Patrick J. Toomey

A statewide poll shows that Joe Donnelly and Dan Coats, Indiana's U.S. senators, took stands opposed by a majority of their Hoosier constituents -- one on gay marriage, the other on background checks for gun purchases. The poll was conducted for Howey...

Taking a cue from the Bible, the Department of Veterans Affairs has decided the last shall be first. The agency announced last week it will expedite claims for disability benefits that have been pending for a year or longer. Those veterans will receive...

Before we move off the issue of gun control — and it's dead for now, believe me, for reasons this column will make clear — let's take a close look at just how something as popular as expanded background checks failed to pass the U.S. Senate...

It pains me to congratulate the National Rifle Association, but the organization's aid to the U.S. Senate's defeat of background checks for gun purchasers was an impressive victory — against common sense. Although there is widespread...

WASHINGTON -- Is there nobody who can tell Ted Cruz to shut up? The young senator from Texas has been on the job for about 100 days, but he has already turned upside down the Senate's ancient seniority system and is dominating his senior Republican...

WASHINGTON -- America's most interesting development since November is the Republican Party becoming more interesting. Consider the congressman from Grand Rapids, Mich., who occupies the seat once held by Gerald Ford, embodiment of vanilla Republicanism....

Usually when a senator suffers a big public defeat, he slinks off to lick his wounds. He rarely retwists the arms that didn't bend his way. Colleagues don't like to be seen switching. Were they horribly mistaken the first time? Don't know what they...

The Bill of Rights is full of mischief. Bad guys often beat the rap, religious zealots can run amok, and citizens can deny entry to authorities who are only trying to find out what's being hidden. Worst of all, people are allowed to be self-reliant...

WASHINGTON -- The gun bill was going down, but Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who reached a compromise to try to save it, went to the Senate floor Wednesday morning to give it one more try. In an unorthodox tactic, he appealed directly...

Let me begin this column with an apology. Once a week, I pick an important issue and offer my reasoned analysis, based on the facts, of what it all means and how we should react. But there are times when the intellect fails and the heart and gut take...

It was dismaying. Not that the U.S. Senate on Wednesday rejected a major gun control proposal that would have required universal background checks prior to all firearm sales. But that such a proposal, popular though it is in opinion polling, wasn't...

WASHINGTON -- In a city where David's righteousness almost never beats Goliath's might, what Nicole Hockley and the other Sandy Hook families did to the gun lobby last week was nigh unto miraculous. Gun-control legislation had appeared to be a lost...