The Chen Guangcheng saga gets stranger and stranger, but also is becoming a major diplomatic embarrassment for the Obama administration.

The tax code is 5,296 pages long and full of complicated details. We outlined a few of them in our recent column for the New York Times Magazine. So why hasn't Congress done anything to simplify the tax code? We posed the question to Alan D. Viard, a tax expert at the American Enterprise Institute. His response is below.

Winning the Tuesday trifecta gives Rick Santorum a second chance to make a first impression. This will give him the momentum that his delayed Iowa victory could have given him.

The National Academy of Sciences creates virtual blacklists of scientists who dare to disagree with "the consensus."

Until the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the American view of radical Islam and its many discontents was shaped more by the Middle East than South Asia. The U.S. has long been at odds with the raging Ayatollah in Iran, the murderous truck bomber in Lebanon and the masked Palestinian "freedom...

Chinese vice president Xi Jinping is back in China, his U.S. visit having gone off without a hitch. Both sides are claiming that the trip was a smashing success and are asserting that the Sino-American relationship is strong and mature.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum caused a stir last month when he labeled college campuses "indoctrination mills" that enforce a strict adherence to "politically correct left doctrine." For conservatives, Mr. Santorum might as well have called the sky blue. But from the way liberal pundits pounced on his remarks, you'd think he had said something profoundly indecent.

The Financial Alignment Initiative has set ambitious time frames for making sweeping changes in the care offered to dual eligibles.  Will dual eligibles be able to obtain the services they need once they are shifted into these new health plans? Will savings come at the expense of patient care, or will this approach lead to real efficiencies in delivering care?