With the threat of a veto hanging over its head, the National Defense Authorization bill heads to the House floor today for debate. Among the provisions are several dealing with the question of a nuclear weapons armed Iran, and what the United States should do to avert a crisis, prepare to handle the threat, or eliminate the threat altogether.

The number of schools ranked highly in guides such as Barron's Profiles of American Colleges is increasing, without any evidence that these schools' instructional quality is also increasing. Applicants and their families should be wary of letting these rankings serve as the main criteria in their college decisions.

Every federal official has an obligation to act in line with the Constitution as he or she understands it. And that doesn't necessarily mean obeying Supreme Court decisions.

Despite China's emergence as an economic power and all the talk about how America has become a service economy, U.S. manufacturing is alive and well.

Despite China's emergence as an economic power and all the talk about how America has become a service economy, U.S. manufacturing is alive and well. But there is a fly in the ointment -- the U.S. has become dangerously dependent on imports of raw materials needed to keep the economy moving.

Only Mugabe and his friends benefit from Zimbabwe’s diamond wealth.

Only by continuing to act on the high seas as it always has can the United States hope to maintain a system of international rules that serves its own interests. Ratifying UNCLOS could very well have the opposite effect.

Syria has always been among the Middle East's most repressive regimes. Any hope that Bashar al-Assad would usher in reform were naïve to begin with, the stuff of diplomats' fantasies. The question of what might come after Assad is a difficult one for American diplomats who have spent far more time trying to engage Assad and his functionaries than in reaching out to the Syrian opposition.