
When crunch time comes, when the chips are down, when the rubber meets the road — employ the cliché of your choice — Americans can put away their selfish concerns and come together in common cause. Even Congress, our only native criminal class.

The Supreme Court is trying to sort out a wrenching adoption case involving a American Indian child, a biological father who first renounced any interest in her, and adoptive parents who eventually were ordered to hand her over to the father.

Liberal hopes to renew Bill Clinton's "assault weapon" ban are beginning to fade, but liberal bitterness is hard to conceal. Opponents of gun rights are turning their attention to legislative harassment.

President Obama's record on nominating federal judges lags behind those of his predecessors, and nowhere is his failure more glaring than on the prestigious U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

"Obamacare" looks increasingly inevitable, but one lawsuit making its way through the court system could pull the plug on the sweeping federal health care law.

Crime knows no bounds. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has been hit by credit card fraud, various media report.

Gay marriage is on trial but it was the Obama administration facing the heat as the Supreme Court began the second of two days of landmark oral arguments on the constitutionality of gay marriage.

The federal government has a "powerful interest" in a single, uniform definition of marriage, even if it excludes gay unions that are legal in individual states, the lawyer defending the federal Defense of Marriage Act said Wednesday as the Supreme Court concluded two days of landmark arguments on gay marriage.

Religious fervor collided with secular ambition this week as the stakes in the gay marriage battle were laid bare in dramatic testimony before the Supreme Court.