POLITICS

Bill Cosby's May 17 remarks at a Washington, D.C., gathering commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision continues to draw controversy and debate. That's good. Some of the debate highlights a point made by my colleague...

Why has the country gone so crazy over Ronald Reagan? Back in 1982, President Reagan boldly told the world in a speech that Communism would end up on "the ash heap of history." At the time most considered this wildly optimistic; seven years later it was fact. Aside...

Q: John Kerry is floating Senator John McCain's name as a possible Secretary of Defense. John McCain is a hawkish Republican. How does this square with Kerry being a pacifist, like you claim? A: First of all, you believe Kerry; how wise is it to believe most...

President Bush is very vocal about his religious beliefs; he likes to preach publicly about "the power of faith" and "the vital place of faith in the life of our nation." This does not bother most Americans, who believe that while the President personally wants to...

It was December 1996 when Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, first questioned if "irrational exuberance" had pushed stock prices too far, too fast. Although his comment sent the market into a brief plunge, history proved Greenspan dead wrong....

In the war between reason and religion, declared by militant Islamic fundamentalists, President Bush is firmly on the side of religion. The positions he supports most passionately are those of theocracies: prayer in schools, a national pledge "under God" recited by...

It is a testament to the perverse priorities of our politicians and journalists that the biggest American outcry over Abu Ghraib has been not about the gruesome decapitation of American Nicholas Berg by terrorists, but about the fact that many Arabs and Europeans are...

May 17 saw several gatherings commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court school desegregation decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. But the event held in Washington, D.C.'s Constitution Hall will be the one to be remembered because of Bill...

There's a funny little radio spot that's been running locally. It's a (fake) phone conversation between a man who wanted his car painted midnight blue and a guy at the paint shop who tells him they've gone with "a stunning shade of lilac" instead. "We just thought...

Consider the following paragraph in an unsigned editorial that appeared last month in the Wall Street Journal arguing in support of the detention of US citizens such as suspected al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla as enemy combatants without the writ of habeas corpus: In...

On Wednesday, Amnesty International (AI) issued their annual "International Report" on the state of human rights. It even included a message from AI Secretary General Irene Khan titled, "Why human rights matter." Her message was apparently aimed the large contingent...

Imagine you're a head physician faced with a large-scale disaster such as the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, the Oklahoma City bombing or battlefield casualties. The first thing that must be acknowledged is that you have limited resources. That means...

Nearly lost in the debate over job creation has been the surge of productivity that has taken place over the last two years. Americans workers are producing more goods per hour of work and boosting their own incomes in the process. Increased productivity also means...