Last December, facing an 11-seat climb back to power, the GOP's most optimistic outlook in the Senate was to win back 4 or 5 seats, enough to break the filibuster-proof Democratic majority and diminish the majority's stranglehold on the Senate's legislative agenda.  Then came Massachusetts.  Scott Brown's stunning victory there assured Republicans 41 seats heading into November's elections and provided ample speculation about what could happen.  Could the GOP win the House?  I've been optimistic on that point, stating the odds to be pretty close to even money.

The federal budget deficit has long since graduated from nuisance to headache to pressing national concern. Now, however, it has become so large and persistent that it is time to start thinking of it as something else entirely: a national-security threat.

A remarkable thing happened in New York recently: the state legislature, in effect, turned down the chance to win $700 million in federal money. No one does that, except extremely conservative Southern governors (who inevitably relent and take the money) — oh, and occasionally teachers' unions. A few years ago, I wrote here about the Detroit union that forced the local government to reject a $200 million philanthropic gift to build 15 charter schools using a model that was already succeeding in the city.

WASHINGTON — The Northeastern Republican was nearly driven to extinction by political climate change, but the species appears poised to make a comeback.

The successful run of Scott Brown in the Senate race in Massachusetts, coupled with the front-runner status of Representative Michael N. Castle in Delaware in his bid for the Senate and other strong candidacies, could bode well for Republicans in a region that has been shedding them because of a sense that the party had grown too conservative and focused on the South.

In Illinois, a former federal prosecutor and a banker battle over who's the best face of 2010 reform.