Here is another good news/bad news column about the 112th Congress.

For some months now, President Obama has increasingly been couching his rhetoric in the language of fairness. But in recent weeks, a growing number of conservative elected officials have begun contesting Obama’s claim to be the arbiter of what constitutes fairness and taking the issue of fairness head on in public policy.

If ever we need evidence of ideology run rampant, the House vote to eliminate the annual American Community Survey and the Economic Census to provide basic information on the state of businesses and industries in the country and data used for generating quarterly gross domestic product estimates is exhibit A.

In recent months, electoral skirmishes and policy debates have hinged on the meaning of fairness. Defenders of free enterprise have often shied away from moral language, preferring to rely on facts, figures, or constitutional arguments to make their case. AEI president Arthur Brooks highlights free enterprise leaders who are changing, now making the moral case.

The tension between Congress and the president is palpable, and nowhere is that more true than in the controversy over recess appointments.

Republicans are jumping on the anti-earmark bandwagon after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced his support for a GOP earmark ban.

In the debt-limit negotiations, Mitch McConnell's plan might be the least bad of the currently possible options. But what's particularly frustrating is how McConnell is selling his proposal.

Let’s start with the stark reality: Second presidential terms rarely result in major accomplishments. Presidents have few new ideas that have not been posed in their first two years, and already met with success or failure. And second-term presidents face even more obduracy from the opposition, bitter at a second loss of the big prize.