National View: By endorsing Moore, Trump sunk the US presidency to unplumbed depths

The first time ended badly, so when, 156 years later, Alabamians were incited to again try secession, this time from the national consensus that America is a pretty nice place, they said: No. No, that is, to rubbish like this: In April, Alabama's Republican governor, Robert Bentley, resigned one step ahead of impeachment proceedings arising from his consensual affair with an adult woman.

GOP edges away from 20 percent corporate rate

Republican negotiators have reached a tentative agreement to raise the corporate rate in their joint House-Senate tax bill from 20 to 21 percent as they seek revenue to pay for a variety of significant changes that could be sold as tax relief for individuals. The higher corporate rate could pay for a reduction in the top individual rate, which Republicans are talking about lowering to 37 percent - beneath the current top rate of 39.6 percent and lower than the rates set by bills passed by the House and Senate this fall.

Lanny Keller: Confusing clash of interests with bonhomie

A decade or two ago, Louisiana's moderate-to-conservative Democrats like John Breaux in the Senate and Billy Tauzin in the House were shrewd, capable and willing to buck their party leadership as centrists in either chamber. They brokered deals with President Ronald Reagan or the Bushes across party lines, quite often winning special laws or tax provisions for Louisiana.

Mark Shields: Francisco Franco and the 2018 Republicans

To understand the discouraging plight for Republicans heading into the 2018 midterm elections, it might help to recall a joke popular in Spain in 1975, when Generalissimo Francisco Franco, that nation's long-ruling and ruthless dictator, lingered for endless weeks on his deathbed. As of today, there are no brave souls in President Donald Trump's inner, or even outer, circle volunteering to mention to him that the most recent four times that majority control of the House of Representatives switched from one party to the other - 1954, 1994, 2006 and 2010 - were after midterm elections.

The Senate couldn’t refuse to seat Roy Moore. But it could kick him out.

Robert L. Walker, an attorney with the D.C. firm Wiley Rein, is a former chief counsel and staff director of the Senate and House ethics committees. If Roy Moore wins Tuesday's special election for U.S. Senate in Alabama, after he takes the oath of office the Senate will have the authority to begin an ethics investigation into multiple allegations that Moore engaged in unwanted or assaultive sexual conduct going back to the 1960s.

U.S. Judge Chides Manafort for Helping to Write an Editorial Ahead of Trial

Ex-Trump campaign manager, who faces money-laundering charges, edited an editorial that appeared to violate a prohibition on public statements A federal judge on Monday lightly chastised Paul Manafort, the former chairman of the Trump campaign facing money-laundering charges, for helping to craft an editorial that prosecutors said violated a gag order prohibiting public statements by prosecutors and the defense before trial. U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson, however, declined to penalize Mr. Manafort for participating in the editing of the essay, which later was published in a Ukrainian English-language newspaper.

The Latest: Charles Barkley slams Moore, Bannon in Alabama

Former professional basketball star Charles Barkley says Alabama voters must send Democrat Doug Jones to the Senate to assure the rest of the nation "we're not a bunch of damn idiots." An Alabama native, Barkley says Republican Roy Moore would continue to embarrass a state that has a history of politicians garnering negative attention.

Brian Monteith: Brexit agreement is a sham to save the PM

There is only one word required to sum up the agreement announced between the UK government and the European Union and it is to describe it as a "sham", for it is designed to do one thing only and that is to keep Theresa May as Prime Minister, for now. This suits not just Theresa May and most of her Conservative colleagues but the EU - for it leaves them all to fight another day.