WASHINGTON – Repealing “Don’t ask, don’t tell” might be the right thing to do, but there’s only one reason to do it: military effectiveness.

Anyone sitting in a dank, fetid Haitian jail for any reason probably deserves at least a measure of sympathy, so in that sense I feel sorry for the Baptist missionaries from Idaho charged with kidnapping 33 “orphans” and trying to take them out of the country. But what the do-gooders allegedly did was not just misguided. It could be criminal, and Haitian authorities are right to hold them accountable.

Tonight I said goodbye to four co-workers, four people I have shared my life with over the past year. Cuts and revenue downturns have resulted in layoffs and revisions in our work force. And here I sit, dumbfounded by the realization that I must start again and count my blessings for the job that I have.

WASHINGTON – In 2013, when President Mitch Daniels, former Indiana governor, is counting his blessings, at the top of his list will be the name of his vice president: Paul Ryan. The former congressman from Wisconsin will have come to office with ideas for steering the federal government to solvency.

It is the enduring paradox of our centuries here.

One day years ago, a naturalized American was speaking to an assembly at my grade school when he produced a storm of naughty giggles from his young audience by declaring that, unlike those of us who were born here, he had arrived in the United States with his pants on.

WASHINGTON – “I am not an ideologue,” protested President Obama at a gathering with Republican House members last week. Perhaps, but he does have a tenacious commitment to a set of political convictions.

WASHINGTON — The economic collapse of 2008 and 2009 did so much damage to the United States that only now can we begin to measure the devastation.

“Come now, let us reason together ...”

WASHINGTON – My favorite thing about J.D. Salinger wasn’t his seminal work – or his most famous character, Holden Caulfield – but how little I knew of him, thanks to his relentless pursuit of privacy.

WASHINGTON – When I heard Scott Brown, the newly elected senator from Massachusetts, describe himself as a “Scott Brown Republican,” I groaned. It sounded as if he’s coming to Washington to be part of the problem, not part of the solution.

If you want to be schooled in the art of modern fashion, go to the mall. You’ll get your education. Used to be that girls were the ones who fussed over “what to wear today” – but clearly, there’s a rising movement for boys’ pants not to be on the rise.

We figured out a long time ago that there was no scarcity of writing talent in the South Sound.

WASHINGTON – The sober, sprawling State of the Union address President Obama delivered last week was marked by one extraordinary moment.

If he’d said it of Jews, he would still be apologizing.