As a soldier in the United States Army, I have often pondered what it means to be patriotic, what it means to serve our country, and what it means to love America.
Steve H. Hanke is a Professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., and writes frequently for Globe Asia and Forbes magazine. Professor Hanke starts off his “Hu versus Sarkozy” article (Globe Asia, November 2009) with a warning. There is no more reliable rule than the 95 percent rule: 95 percent of what you read about economics and finance is either wrong or irrelevant.
Anthony McKinney got a life sentence for running down the street.
Iranian students are engaging this week in Round Two of their street-level struggle for reform. Round One took place last June, when young people protested the fixed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Claiming to be a supporter of al-Qaeda isn't a crime in this country. Neither is it a crime for undercover agents posing as members of a terrorist "sleeper cell" to agree that Osama bin Laden is the 21st-century equivalent of the bee's knees.
Exactly who made Bernadine Shimon think that she could buy a new house shortly after declaring bankruptcy and losing another home to foreclosure? The American taxpayer, that’s who.
You figure the White House is probably feeling pretty good about itself right now. After spending much of the summer as a punching bag for conservatives, Team Obama has begun throwing punches of its own.
You may remember all those Obama campaign cheerleaders for change chanting, “Yes we can!” during last year’s campaign events. This year, in the 10th month of his presidency, it doesn’t really seem they can, or that he can.
According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize should be awarded to the person who: “during the preceding year, shall have done … the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
We are living in a time when honest discussion is often drowned out by the noise of partisan cheerleading.
Throughout our history, the United States has been a magnet for immigrants around the world. What accounts for what some have called American exceptionalism?
We are gathered here today in sympathy with our brother, Rush Limbaugh.
It’s one of the most contentious issues to be debated in years. Even the title is contentious. Is it a national health program? Health reform? Health insurance reform? Universal medical coverage? Pick the one you like. Or the one you don’t like and can use as a club. Or make up one of your own.
Social Security is a glossy piece of paper on which nearly every politician wants to finger-paint an agenda. But Social Security has no need of ornament. It is a very grown-up program. Put some other toy into the political playpen.
I just finished Dan Brown’s latest thriller, “The Lost Symbol” Don’t worry. I’m not going to give anything away. I will say that the book is a real page-turner in the same spirit as his previous two novels, “The Da-Vinci Code” and “Angels and Demons.”
The post-Katrina narrative has focused, for both better and worse, almost exclusively on New Orleans. But the effects of that disaster did not stop at politican boundaries, even if they have largely faded from the public’s — and Washington’s — attention.
The recent award of Nobel Prizes in biology and chemistry to three women dredges up Larry Summers’ suggestion in 2005 that differences in the female brain may account for the dearth of top women scientists.
College education is a costly proposition with tuition, room and board at some colleges topping $50,000 a year. Is it worth it? Increasing evidence suggests that it’s not.
It has taken much longer than President Obama hoped, but we are finally at the point where he can — and must — put his personal stamp on his main domestic initiative, the overhaul of the health care system.
So I guess now he’s a socialist-terrorist-secret-Muslim-radical-Christian-Hitler-clone and Nobel Prize winner?
There is a terrible irony in the fact that of the only two federal holidays named after noteworthy persons in the United States, one was the father of the slave trade and the other was martyred trying to put an end to the post-traumatic spiritual disorder that followed in its wake for centuries.
There are times when less is more and more is the wrong answer.
Rep. Diane Watson said, in praising Cuba’s health care system, “You can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met.” W.E.B. Dubois, writing in the National Guardian (1953) said, “Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature … But also — and this was the highest proof of his greatness — he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate.” Walter Duranty called Stalin “the greatest living statesman … a quiet, unobtrusive man.” George Bernard Shaw expressed admiration for Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin.
Somebody please help me with this. Obviously, I’m missing something.
What you need to know about Michael C. Finton is that he parked a van in front of a federal building in Springfield, Ill., believing it was loaded with explosives. He then twice made cell phone calls that he thought would detonate the bombs.
The business of business may be business, but the business of life is not.
Americans, maybe more than most humans, forget quickly. The recent Honor Flight, a remarkable recognition of the service of World War II veterans, doesn’t belie that tendency. It was just a temporary and unusual deviation, a gracious expression of appreciation for what had been little noticed, outside immediate families, for more than half a century.
Suddenly the heat is on President Barack Obama urgently to decide, right now, whether to heed his military commander’s appeal for another big surge of American troops or deal with the possibility of defeat within a year in Afghanistan.
"Rome was not built in a day,” Montana Democrat Max Baucus said with resignation after the Senate committee he heads voted to reject a “public option.” A government-run health plan that would compete with private insurers’ offerings, the public option is a means to curb spiraling health care costs.
Isn’t it obvious? If you believe you’re the object of a witch hunt, the first thing you do is stop hanging around with witches.
