Today, let’s do a favor for Mitt Romney. Not on your to-do list? Indulge me.

By John Welty and Deborah Nankivell

By Petula Dvorak

SAN DIEGO -- The Hispanic Beltway is atwitter. For those politicos and pundits in the nation's capital who understand that Hispanics could choose the next president because they populate battleground states, there is something irresistibly ironic abo

By Doyle McManus

The country is divided when different people take different sides in a debate. The country is really divided when different people are having entirely different debates. That's what's happening on economic policy.

Last week the High-Speed Rail Authority met in Fresno and approved the final Environmental Impact Report for the Merced to Fresno Section of high-speed rail.

"If Mitt Romney can be pushed around, intimidated, coerced, co-opted by a conservative radio talk show host in Middle America, then how is he going to stand up to the Chinese? How is he going to stand up to Putin?" So asked Bryan Fischer, a radi

As he bade farewell to his troops upon his exile to Elba in 1814 following his disastrous Russian campaign, Napoleon asked, "Are we not still the soldiers of Austerlitz?" Austerlitz in 1805 was a brilliant French victory over the Russian and Aus

WASHINGTON -- Economic austerity is a dangerous, self-defeating intellectual fad. Perhaps I should say that's what it was, given Sunday's election results in Europe. Perhaps I should also say good riddance.

"Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr." is another of the Harvard professor's wonderful television series for PBS. This is "must-see TV" and a more than worthy sequel to three previous projects Gates has hosted about how s

CHICAGO -- This fall the Supreme Court will hear Fisher v. University of Texas, a case that could decide the fate of racial preferences in the college admissions process. And here's a perfect example of why higher education's affirmative action

SAN DIEGO -- Jose Antonio Vargas is one of the most well-known illegal immigrants in the country. But what he wants you to know is that he is first and foremost a journalist.

By Geoffrey Greif

Today's front page story about Bee reporter Pablo Lopez and his family's battle with Fresno Unified School District is unusual both in subject matter and authorship.

No screenwriter could have dreamed up the saga of the blind Chinese human-rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng, a story so dramatic that it threatens to up-end U.S.-Chinese relations -- but offers China's leaders a unique chance to promote legal reforms.

What sort of thing is a presidential campaign?

In Syria, two photojournalists were killed. In Pakistan, a magazine editor was tortured and murdered. Two investigators, one in Brazil and one in Peru, both looking into the murder of journalists, were gunned down.

Washington is full of nerds. I know. I speak nerd, not fluently mind you, at least not anymore. But I certainly know more than a few phrases memorized from a Berlitz nerd-to-English phrase book.

In Spain, the unemployment rate among workers under 25 is more than 50%. In Ireland almost a third of the young are unemployed. Here in America, youth unemployment is "only" 16.5%, which is still terrible -- but things could be worse.

By John B. Quigley

SAN DIEGO -- How long before the smugglers who have made millions helping Mexicans enter the U.S. illegally figure out that the next big idea is to help them return home?

By Lawrence J. Haas

By Doyle McManus