dangerous to cut too deeply while...

January 20, 2011  |   Americans love to take note of anniversaries, both good and bad. We remember the ends of World Wars I and II, the exact moments of the Sept. 11 terror attacks -- and events less momentous. We note the birthdays...

January 12, 2011  |   Last weekend's tragedy in Tucson has stirred up several conversations, including one about the nation's gun laws. Some are disturbed that a young man as troubled as accused gunman Jared Loughner appears to be found it easy to buy a...

January 6, 2011  |   While members of Congress took turns reading the Constitution out loud on the House floor Thursday -- a move initiated by the new Republican majority -- there's a serious battle just getting underway over one section of the document...

December 22, 2010  |   Almost half of my youth was spent in the South, where the civil rights movement played out in ways both peaceful and violent. My father was stationed in the Army in Taiwan, so when our family moved to Georgia I...

December 15, 2010  |   A lot has been written over the past few days about Richard Holbrooke, the 69-year-old diplomat who died this week while serving as the Obama administration's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Besides the war, he was focused on...

December 8, 2010  |   An easy two-part political quiz: 1 which state voted against the national Republican political tide in every one of its major contested races in the midterm elections? And 2) Which state is facing a near-term budget shortfall of $25...

December 1, 2010  |   Did anyone think the November 2nd midterm elections were a cry for lawmakers in Washington to begin to work together, for heaven's sake? If so, you may want to stop reading here. Because gridlock, and the disagreement over what Americans...

November 24, 2010  |   Even reporters who cover politics and Washington have something to be thankful for at this time of year. Not buying that? Here's a short list; let me know if you think of others: Candidates in VERY tight elections who graciously...

November 18, 2010  |   As new and old members of Congress gather in Washington this week to sort out their agenda after the midterm elections, a key Republican House member is making it clear his colleagues are in a hurry to send signals...

November 17, 2010  |   Up until a couple of months ago, the front-runner in the race to fill Vice President Joe Biden's former Senate seat in Delaware was the at-large member of Congress from the state and former governor, Republican Mike Castle. Castle's...

November 11, 2010  |   So now maybe we'll find out who's serious about attacking the federal debt. With the proposal released Wednesday by the heads of the bipartisan commission appointed by President Obama to look at ways to tackle the nation's looming fiscal crisis,...

November 3, 2010  |   As tempting as it is to focus only on what the Republicans accomplished in the midterm elections in Congress - taking control of the House of Representatives, and adding at least six Senate seats, it's just as important to...

October 27, 2010  |   Quick: Which Republican running for the U.S. Senate is telling anyone who'll listen: "I don't owe the Republican Party a thing ... I will be accountable to the voters ... because they are the ones that will send me to...

October 22, 2010  |   Political reporters are like Willie Sutton in at least one respect: legend had it that he said he robbed banks because that's where the money is ; we gravitate to the most competitive political races, because...

October 19, 2010  |   LAS VEGAS | In the Silver State's closely watched Senate race between incumbent Harry Reid and Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, supporters on both sides of the spectrum voice deep concern over the state's hard-hit economy....

October 14, 2010  |   Ever since women won the right to vote in 1920 -- was it only 90 years ago? -- there's been guessing about whether women and men vote differently. This speculation reached a high point during the presidential election year 1980,...

October 13, 2010  |   Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman to sit on the high court's bench and retired from the court in 2006. Her work since then has taken her many places, including the classroom. Judy Woodruff's has...

October 6, 2010  |   This year, mostly you don't. Once upon a time, not so long ago, candidates in competitive races sought out the news media to help get their messages across to the voters, and they scheduled frequent public events so they could...

September 22, 2010  |   There is no set pattern to the lives led by former presidents, but there is arguably a pattern to the way they relate to the press. It goes roughly like this: either 1 they avoid reporters, and are happy to...

September 17, 2010  |   With Washington stuck in a cycle of partisanship -- made worse by the prospect of mid-term elections a little more than six weeks away -- it's refreshing to hear a room full of people cheering on the role ordinary citizens...

August 17, 2010  |   There are lists we like - the New York Times Best Sellers List comes to mind - and lists we can live without. Now comes a list guaranteed to make most of us feel -- old. But still worth checking...

July 26, 2010  |   The question to ask on the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, is whether life today is any better for those with disabilities? The first-ever civil rights law for people with physical and cognitive challenges, signed by President...

July 22, 2010  |   <!-- _pap_embed_custom; //--><!]]> President Obama spoke by phone Thursday with fired U.S. Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod, expressing regret for her firing and hoping she will accept the offer of a new position at the agency. The call helped bring...

July 19, 2010  |   U.S. tennis star Andy Roddick works with Special Olympics competitor James Reiter in a tennis clinic on Sunday in Nebraska. I can confirm there was at least one place in America...

July 9, 2010  |   If you're one of those people who don't get all the fuss over Twitter and YouTube, hoping they'll simply go away, you may not want to read the results of a new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life...

July 1, 2010  |   Like just about everyone else covering Elena Kagan's confirmation hearings this week, I observed that she did a good job of ducking tough questions. Sen. Arlen Specter: Would she vote for the Supreme Court to take up a claims...

June 18, 2010  |   A controversial comment by veteran Texas Rep. Joe Barton, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, reminded us of an interview we did with him earlier this year. On Thursday, Barton startled many in a Capitol Hill...

May 14, 2010  |   I doubt it shows up in any political science textbook, but my observation has long been that intra-party fights can be even rougher and more personal than general election battles. Remember "You're likable enough, Hillary..." from then-Sen. Barack Obama,...

March 12, 2010  |   Professor David Coates thinks today's liberals need a guidebook on how to fight conservative arguments. So he wrote one for them. Coates, a professor of political science at Wake Forest University, released "Answering Back: Liberal Responses to Conservative Arguments," which...

March 10, 2010  |   If there was any doubt that the recession has had a big impact on Americans who are 18 to 29 years old, two national polls done in January and February shed new light on the issue. According to the Pew...

March 8, 2010  |   One month after their convention in Nashville, Tenn., landed them firmly on the political radar screen, organizers and supporters of the tea party movement are hyper-focused on November's mid-term elections for the U.S. House and Senate. "We want to elect...

February 25, 2010  |   As part of a continuing series of conversations about climate change legislation, Judy Woodruff recently talked with Brad Wall, premier of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Wall argues that because the U.S. and American economies are "so inextricably linked, we...

February 24, 2010  |   On Wednesday, I'll be spending most of the day focused on "millennials," one of the terms being used for the younger generation. I will moderate a daylong conference sponsored by the Pew Research Center and aimed at providing a portrait...

February 15, 2010  |   Dr. John Mendelsohn, president of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, says that when he was born, only a third of cancer patients lived five years or more. Now, two-thirds live that long. Mendelsohn stopped by the Rundown...

February 5, 2010  |   As part of a series of conversations on President Obama's energy agenda and the climate change legislation circulating in Congress, I spoke this week from an opponent of the House bill that would set a cap on carbon emissions. I...

January 28, 2010  |   Among the passionately expressed sentiments in last night's State of the Union was the president's call for bipartisanship. He first reminded Democrats that even with voter frustration and anger running high against Washington, they have the largest majority in decades,...

January 26, 2010  |   We're starting a series of conversations here on the Rundown about where climate change legislation stands in Congress. Among the players: A large consortium of American corporations and environmental groups, who are pushing Congress to adapt new laws to regulate...

January 12, 2010  |   As we near the end of President Obama's first year in office, and with talk of race much in the air this week in Washington, a new poll from the Pew Research Center caught my eye. Pew released what they...

December 10, 2009  |   The reporting I've done in the past few days on the Copenhagen summit tells me we may discover one more piece of evidence, as if we needed it, of China's growing global influence. A senior U.S. official at the center...

December 8, 2009  |   This is an exciting moment for all of us at the NewsHour, whether we've been working here for decades, or just a few months. The changes you see -- here on the Web site and on television -- are the...