Like all our political institutions, the presidency has evolved with the growth of the nation and the pace of change in the modern world. Three key changes come to mind.

Iran's threats to close the vital Strait of Hormuz, its naval exercises in nearby waters, and the ominous increase in tensions over its nuclear weapons program all point to a dangerous year ahead.

American Enterprise Institute (AEI) president Arthur C. Brooks has announced that AEI scholar Leon R. Kass, M.D., is the recipient of AEI’s 2012 Irving Kristol Award. Dr. Kass will receive the award and deliver the Irving Kristol Lecture at AEI’s annual dinner on Wednesday, May 2, 2012, at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President. You've come a long way in your first 50 years of life, but so has the country. Take a look back at what Americans were thinking about the year Obama was born.

Sargent Shriver never attained elective office as the three Kennedy brothers and assorted offspring did, but he achieved something as important, or more so.

Jan. 21 is an auspicious day, for two reasons. It is the date of the South Carolina primary, and it is the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

Rather than await the decision on the Affordable Care Act, President Obama decided to attack preemptively with error-filled claims about the place of judicial review in our constitutional system. Judicial review springs from the duty of a court, when deciding a case before it, to enforce the Constitution over a conflicting act of Congress.

The Financial Times’s Ed Luce has a largely incomprehensible column on the witches’ brew of Iran, Barack Obama, Israel, and the Republicans in today’s paper. Starting off coherently, Luce notes that 2012 may be the “year of Iran,” if Tehran achieves nuclear capability,...