Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) handily won reelection in November, even though his House colleagues had voted to censure him for ethics violations in 2010 by an overwhelming margin, 333 to 79. He could have left those charges alone, knowing they had not dissuaded his constituents from supporting him, but that wouldn’t be the Rangel way. So he is back fighting with a lawsuit filed against House Speaker John Boehner and the six lawmakers who sat on the ethics panel that brought the charges against him.

The substance of the charges against him are almost a sideshow: failing to pay taxes on the rental income he received from a vacation home in the Dominican Republic and using his position as a powerful committee chairman to solicit donations from companies wanting to court him top the list. Rangel has taken issue with how the six-member Ethics Committee arrived at their decision and whether relevant information was withheld.

That’s where it gets interesting. Jay Goldberg, Rangel’s attorney, uncovered a secret July 2011 memo from Democratic staff director Blake Chisam outlining at length his concerns about the performance of two committee attorneys, Stacy Sovereign and Cindy Morgan Kim. The most stinging of the complaints are politically charged, accusing the attorneys of essentially being in cahoots with the Republican members, constructing scenarios that went beyond the facts to charge Rangel, and alleging that Sovereign in particular made racially prejudicial remarks suggesting a bias that made coworkers uncomfortable.

On the eve of the dedication of his presidential library, can George W. Bush be rehabilitated?

Such things have been known to happen.

Modern scholars, for instance, consistently rate Harry S. Truman in the first rank of American presidents. But when Truman left the White House in January 1953, he was one of the least respected chief executives in history—his nearly eight years in office beset by petty scandals, a lingering war in Korea and the indelible image of a ward-heeling haberdasher unworthy of the godlike legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

So far, it doesn’t look like the story of the Tsarnaev brothers is killing Republican support for immigration reform. John McCain and Lindsey Graham insisted that their identity makes reform all the more important. But Boston aside, if you pay a little attention you see signs that the right is getting a bit restive about all this reasonableness. There’s a long and winding road from here to there, but if the GOP does drop immigration, then it will essentially be a party of nothing, the Seinfeld Party, a party that has stopped even pretending that policy is something that political parties exist to make.

Yesterday in Salon, political scientist Jonathan Bernstein wrote up the following little discovery, which has to do with the numbering of bills. Historically, the party that controls the House of Representatives reserves for itself the first 10 slots—HR 1, HR 2, and so on. Usually, the majority party has filled at least most of those slots with the pieces of legislation that it wants to announce to the world as its top priorities. When the Democrats ran the House, for example, HR 1 was always John Dingell’s health-care bill, in homage to his father, a congressman who pushed for national health care back in the day.

Today, nine of the 10 slots are empty. Nine of the 10. The one that is occupied, HR 3, is taken up by a bill calling on President Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Even this, insiders will tell you in an honest moment, is completely symbolic and empty: the general expectation among Democrats and Republicans is that Obama will approve the pipeline sometime in this term, but that eleventy-jillion lawsuits will immediately be filed, and the thing won’t be built for years if at all, and nothing about this short and general bill can or is designed to change that. One other slot, HR 1, is provisionally reserved for a tax-reform bill, so at least they have settled on a subject matter, but if you click on HR 1, you will learn that “the text of HR 1 has not yet been received.”

Lost in the horrendous events of last week was an opportunity to talk about what we normally talk about on April 15: taxes. President Barack Obama, one of the wealthiest presidents of the past century, with a net worth of about $14 million and income last year of more than $600,000, paid an effective federal tax rate of 18.4 percent.

Yes, this is the same Obama who’s delivered this message for the past two years:

For a debate often mired in tedious details conducted in obscure hearings, the president put a victim’s face—Warren Buffet’s struggling secretary; never mind that some estimated she makes $200,000 a year herself—on the matter. Call it the Obama rule: If you are wealthy, says the president, taking a tax break you don’t need isn't right.

It’s been called the most exclusive club in the world, with membership limited to living ex-presidents and the current occupant of the Oval Office.

On Thursday, Barack Obama is joining four of his predecessors—Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and the two Bushes—for a reunion of that club, to mark the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas. It is a rare moment for the country to savor, with all five coming together in the warm glow of friendship to underscore the special bond that exists among those who have held the presidency. They rarely speak ill of each other, at least not in public, and stand ready to respond like a troupe of superheroes in times of crisis.

“There’s no job like it, and there are very few in our history who have held it,” said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Monday. Obama’s presence at the ceremony Thursday is evidence of that special bond, which the president believes trumps policy and political differences, Carney said. “He is firmly of the view that every one of his predecessors that he will be seeing in Dallas approached their job trying to do the very best for the country, that they all love their country, and they made policy decisions based on what they thought was the right thing to do.”

Once again an emotional debate is swirling around the Obama administration’s treatment of a terrorist suspect. Its decision not to read Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights by invoking the so-called public-safety exception has anguished civil libertarians, who see it as a slippery slope toward police-state justice. Meanwhile, the administration’s decision not to brand the suspected Boston Marathon bomber as an enemy combatant has provoked howls from Republican members of Congress who say terrorists are war criminals who don’t deserve the gold-plated justice afforded by the U.S. criminal-justice system. Moreover, they argue, the government’s overriding priority ought to be extracting intelligence from terror suspects rather than protecting its ability to prosecute a case in civilian court. (Never mind that Obama would be in defiance of the law if he tried Tsarnaev, a naturalized U.S. citizen, in a military commission.)

There’s nothing unusual about the administration being buffeted from all directions by the politics of terrorism. What is different this time is that Obama officials seem to have approached the Boston case with a serene confidence that was lacking during most of the first term. Sources tell me there have been none of the usual fevered White House meetings or the deep divisions between administration lawyers and White House political factions that have characterized many of the other debates over terrorism policy.

For much of President Obama’s first term, the administration tangled itself up trying to calibrate security and civil liberties. The congressional backlash over efforts to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay and to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court left the White House’s rule-of-law agenda in tatters.

“He looks like me,” my son, Shibli, 10, said as we looked at a photo of a young Dzhokhar Tsarnaev flash upon the TV screen Friday night. Indeed, with his innocent eyes and rumple of dark curly hair, he did. As an American, a Muslim, a mother, and an aunt to a nephew on the cusp of manhood, my heart just broke for yet another boy lost in our Muslim community, taking with him the lives of others.

Enough, enough, enough, I say, with the CYA—Cover Your A**—strategy in our Muslim communities. I would like our community to take responsibility for how it is that we—yes, we—have allowed an interpretation of Islam to prevail in this world that turns this boy of innocence into a bomber and murderer. We need to work with compassion and love to guide these boys to a “straight path,” as mentioned in the Quran’s first chapter, Al-Fatiha, “the Opening.” And that straight path should be one of nonviolence.

There is much debate about the “T-word,” or “terrorism,” and whether President Obama took too long to say it in the case of the Boston bombing. In the same way, we—Muslims, journalists, and policymakers—have to dare to say the “I-word”—Islam—because there is no denying that an interpretation of Islam is sanctioning some Muslims to commit terrorism. I believe that until Muslims directly challenge it, we will never really isolate this interpretation of Islam, and the world will judge all Muslims.

At times last week, it felt like the days after 9/11: the endless TV coverage, the heroic first responders, the ghastly images, the interfaith prayer services. But something was missing. It took me a few days to realize it: this time, America isn’t going to remake the Muslim world.

After 9/11, that missionary impulse took different forms. For Ann Coulter, who proposed that “we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity,” the post-9/11 “crusade” was literally that. Others were more ecumenical. In his address to Congress a week after the attacks, George W. Bush declared “freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom, the great achievement of our time and the great hope of every time, now depends on us.” And many who loathed Bush—myself included—cheered, believing that the best way to prevent another 9/11 was to wage a generational struggle for democracy in the Muslim world, as we had in Europe when its species of totalitarianism threatened our safety.

No one’s saying that anymore. To the contrary, all the Boston-related policy debates have been internal: should the police have read Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights, should he be tried before a military tribunal, does the attack weaken the case for immigration reform, or would a background check have helped? In part, this inward gaze stems from the particularities of attack. The suspects have not been linked to al Qaeda central, and al Qaeda central—which on 9/11 was basically running Afghanistan—is not what it once was. Unlike their 9/11 predecessors, these suspected killers are Americans—they were immigrants before they became terrorists. And unlike 9/11, where most of the suspects came from Saudi Arabia, a seething corner of America’s empire, the Tsarnaevs hail from the Caucuses, a seething corner of Russia’s.

If you harbor any doubt about the power of words, just take a look at Greg Walden. Last week the eight-term Republican congressman from Oregon went on CNN and accused Barack Obama of “trying to balance this budget on the backs of seniors”—a reference to the president’s proposed cuts to Social Security. Walden—who recently became chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, meaning he will oversee the GOP’s effort to hold on to the House in 2014—was effectively attacking Obama from the left. And soon enough, conservatives were attacking him.

The Club for Growth, which punishes any Republicans who stray from its small-government orthodoxy, threatened a primary challenge. “We always knew Greg Walden had a liberal record, but he really cemented it with his public opposition to even modest entitlement reform,” said the group’s president, Chris Chocola. Asked about the rogue congressman at a press conference, House Speaker John Boehner replied, “I’ve made it clear that I disagree with what Chairman Walden said”—and added for good measure, “We’ll leave it at that.”

The sudden infamy was a big change for Walden, who prior to last week was not a household name in Washington. The congressman hails from the sprawling flatlands east of Portland, where he routinely garners wins by margins of 30 points or more—something Oregonians attribute to his relentless travel around the eastern part of the state. “People in that part of the world, they want you to take your time to talk with them, and Greg will travel to these small towns and stay until he has heard from everyone,” says Greg Leo, executive director of the Oregon GOP, adding that Walden is one of the most gifted public speakers in state politics. Leo says he doubts local conservatives were much concerned with Walden’s supposed apostasy. “Greg read it in a uniquely accurate way. That is an Oregon quality—we call ’em as we see ’em, no matter what the party line.”

There are lots of lessons we will, in time, draw from the Boston Marathon tragedy, but one is already clear: don’t denigrate government workers. Along with some heroic civilians, it was government workers who ran toward the blast zone. And they were unionized government workers.

If there’s a bogeyman on the right these days, it is a unionized government worker. Mitt Romney, who got rich in part through laying off private-sector workers, made his feelings about government employment clear in the 2012 campaign. “During the president’s term so far, he has added 140,000 more government workers,” he told supporters in San Diego. “Not only do we have to pay for them, but they have to do something every day. So, they look at things they can do, alright? Places they can interfere.”

Things they can do. Places they can interfere. Alright? How about in your former hometown, Mitt? Just over a mile from your former office, government workers found things they can do, places they can interfere. What they did was save lives. What they interfered with was terror. (Oh, and by the way, the progressive wonks at ThinkProgress estimated the number of government workers actually fell in President Obama’s first term by half a million.)

Liberals and civil libertarians shouldn’t yet be saying that there’s utterly no way that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be declared an “enemy combatant.” The post-9/11 law, whatever one’s opinion of it, does say that an American citizen affiliated with al Qaeda, the Taliban, “or associated forces” engaged in hostility with the United States can be declared an enemy combatant. It doesn’t seem like he’s that, but who knows, he may shock everyone when he comes to by saying that he and his brother were precisely that.

But it isn’t liberals who are jumping the gun here. As usual, conservatives are rushing to judgment, shredding the Constitution, using the bombing as an pretext for derailing immigration reform, and generally seeking any excuse to reimpose their paranoid and authoritarian worldview, which needs fear like a vampire needs blood, on the rest of us.

The cry, which I’m sure will pick up steam this week, was led over the weekend by the usual suspects—John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte, and Peter King. On the basis of what evidence? On the basis of no evidence at all. They know nothing! We’re starting to piece together a portrait of these guys, although it’s more of Tamerlan than of his younger brother. It’s a grim portrait. He evidently did become a radicalized Islamist. But if he and his brother were acting alone, even if the bombing was 100 percent politically motivated, they can’t be called enemy combatants. Period.

Jon Huntsman's 2012 presidential campaign was plagued by internecine feuding between advisers, debilitating disorganization and a late start by a mostly green candidate. But most damaging to the former Utah governor and U.S. ambassador to China was the perception that he was out of step with his party's base—too moderate, mushy, and effete for the moment.

“Timing is important,” Huntsman replied when I asked him recently the most significant lesson he took from the failed run he abandoned 15 months ago.

But as the Republican mainstream gravitates towards his worldview on issues like gay marriage, immigration, and even the war in Afghanistan, the 53-year-old Huntsman appears to be gauging whether he was a candidate ahead of his time—and if there’s space in the GOP for a Huntsman 2.0.

From the moment the first suspect in the Boston bombing was killed in a shootout, I was counting the minutes until the Beltway types started trying to score political points.

I didn’t have to wait long.

The bogus cry of this-raises-serious-concerns was soon heard throughout the land.

Arkansas: Gunless Boston Liberals

Nate Bell, a Republican Arkansas State representative, sent out a tweet on Friday that soon went viral as Boston residents remained in lockdown in their homes. The tweet, sent from Bell’s official account @NateBell4AR, read: “I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine? #2A.” It didn’t take long for the Internet to erupt, prompting an apology from Bell. “In hindsight, given the ongoing tragedy that is still unfolding, I regret the poor choice of timing,” Bell wrote on his Facebook page.

New Hampshire: ‘Children and Vaginas’

State Republican Representative Peter Hansen got the “shock value” he initially sought with his comments, when he was forced to apologize after calling women “vaginas.” Rep. Hansen, who once restrained an intruder who broke into his own home using a gun, was discussing the idea of retreating in an email when he uttered the phrase that got him in trouble. A day later a number of local groups called on him to apologize and resign but Hansen refused, saying his comments were blown out of proportion. But with pressure continuing to mount from both sides of the aisle, a day later Hansen caved for his "blatantly offensive, insensitive, and frankly, stupid language."

The rap against Barack Obama, at least on the left, has long been that he’s too cautious, too calculating, too conciliatory. Not a guy willing to take risks.

We can apologize now.

What Obama did in the four months between December’s Newtown shooting and this Wednesday’s Senate capitulation was one of the great displays of presidential guts in American history. On gun control, the Democratic Party had been in the fetal position for years. By 2008, the party whose 1972 platform had proposed banning handguns was reduced to declaring: “We recognize that the right to bear arms is an important part of the American tradition, and we will preserve Americans’ Second Amendment right to own and use firearms. We believe that the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation, but we know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne.” In 2009, when Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley tried to revive gun control legislation, House Democratic leaders refused even to hold a hearing. In 2010, Obama signed legislation lifting restrictions on carrying guns in federal parks. Last July, after a gunman killed 12 and injured 58 at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told the press: “There are things that we can do, short of legislation and short of gun laws, as the president said, that can reduce violence in our society. We do need to take a broader look at what we can do to reduce violence in America. And that’s not just legislative, and it’s not just about gun laws.”