It's easy to find educators, politicians, and parents bemoaning the state of American education. It's a reliable applause line at political rallies, and unchallenged in newspaper editorial pages: American schools stink.

Except they don't. Not really. Schools all over the country are turning out students who work hard, take challenging...

During the Bad Old Days of the Cold War, a Latin American country had a few options: you could go it alone, cozy up to Washington, or get friendly with Moscow. All three choices had their problems. The world has transformed over the last 25 years. The Cold War is...

Mexico's descent into something like open war over the drug business has created anxiety in the American states closest to the border. If you believe the FBI's annual crime statistics, the big cities on or near that 1400-mile frontier -- San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso -- are among...

You had to read past the jump from the front page to the inside of the paper to find some of the more obscure points in the budget-cutting deal that avoided a government shutdown a few weeks ago. For those of you who never handle newspapers, I guess you had...

As the Congress and the White House try to come to terms on bringing what the federal government spends and what it collects closer to each other, listen for loose talk. There's bound to be plenty of it on all sides of the debate.

This year, the government of the...

It's one of the most important jobs of the Congress and the president: come up with a plan for financing the operations of government. The administration and the Hill have to figure out how to raise the money -- who to tax and how much -- then spend it.

One...

If we consulted the health statistics kept by the rich countries club, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, we might not be too surprised to find that the United States has the highest rate of obesity, at 30.6 percent. What country, would you guess, is number two?...

Secretaries of Labor are often unstoppable cheerleaders for the job market, seeing blue skies ahead. Former US Representative, now cabinet secretary Hilda Solis has learned from two years on the job during tough economic times: No blue sky forecasts unless they are absolutely guaranteed. Here's what she sounds like now:...

Just as the US Constitution required and Congress paid for the Bureau of the Census headed out into the country to do the hard and seemingly impossible work of counting everyone living in the country during 2010. That elusive number is a constantly moving target: People move in. They move...

Here we go again... or do we?

You can bet interested parties on all sides of the immigration debate held their breath during the final weeks of the lame duck session of the 111th Congress. When the clock, the year, and the congress all ran out, so did what the...

There's something about the subject of Cuba that just riles people up. So it was with anticipation and no little anxiety that I strapped myself into the anchor chair at Destination Casa Blanca to moderate a conversation on Cuba. Looking back on it, the conversation was more civil...

In last November's election, Latinos gave two out of three votes to Democratic candidates. At the same time, other Americans gave the Democrats a stinging defeat. The House shifted from a secure Democratic majority to a big Republican one. Democrats held the US Senate -- barely. State governments shifted heavily...

In 2012 tens of millions of Americans will head to the polls, and their mailboxes, to cast votes for President, the US Congress, and thousands of state offices. Thousands of incumbents will be asking the voters to rehire them, hundreds more newcomers will be running against them, in districts shaped...

Like any society on earth, the United States has to decide how to spend public money. Simple as that: economy, from a Greek word meaning household management, means we have to decide how to run the national household.

Who gets educated, and who doesn't? What communities get new...

Governments around the world are starting to make a priority of developing new industries that will reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. The United States government... sorta. The executive branch led by President Obama is moving ahead with subsidizing research and development of green industry with an eye toward creating...

Let's say you're a Latino voter. (Not too hard, right?)
You're curious about turnout, and wins and losses, so you're looking over the landscape left by the momentous midterm elections. What do you see?

Some defeated Latino incumbents are there... Ciro Rodriguez and Solomon Ortiz in Texas border...

The polls weren't wrong. The Democrats took a beating on Election Day 2010. Late into the day, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, angrily rejected claims based on projections that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team would be swept out of...

As campaign 2010 moved into its final hours this weekend, the president still had to campaign for the Democratic Party in one important place: his home state of Illinois.

Alex Giannoulias, the Democrat hoping to win the president's old U.S. Senate seat, is in trouble. So is Pat Quinn, the...

MAPUTO, Mozambique | Heard much about Mozambique in the last 35 years?

It's a country that doesn't get much attention in the United States. It's a big place, roughly the size of Pakistan, and sparsely populated by some 23 million people. It's among the poorest countries in the world with...

Deportations are up.

Angry anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise.

The U.S. economy isn't shrinking any more, but the number of jobs isn't growing.

And yet, the United States is still a magnet for people around the world, and especially from the rest of this hemisphere. Sure, estimates of...