Commentary: Bachmann may be a 'submissive wife' but she definitely isn't weak

One must tread carefully when asking a woman if she’s a submissive wife. I did so by asking my wife through email in the guise of doing field research for work. | 08/18/11 13:26:46 By - Issac Bailey

Commentary: Did Molly Ivins say that about Rick Perry?

Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced last Saturday that he is running for the Republican presidential nomination. Here are excerpts of columns from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram by the late, great Molly Ivins. Ivins covered the Statehouse in Texas for decades and spread her barbs widely. One frequent target was Perry, whom she called "The Coiffure" and "Gov. Goodhair." | 08/18/11 12:10:34 By - Molly Ivins

Commentary: Fear of a black Spider-Man

OK, people: chill out. Breathe. Relax.

Spider-Man is still white. He’ll always be white. He’s been white since that day in 1962 when Peter Parker, a high school science nerd, was bitten by that radioactive bug. | 08/15/11 06:38:04 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Burgess should know impeachment isn't a political tool

U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess should have said, "No." Speaking to about 100 people at a NE Tarrant Tea Party meeting Monday night in Keller, the Lewisville Republican heard a suggestion from one attendee that the House push impeachment proceedings against President Barack Obama to impede his political agenda. | 08/12/11 11:20:37 By -

Commentary: Debt ceiling fiasco doesn't solve U.S. debt problems

If your home caught fire, would you put out the flames, or ignore them and focus on fixing a leaky pipe that could eventually flood your basement?

You would call firefighters, of course, and deal with the pipe after the emergency had passed. Unless, that is, you were a member of Congress. | 08/09/11 06:02:48 By - Tom Eblen

Commentary: It's time to get out of Iraq

The Christian Science Monitor, which shares a Baghdad bureau with McClatchy, reported earlier this week that, under intense U.S. pressure, Iraqi leaders have agreed to start negotiations on keeping some American soldiers in Iraq after Dec. 31, the current deadline when all U.S. forces are supposed to leave. | 08/08/11 12:12:41 By -

Commentary: Even in Texas, government keeps growing

By one measure, government has been shrinking. Since the economic recovery began two years ago, more than half a million government jobs have been eliminated nationwide. Then there's Texas, where 39,000 government workers were added during the same period. | 08/04/11 06:08:51 By - Mitchell Schnurman

Commentary: Appointing appellate judges in the 112th Senate

When President Barack Obama secured election, the United States Courts of Appeals experienced openings in fourteen of the 179 judgeships. Accordingly, it was essential that the White House expeditiously fill those vacancies. The administration has instituted many measures to facilitate appointments. | 08/02/11 13:02:19 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: Is calling Anders Behring-Breivik a Christian terrorist wrong?

Bill O'Reilly is furious with the media for describing Anders Behring-Breivik as a Christian. O'Reilly no doubt is right that Breivik, an admitted mass murderer, doesn't fit most people's idea of a committed Christian, but I think O'Reilly is missing the bigger point. Namely, this atrocity should sound a note of caution about blaming a particular religion as the instigator of terrorist acts. | 07/29/11 12:48:35 By - James Werrell

Commentary: On immigration, President Obama: Yes, you can!

When President Barack Obama spoke to a major U.S. Hispanic group earlier this week about his unsuccessful efforts to change this country’s outdated immigration rules, many in the crowd broke out in a spontaneous chant: “Yes you can!” | 07/29/11 06:17:28 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Texas is vulnerable to D.C. spending cuts

The battle between Republicans and Democrats over the debt ceiling overshadows one consensus that has emerged in Washington: Most leaders want to cut federal spending deeply, shaky recovery or not. Absorbing those hits down the road may prove even more painful than watching the bickering federal government. | 07/27/11 15:03:09 By - Mitchell Schnurman

Commentary: Basketball and life-long friends

We didn't ever want to come out of those showers. We knew when we did our high school basketball careers would be over. March 1963. Wichita, Kan. Class AA state basketball tournament. Our team, the Hayden Wildcats, had just lost to Salina, which went on to win the trophy. The three seniors on our team -- Greg Bien, Ed Tucker and I -- didn't want to leave the locker room. We didn't want to face the fact that four years of playing ball together were history. | 07/25/11 13:31:14 By - Mike Tharp

Commentary: When standards of justice clash with compassion for mentally ill

However mesmerized we may be by television's neatly packaged but predictable crime dramas, the ones that play out in real life are so much more intriguing. Few crimes have stirred so much debate on a number of social and legal questions as the murderous rampage of Jared Lee Loughner. His gun attack at a political gathering in Tucson, Ariz., in January left six dead and 14 others wounded, including the amazingly resilient Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz. | 07/18/11 13:10:40 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Time for 'War on Drugs' to end

On Friday it will be 40 years since President Richard Nixon asked Congress for $155 million to combat a problem he said had “assumed the dimensions of a national emergency.” Thus was born the War on Drugs.

Seven presidents later, the war grinds on. And if it has made even a dent in drug use, you could not prove it by me — nor, I would wager, by most observers. | 06/18/11 06:30:17 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: A love letter to newspapering

I didn't go into newspapers because I wanted to crusade for anything - not sunshine laws, or streetcars or sidewalks - or because I wanted to spend years interviewing politicians and police. I just wanted to become a famous novelist someday. | 06/18/11 06:32:50 By - Mary Newsom

Commentary: Is GOP's 2012 game plan to cause a recession?

Pity the poor political pundits. They have to make a living regardless of whether or not there is anything worth opining about. With a 24/7 news cycle to fill that requires some creative writing. And that is why there is often so much ado about so little.

Take the recent debate between some of those who aspire to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012. It was meaningless and not because there seemed to be no real winner nor any substance to the chatter. It was meaningless for two other reasons — who the nominee is won't affect the outcome of the election and who that nominee is won't be determined by a debate. | 06/18/11 06:29:48 By - Dennis Jett

Commentary: Texas job growth story isn't simple

The number is so big that it sounds like a tall tale: 48 percent of the net jobs created in the U.S. since the recovery have been in the Lone Star State. That fact comes from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, using non-farm payroll data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and its own analysis. From June 2009 through April 2011, the country added 496,000 jobs, and the Dallas Fed says that 237,000 of them were in Texas. Texas may be big, but only 8 percent of the workforce lives here, so its outsize job growth is giant indeed. | 06/15/11 13:31:26 By - Mitchell Schnurman

Commentary: U.S. history 101 with Sarah Palin

Fellow Republican tea partyers, we all remember when our great Sarah Palin, formerly Alaska's governor-in-brief and running mate to closet liberal John McCain, was raked over the coals by the leftist news media for asserting that she could see Russia from Alaska, thus qualifying her for president based on foreign policy experience. (She was technically right, there being a couple of islands, the Diomedes, one Russian and one American, within sight of each other. But we don't want to linger on this to throw around our education or experience with Wikipedia.) | 06/10/11 06:09:40 By - Jim Jenkins

Commentary: Afghans show limits of U.S. power

We are not Supercountry. Various American leaders boast we are "the indispensible country." Hard to believe there are dozens of countries around the globe able to resolve their own problems for better or for worse without U.S. tutelage. | 06/09/11 06:24:52 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: Sex scandal rule No. 1 — don't make things worse

Thank you, gentlemen, for attending this seminar titled "Ethical Fulcrums of Political Integrity for Lecherous Pigs." Because this is a remedial course, we'll skip over Lesson One, "What Were You Thinking?" and get right to Lesson Two, "You Were Thinking You'd Get Away With It? Seriously?" | 06/08/11 12:34:29 By - Mark Washburn

Commentary: Giuliani is now fighting 'War of Terror' in Peru

While George W. Bush called it the "War on Terror" during his time in office, the "War of Terror" would have been a more accurate name. That’s because it was used to scare voters into reelecting Bush despite an accomplishment-free first term. That strategy is now being used in Peru for the same purpose with one of the same combatants — Rudy Giuliani. | 05/24/11 06:18:07 By - Dennis Jett

Commentary: Economic freedom key to improving society

My brother David and I have long supported the principles that help societies prosper. I have actively done so for nearly 50 years, as has my brother for more than 40. In recent years, we have stepped up our efforts to deal with the enormous threats to the future well-being of the people of this country. This has prompted some extreme criticism. From the White House to fringe bloggers, we are now being vilified, mischaracterized and threatened. | 05/23/11 06:14:17 By - Charles G. Koch

Commentary: Perry Looks More Like the Chosen One

In the 2001 Texas version of the rapture, the best and brightest Republicans in the state Capitol were called up to join George W. Bush in Washington. We all see which Republican was left behind. | 05/22/11 08:27:53 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Some perks of being left behind after the Rapture

One good thing if the Rapture comes Saturday: Getting a table at the IHOP ought to be easier Sunday mornings from here on, don’t you think? The job market, too, should loosen up once the chosen few are called home. Though if Howard Camping and his followers are right, your own personal recovery would be short-lived should you be left behind and get that long-sought-after job. | 05/20/11 11:52:12 By - Mike Hendricks

Commentary: With Rapture at hand, why bother flossing?

Many people — more than a dozen, at least — think the world will end Saturday. They've found the evidence in the Bible, so you'd be wise to quit making fun of them. These people are not crackpots. I know this because I attract crackpots. Recent emails I've gotten: "I just wrote a book. Could you do an article on it? It's about ghosts." | 05/20/11 06:20:14 By - Mark Washburn

Commentary: When Obama speaks to the Arabs

When President Barack Obama speaks this week to the Arab and Muslim world, addressing the uprisings of the Arab Spring and trying to reach out and end the wave of hostility between the Muslims and the West, he needs to know to whom he speaks. | 05/19/11 06:12:22 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: Arnold Schwarzenegger's 'True Lies'

You have to wonder how many lies Arnold Schwarzenegger has told and whether he can keep them all straight. | 05/18/11 12:30:53 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Time for Israel to reach out

It's time for Israel to join the Middle East revolutionary spirit. For five months Israel has followed the wisest path available to it — silence — while millions of Arabs stormed the bastions of power from Morocco to Yemen to Syria — shaking the floors underneath the despots of the Middle East. | 05/18/11 06:11:28 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: Some pols played dirty after bin Laden raid

If you were watching the last few ugly minutes of the last ugly game of the Dallas Mavericks’ sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA playoffs, you saw a vicious blind-side forearm by Andrew Bynum to the exposed ribcage of the Mavs’ Jose Barea. | 05/17/11 12:22:16 By - Dusty Nix

Commentary: It's time for Congress to act on border security

Earlier this week I joined President Obama and others in El Paso, Texas, as he reported on the tremendous progress we have made in securing the Southwest border and transforming our immigration enforcement efforts over the last two years even while we wait for Congress to address immigration reform. | 05/15/11 06:21:14 By - Janet Napolitano

Commentary: Sizing up the GOP 2012 potential nominees

News item: Likely Republican candidates for president are having a difficult time, or at least more difficult than they anticipated, raising early and big money for their campaigns for the GOP nomination. This is of some surprise to them, and doubtless to a few Democrats, who have always portrayed the Republicans as able to open their arms when the mood strikes and just wait for the money to falleth from the sky. | 05/15/11 06:26:25 By - Jim Jenkins

Commentary: A busload of kids that changed America

Fifty years ago. A group of college students boarded two buses here, bound for New Orleans. They were joined by members of the African-American press, and officials of the Congress of Racial Equality, including its national director, James Farmer, who had organized the journey. Six of the riders were white, 12, black. The fact of their traveling together would prove incendiary. | 05/10/11 06:16:37 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: 'Presidenting while black' is birthers' biggest issue with Obama

One thinks of rats scurrying off a sinking ship. Meaning the new exodus of birthers from birtherism. Fox News now says in a blog post that it hardly pushed the birther issue at all. Wonder how folks got the idea Fox did that? Oh yeah: by watching Fox. | 05/05/11 12:53:31 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Seeing photos of bin Laden's body isn't necessary

Face it: there are some things we just don't need to see — the first ex-wife in Spandex; the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter sex tape, and post-mortem pictures of Osama bin Laden. Even before the smoke cleared from the M16 assault rifle, or whatever weapon sent bin Laden to his just rewards, news outlets, cynics and the morbidly curious were demanding pictures. | 05/05/11 07:27:38 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: Stunning to find Bin Laden in Abbottabad

When I heard the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Abbottabad on Sunday night, my immediate reaction was to turn to my brother-in-law in disbelief at where the leader of al Qaida was found. My brother-in-law, an engineer who now lives in the San Francisco area, is originally from Abbottabad - his family is Hazarewal, or people from the Hazara region in Pakistan that includes Abbottabad. | 05/04/11 11:25:39 By - Ameera Butt

Commentary: Bin Laden's death brings some sense of closure

Although most Americans and Muslims welcomed news of the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, many don't think his death signals an end to terrorism. Probably the most we can hope for is that his death will be a salve for those grieving the loss of loved ones on 9/11, and a dampening of the discrimination many Muslims have experienced since then. | 05/04/11 06:12:38 By - Merlene Davis

Commentary: Waiting for Osama bin Laden to be himself

Late last night, as we stayed up late soaking up the details of the death of Osama bin Laden, I started thinking about the value of waiting.

One thing I've learned in my job is that the key to understanding someone isn't fancy writing or clever questions. It's watching and waiting. Most people aren't real when they first talk to a reporter -- they want to please, or they want to put up a front of some kind. But if you hang around long enough, eventually the mask drops. At some point people go back to being themselves. | 05/03/11 06:29:34 By - Tommy Tomlinson

Commentary: Osama bin Laden finally brought to justice

The people of the United States and other nations have waited almost 10 years to hear these words: "I can report to the American people and to the world that the U.S. has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden," President Barack Obama told the nation. | 05/02/11 06:45:31 By -

Commentary: The changing dangers of nuclear radiation

In some of my fondest childhood memories, my heavily bundled siblings and I followed our mom into the back yard after each new snowfall. Mom would brush away the top layer on the ground and collect a mound of snow in her mixing bowl. We’d run behind to the kitchen, where she’d add just the right amount of cream and sugar to make a treat of snow ice cream. | 04/16/11 06:13:03 By - Lewis W. Diuguid

Commentary: My hero Snooki and the American dream

In his remarks about the deficit the other day, President Obama reminded us that America is still the land of opportunity. That thanks to the free enterprise system, “the engine of America’s wealth and prosperity,” any of us can become successful. And as I listened to the speech, it occurred to me that he was talking in a way about my newest personal hero: Snooki. | 04/15/11 12:15:22 By - Mike Hendricks

Commentary: What defines a 'true American?'

My byline is an irritant. Mary Sanchez is simply my given name. But it seems to rile some people. They believe that anyone with such a surname couldn’t possibly have a strong lineage in this country. The charge is usually made when someone disagrees with my opinion-writing, launched to infer that I have no claim to being a “true American,” whatever that subjective term might mean. | 04/15/11 06:13:22 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Mystery of the stowaway boy who fell from the sky

He loved martial-arts movies. He wanted his first car to be a Mustang. He had just turned 16. He was afraid of heights. His name was Delvonte Tisdale. At 7:15 p.m. on Nov. 15, US Airways Flight 1176 took off from Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, bound for Boston. Delvonte was inside the left wheel well. | 04/14/11 13:35:05 By - Tommy Tomlinson

Commentary: Why no Libya policy is the best policy

The whining noises of bombs being dropped have been heard loudly on the news of late. They are not caused by the missiles fired at Moammar Gadhafi’s forces. They are the sounds being made by the many critics of President Obama’s actions in Libya. For some of those armchair field marshals, his efforts have been too slow, for others too fast. | 04/05/11 06:10:41 By - Dennis Jett

Commentary: Elizabeth Taylor's AIDS activism is worth emulating

True enough, the late Elizabeth Taylor was a woman who was so beautiful some women would try to mimic her with violet-colored contact lenses and dark brown hair dye. | 03/24/11 12:45:01 By - Merlene Davis

Commentary: Lessons for Japan from Indonesia's tsunami

When I arrived on the scene of the tsunami, I was greeted by an entire horizon filled with splintered bits of human life — huge boats washed up on top of houses three miles from the shore. But it was not the tsunami that struck March 11 in Japan. It was the Great Tsunami of Dec. 26, 2004 that struck the city of Banda Aceh in Indonesia where perhaps 200,000 people were erased from the earth in a matter of minutes. | 03/22/11 08:50:21 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: GOP's NPR defunding is more about ideology than money

I long ago decided I like the sound of droning voices on the radio better than music while I'm driving. That's why my car radio stays set most of the time on National Public Radio. But I might have to make adjustments. Republicans in Congress would like to take the "public" out of NPR and make it sink or swim on its own. | 03/18/11 12:34:43 By - James Werrell

Commentary: In Japan's crisis, old-fashioned values emerge

Noticed anything about how the Japanese are dealing with their worst catastrophe since the end and aftermath of World War II? Actually, it's conspicuous by its absence. No looting. No riots. No violence. | 03/17/11 10:02:54 By - Mike Tharp

Commentary: We taxpayers have let NFL owners, players down

I blame myself. And I blame you, the taxpayers and you, the fans. If only we all had provided more tax dollars for stadiums, if only we’d paid more for tickets and stadium grub and beer and league-sanctioned apparel, this wouldn’t be happening. By “this” I mean, of course, the pending work stoppage that threatens that most-holy aspect of American life, the National Football League. | 03/16/11 13:27:07 By - Peter Callaghan

Commentary: Wary of the new Middle East

Events in the Middle East are taking place so fast and furiously, uprooting decades of established rules within the Arab world, that I find myself gaping in wonder at the changes. Frankly, many of us are torn by these unforeseen events. We greatly admire the young people in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia who have stood up for freedom and democracy. But we also worry that once the old order is thrown out of power, the new one may not be a whole lot better. | 03/10/11 06:16:07 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: China's atheist rulers plot endgame for Tibet

March is typically a tense month for Tibetans under the yoke of their Chinese rulers. It marks the anniversary of the Dalai Lama's 1959 flight into exile. Protests, like ones in 2008, typically erupt this month. If any unrest occurs this year, few foreigners will be present. As in past years, China has shut the door to foreign tourism to Tibet this month, keeping the world's eyes away. It wants no witnesses. | 03/09/11 06:04:57 By - Tim Johnson

Commentary: A frank discussion about terrorism is missed in Berenson article

This week’s New York Times Sunday magazine features a story about Lori Berenson, an American citizen who was arrested in Peru in 1995 on terrorism charges. It rambles on for some 8300 words describing in detail what she is wearing and how she is living since she was released from prison last year. While evoking sympathy for Berenson, the article completely misses an opportunity for some much needed national introspection. Instead of a puff piece, the country would have been better served by a serious discussion of terrorism. | 03/06/11 06:11:18 By - Dennis Jett

Commentary: Stop putting Phelps, Westboro church in spotlight

We’re suckers, all of us who are provoked to speak out or take action against Fred Phelps and his hateful message. Phelps family spokeswoman Shirley Phelps-Roper said as much on a talk radio show before Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming her family’s constitutional right to act like jerks at military funerals. | 03/04/11 07:16:13 By - Mike Hendricks

Commentary: Perry can't blame unions for Texas' budget woes

Last week, Gov. Rick Perry was quick to blame Wisconsin's problems on its unions and their pensions, saying they were "strangling the state's budget." But if unions are ruining Wisconsin, what's the explanation for Texas? The budget hole here is a lot deeper, unemployment is higher, and poverty and health care are much worse. | 03/04/11 06:14:36 By - Mitchell Schnurman

Commentary: Koch brothers and the union-busting Kansas House

The Republican union-busting campaign spread to Kansas this week like a disease, with state lawmakers approving a bill that would gut the free-speech rights of union members. There’s no shortage of analysis on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s frank admissions over the phone to a blogger pretending to be billionaire David Koch, let’s focus, instead, on what political allies of the real Koch brothers have been up to in their home state. | 02/25/11 12:32:36 By - Mike Hendricks

Commentary: Giving the gift of illegal immigrants to Congress

Just in time for Texas Independence Day, state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, has a gift in mind for Washington lawmakers. If Kolkhorst's bill passes, every member of Congress from Texas will get a special delivery from law officers: A van-load of illegal immigrants arrested on other charges, unloaded daily at the lawmakers' local office doors. | 02/25/11 11:49:58 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Death knell for high-speed rail in California?

Grab a shovel and get ready to place the flowers. California's first attempt to build a high-speed train system is nearing death on arrival. When the bold idea expires, the autopsy will show that high-speed rail was done in by poor ridership research, unrealistic cost projections, artificial deadlines and political agendas. But anything worth doing is worth doing right. And there's little evidence that getting it right is the goal of the state High Speed Rail Authority or federal transportation officials. | 02/22/11 11:22:09 By - Bill McEwen

Commentary: The Internet 'kill switch' and other myths

Speaking of Internet hoaxes and urban myths that trouble the sleep of people who keep copious amounts of weapons, Vienna sausages and saltines in their basements, here's another: This myth is particularly fitting for Presidents Day because it involves President Barack Obama's alleged quest to - get this - acquire a "kill switch" that would allow him to shut down everyone's Internet access. | 02/22/11 08:47:58 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: There are reasons to worry about Egypt's future

Now that the euphoria has started to die down, it’s time for a cold look at Egypt after its people’s victory over dictatorship. President Hosni Mubarak has left power, and the ruling military council promises elections in about six months. That is not a lot of time to change many minds. As a result, there is a good chance that the new Egypt will not resemble what advocates of democracy – in Egypt and abroad – had envisioned for the country’s future. | 02/21/11 11:57:19 By - Frida Ghitis

Commentary: Phill Kline, Planned Parenthood and the anti-abortion movement

Phill Kline’s supporters this week took to the Internet to celebrate their hero’s accomplishments and drum up donations. The donations will pay for Kline’s defense against ethical complaints that could cost him his law license. His hearing will start Monday. And as always, Kline’s martyrdom on behalf of the right-to-life movement was the hook. | 02/18/11 12:51:47 By - Mike Hendricks

Commentary: Mr. President, Visit the San Joaquin Valley

Dear President Obama:

We invite you to visit the San Joaquin Valley on your trip to the San Francisco Bay Area on Thursday. In fact, we think your visit here should take priority over your stay in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. That’s because our Valley represents the worst of the problems facing America — few jobs, underwater homeowners, scary school dropout rates, drugs and gangs … you know the litany from your days as an organizer in Chicago. | 02/16/11 11:35:13 By -

Commentary: Regarding Arabic studies, we're not speaking the same language

On Sunday night, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined former President George W. Bush at the Super Bowl. One night later, only a few miles away, some south Arlington and Mansfield parents delivered a sharp drop-kick to one of Bush's and Rice's dreams. After 9-11, a federal commission concluded that America's security is at risk in part because so few of us read or understand Arabic. Rice even said that unless more children learn Arabic, we can't spread our message of freedom. | 02/09/11 12:23:00 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: The time has come to make a deal

One of the best NFL seasons in history is now over. We salute NFL players for their extraordinary talent and we deeply appreciate the tremendous support of the fans. The hard work to secure the next NFL season must now accelerate in earnest. We are just weeks from the expiration of our collective bargaining agreement. There has been enough rhetoric, litigation and other efforts beyond the negotiating table. | 02/08/11 08:15:12 By - Roger Goodell

Commentary: Lower federal court vacancies need filling

Last week, the federal courts marked an important milestone when United States District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Ricardo Urbina assumes senior status after seventeen years of dedicated service. Judge Urbina’s action means that the judiciary has 101 openings out of the 858 appeals and district court judgeships. | 02/07/11 14:32:29 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: Reagan's myth doesn't match reality of his record

In this tsunami of adoration leading up to the centennial of his birthday on Sunday, Ronald Reagan is touted as the model of Republican, and even tea party, virtue. But Reagan’s acolytes may be misunderstanding the master’s record.

As president, he paid lip service to ending abortion but never did anything about it. And he worked with congressional Democrats on a massive tax hike in 1982, thereby averting the worst effects of the supply-side deficit spending he had endorsed when he entered office the year before. Moreover, Reagan, the putative foe of big government, had accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars in debt by the end of his second term. | 02/06/11 09:29:38 By - Jacon Heilbrunn

Commentary: GOP needs more leadership, less posturing on health care law

A lot of heat has been generated this week in South Carolina about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but little light. Our two U.S. senators, Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint, are pushing bills that would repeal the law altogether or allow states to opt out without any requirements. What's most fascinating about this past week's development is the utter silence on the replace part of the repeal-and-replace mantra. | 02/06/11 06:38:10 By - Issac Bailey

Commentary: Democracy in the Arab world

When I lived in the Arab quarters of Tangiers and Marrakesh, and when I visited the back streets of Cairo and Algiers, I learned that the one thing people feared more than the police was their own neighbors.

The events we’ve seen so far in Tunis and Cairo have changed a lot on the surface and somehow not changed anything. | 02/02/11 06:04:09 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: Unemployed can tell politicians about the 'real world'

After President Barack Obama said Tuesday night that the state of the union was strong and looking up, surely the rest of us could look up, too. After hearing the Republican response say we could do anything with free enterprise and small government - that we are America - everybody had to be singing Wednesday, right?. | 01/28/11 06:12:51 By - Andrew Dys

Commentary: What's behind Keith Olbermann's MSNBC departure?

Any hint that a network fired or pushed out its signature host (Olbermann's show had the best ratings, by far, of anything on MSNBC) is bound to raise searching questions. And the odd timing of the announcement will only multiply them. But let's remember that Olbermann was a human relations time bomb. | 01/24/11 08:22:23 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: Facebook's show-and-tell culture

Except for our abhorrence of full-body scanners, we are an exhibitionist nation. What won’t we let the world in on these days?

College students post photos of themselves in states of intoxication on social network sites. Those cute-but-embarrassing babies-in-the-bathtub pictures that used to be kept within the family are now disseminated on the Internet. And if only they stopped with the babies. | 01/19/11 12:32:05 By - Barbara Shelly

Commentary: King worked for economic justice too

One of the most remarkable people I got to know as a young reporter in the 1980s was Myles Horton, whom Rosa Parks called “the first white man I ever trusted.” Horton helped start the Highlander Center in Tennessee, which became a cradle of the civil rights movement. He was a confidant of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.. In focusing on King’s work for racial justice, Horton said, many people ignore the fact that he was equally passionate about economic justice. | 01/17/11 13:19:28 By - Tom Eblen

Commentary: South America should stay away from Mideast quagmire

Following the recent decisions by Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador to officially recognize a state of Palestine, supporters of the Palestinian cause are preparing for their next big step: a South America-wide declaration recognizing a Palestinian state in a territory that would include East Jerusalem and other territories currently held by Israel. | 01/17/11 11:05:53 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Bridging the trust deficit with China

China’s President Hu Jintao will make a historic trip to Washington next week, appearing alongside President Obama on a stage likely to be dominated by two issues: righting the vast U.S.-China trade deficit and avoiding a catastrophic war on the Korean Peninsula. Both subjects matter. Both are manageable, if we work together. But lurking in the wings is an issue of even greater long-term importance: reducing the growing trust deficit with China. | 01/16/11 06:16:23 By - Sen. John Kerry

Commentary: After Arizona crisis fades, respect for others must remain

Last week, my oldest brother was turned down again for parole. He has been in prison for almost 29 years since pleading guilty to first-degree murder. His son will be in prison for the next quarter of a century. Many years ago, a young man I mentored shot and killed a police officer. The wisest thing I can say about what ultimately motivated each of them is this: I don't know. | 01/15/11 06:30:04 By - Issac Bailey

Commentary: We must mend safety net for mentally ill

Talk radio windbags didn't buy Jared Lee Loughner his Glock, or the horrifically oversized 30-round magazines. Arizona's governor and legislators didn't drive him to the Safeway in Tucson where he left six people dead and 13 injured. Crass politicians didn't order him to squeeze that gun's trigger in an attempt to assassinate Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. But from this crime that makes no sense, we need to talk rationally about a mental health system that is profoundly and criminally insane. | 01/14/11 06:05:38 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Woodhouses are brothers in everything except politics

Christmas in the Woodhouse home can be a combustible affair. On the far left end of the sofa you have Brad Woodhouse, who as communications director for the Democratic National Committee is one of the country's leading voices backing Democrats and attacking Republicans. On the far right you have his brother, Dallas, who as director of the N.C. chapter of Americans for Prosperity is dedicating his career to fighting "Obamacare," "union thugs" and other Democratic darlings. | 01/14/11 08:41:51 By - Taylor Batten

Commentary: Can we end the political trash talk please?

The echoes of bullets still could be heard in Tucson, Ariz., when the political spinning began. It's an indictment of the times that political schemers of all stripes believe it's a sin to waste a tragedy -- especially when there's an insatiable media to feed. So, the elected sheriff of Pima County told us to cool down the overheated political rhetoric. | 01/11/11 12:02:06 By - Bill McEwen

Commentary: CIA needs sunlight and Tinners' case might shine some on it

By its nature, an intelligence service is antithetical to the transparency and accountability that are hallmarks of a democracy. When the Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1947, the diplomat Dean Acheson wrote, "I had the gravest forebodings about this organization and warned the President that as set up neither he, the National Security Council, nor anyone else would be in a position to know what it was doing or to control it." | 01/10/11 12:29:06 By - Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz

Commentary: S.C. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer doesn't deserve his road sign

The main problem with the Legislature’s habit of naming roads, bridges and other infrastructure after living people (usually legislators or their supporters) is that this self-aggrandizing/patronage system opens the state up to all sorts of embarrassment should those honorees get into trouble later in life. They rarely succeed in naming public property after people who already have embarrassed our state. Yet, South Carolina has done it with the "Lt. Governor-Senator Andre Bauer Interchange." | 01/07/11 13:25:44 By - Cindi Ross Scoppe

Commentary: Unified approach could fix criminal justice system

America's criminal justice system provides neither justice nor security. People are right to ask: Why continue to perpetuate a disastrously expensive and largely ineffective approach to public safety? Isn't there a better way? There is. But we have to be willing to dismantle our current piecemeal system and replace it with an integrated model. | 12/30/10 17:08:55 By - Sunil Dutta, Christian Science Monitor

Commentary: American Civil War holds lessons for all democracies

It's virtually the only civil war in human history which didn't end in dictatorship or monarchy. As we approach the 150th anniversary of the last "gentleman's war," this fact is often forgotten. Consequently, the Civil War in the United States holds valuable lessons for democracies in times of war. | 12/30/10 17:08:07 By - Franz-Stefan Gady, Christian Science Monitor

Commentary: Baby boomers delaying retirement isn't good for economy

Demographers say that every day, for the next 19 years, some 10,000 boomers will turn 65. Yet thanks to a perfect storm of bad financial planning and an even worse economy, it'll be a long while before the American workplace sheds that powerful generation born between 1946 and 1964. | 12/29/10 16:35:04 By - Ron Stodghill

Commentary: Lee Harvey Oswald's first coffin should rest in peace

Bill Dear remembers the day they dug up Lee Harvey Oswald. First, they had to dig up a moldy pine box. "It was pretty rank," said Dear, 73, the storied Dallas private investigator who was in charge of security at the 1981 Fort Worth exhumation of the accused presidential assassin. | 12/26/10 06:59:01 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: My old man and the Christmas tree

It was 1955 -- a cold, snowy day in West Virginia -- when my lifelong incompatibility with this peculiar, possibly pagan icon called the Christmas tree took root. The year would become notable in history for a riotous reaction by concertgoers in Jacksonville after Elvis Presley uttered, "Girls, I'll see you backstage.'' (I've tried the same line over the years, but the effect seems to have been limited to '55.) | 12/24/10 06:13:20 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Here's to holiday craziness

Forget the Three French Hens. This is the Week of Roosting Chickens, when forgotten details and unfilled promises come home to give me the beady, baleful stare. Forget anticipation. These last few days before Christmas are all about the deadline. And I hate deadlines. | 12/23/10 06:16:45 By - Kathleen Merryman

Commentary: Why must we keep fighting the Civil War?

The next battle of the Civil War commenced on Monday in Charleston when the NAACP protests a $100-per-ticket "secession ball" being co-sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The protest and ball are the warm up acts for next year's events, which likely will continue a century-long tradition of Southern apologists rewriting the reasons why the South took up arms, pretending as though slavery was a minor reason (if one at all) even though the 170 men who made the decision in Charleston 150 years wrote in the state's official secession document that it was primarily about preserving slavery. | 12/21/10 14:43:38 By - Issac Bailey

Commentary: Celebrating South Carolina's secession is just wrong

I just don't get it. And I never will. What’s so joyous about a state that thrived off the enslavement and degradation of human beings deciding to withdraw from a contract to live under a common union just to continue those mean-spirited, malicious and evil acts? What’s there to dance about? What’s there to celebrate? What, pray tell, is there to get dressed up and prance around about? What’s there to be proud of? | 12/20/10 06:09:10 By - Warren Bolton

Commentary: Black veteran's views on Confederacy celebration will surprise you

There will be gowns and tuxedos and cocktails in Charleston on Monday night. A gala — as it is called by the organizers — to commemorate what these people think is worthy of a ball with cut glass decanters and soft music. Treason. The Sons of Confederate Veterans Secession Ball is to celebrate South Carolina's seceding from the United States of America 150 years ago. | 12/17/10 09:40:40 By - Andrew Dys

Commentary: There's no need for assault weapons in civilian hands

Like accountants working a cold night in hell, crime scene technicians recorded the number of gunshot holes in Ciara Lee's Liberty City home, scrawling a black numeral where each bullet had penetrated the concrete block wall or blasted through a window. It's the gruesome new numerology of Liberty City and other neighborhoods where teenage gangbangers wield the same weaponry carried by soldiers and insurgents in war-afflicted places like Iraq and Afghanistan. | 12/16/10 12:04:22 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Judge Diaz deserves confirmation before Senate adjourns

Several months ago on this website, I published a commentary urging President Barack Obama and the U.S. Senate to swiftly fill vacancies in two of the 15 Fourth Circuit judgeships because the openings can erode the prompt, inexpensive and fair disposition of appeals. I specifically called for expeditious Senate approval of North Carolina Superior Court Judge Albert Diaz because the well-qualified, uncontroversial jurist was nominated in November 2009. | 12/16/10 08:58:02 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: Congress must approve DREAM Act

As a young person, whenever I was asked about my heritage, I'd flatly declare that I was Mexican. Until I was 18, our family plan was to move from our home in San Jose to Mexico, where my parents were raised. I was Mexican first for many years, until one day I wasn't. This transformation didn't happen overnight, but only after I grew invested in the nation where I was born and raised. | 12/15/10 11:58:33 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: Our troops can handle gays serving openly

I have more faith in members of the Marine Corps, Army and Air Force than in the men and women who lead them. I believe the men and women in those three branches of the U.S. military are such professionals that if top generals gave orders to treat fellow soldiers with respect, even if they are gay, they would follow those orders without much fuss or fanfare. | 12/15/10 06:11:41 By - Issac Bailey

Commentary: Palin, Beck suffer from 'Obama Dementia'

In 2003, Charles Krauthammer, a columnist and psychiatrist, coined a new term. Noting what he said was "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush," Krauthammer identified a previously unknown malady he called Bush Derangement Syndrome.

No shrink am I, but it seems obvious to this untrained eye that B.D.S. has lately been supplanted by a new disorder. Call it Obama Dementia. | 12/13/10 06:28:20 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Congress turns a deaf ear to the poor

Last year, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, caused a stir when he said on the House floor that the Republican alternative to the Democrats' health care plan had two elements: 1. Don't get sick; and 2. If you get sick, die quickly. Some S.C. Republicans apparently don't care how long it takes people without health insurance to die; they just don't want to hear about it. | 12/12/10 06:42:21 By - Terry Plumb

Commentary: Take that Chia Obama off your Christmas list

I wasn’t so much worried about being accused of racism when I approached the register at the Pearl Street Rite Aid. Instead I was worried they wouldn’t sell me the “Chia Obama Special Edition.” They were leaving “Chia Lincoln,” “Chia Washington” and “Chia Statue of Liberty.” But they said they’d gotten orders from headquarters to remove not just “Determined” Chia Obama, but “Happy” Chia Obama as well. Both versions had, it seems, been recalled. | 12/11/10 06:57:52 By - Peter Callaghan

Commentary: Fight for health care to honor Elizabeth Edwards

Elizabeth Edwards is being lauded for the courage and grace she displayed in her battle against cancer and her fight to retain dignity in the public eye. How to honor her legacy? A defense of health care reform seems like a fitting gesture. Edwards, who died Tuesday at age 61, believed that every American should have access to affordable health care. | 12/11/10 06:31:43 By - Barbara Shelly

Commentary: Charles Rangel didn't learn from mistakes

Even when he's just sitting around his Chapel Hill apartment, watching TV and reading The New Yorker magazine, Chuck Stone is classy. He's resplendent this day in a green plaid sport coat, orange shirt, bowtie and saddle shoes. Stone, a retired UNC-Chapel Hill journalism professor and renowned columnist, is so classy that you know he isn't going to bad-mouth Charles Rangel, the Harlem congressman who cost Stone his job 40 years ago. | 12/09/10 09:06:27 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: Gay marriage's best-case scenario involves Supreme Court

Monday's federal appellate court hearing on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that bars same-sex marriages, was divided into two one-hour segments. During the first hour, lawyers argued over who, if anyone, has legal "standing" to appeal District Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. | 12/08/10 12:53:52 By - Dan Walters

Commentary: How Pearl Harbor unifed America

"December 7th, 1941, a date that will live in infamy," as President Franklin D. Roosevelt characterized it, was a complete shock to metro-east residents and to the young men from Southern Illinois who were serving at Pearl Harbor, some of whom were injured in the attack. But the Sunday morning surprise attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii also galvanized a nation, which already had been slowly gathering itself for war. | 12/07/10 12:48:55 By - Wally Spiers

Commentary: War on Christmas? No. War on common sense? Yes.

Tarrant County, Texas, is the newest battlefront in the War on Christmas. Or is it? Just when the fervor was dwindling over atheists' petty publicity-stunt ads on the T, a new O'Reilly-ready Christmas clatter broke out in Southlake. | 12/06/10 14:48:08 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: One Muslim woman's pilgrimage to Mecca

The questions no longer need answers. Mahnaz Shabbir has experienced the pilgrimage to Mecca. So the queries she never made to her husband before he died have faded. Muslims are expected to complete Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, once in their lifetime if they are able. | 12/06/10 13:51:47 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Murdered soldier's parents know 'don't ask, don't tell' is wrong

An adequate adjective doesn’t exist to describe this husband and wife’s Tuesday. The word would have to capture too much: The unrelenting trauma of their son’s murder. Nearly a dozen years of pleading unsuccessfully with military leaders and Congress to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.” And their plain-spoken yet consistent drive to push back ignorance about gays and lesbians. | 12/03/10 10:15:38 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: President Obama should join the Mine Ban Treaty

Along with 14 of our brother and sister Nobel Peace laureates - including democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma - we have written to fellow laureate President Obama to urge him to bring the United States into the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. Many of the Nobel Peace laureates have long expressed concern at the humanitarian impact of antipersonnel mines and have worked for their eradication. | 12/02/10 12:59:40 By - Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Jody Williams

Commentary: 'Earmark' isn't a dirty word in high-poverty states

Republicans in the incoming Congress, under pressure from the tea party movement and voters of many political persuasions, have vowed to ban earmarks. That sounds great. But what if it’s phrased this way: They’re pledging to halt spending on state and local projects that keep thousands of Mississippians employed, and to ban spending such as the federal Katrina relief Mississippians received after the storm’s devastation. Elected GOP leaders want to turn over control of this $16 billion in discretionary money to the federal bureaucracy and a Democratic administration whose policies they despise. | 11/29/10 12:55:18 By - Geoff Pender

Commentary: Lend an ear on National Listening Day

One way to make a newspaperman wince is to request publicity for a day of observance. Hardly a day goes by when someone isn't promoting a day or week dedicated to, say, the fight against cancer or the importance of eating more blueberries. So when my younger daughter requested a column in support of National Listening Day, my initial reaction was lukewarm. When I learned that the third annual event would take place Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, I was even more dubious. Every real American knows that's the day we rush, lemming-like, to the nearest mall. What was she thinking? | 11/26/10 12:24:48 By - Terry Plumb

Commentary: 'Opt-out' protesters could turn me into a shoe-thrower

If I were at the airport today and forced to wait in a long line because someone ahead of me was making a political statement against the new airport security screening system, I’d be tempted to make a statement of my own. By taking my shoes off — even before the guards instructed me to — and flinging them at the silly fool inconveniencing the rest of us. | 11/24/10 12:50:09 By - Mike Hendricks

Commentary: Gary Condit deserves an apology

It turns out a Salvadoran immigrant murdered Chandra Levy, or so a District of Columbia jury ruled on Monday with little fanfare. How soon we forget. Nine years ago, Levy's case was an American obsession. It was the featured story in the 24-hour news cycle because the prime suspect in the disappearance of the young Modesto woman was then-Rep. Gary Condit, a ranking Democrat. | 11/24/10 11:22:26 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: Air travel safety trumps dignity in my book

Dignity and the prospect of bombs aren't compatible. Yet we're faced with protesters -- indignant over full-body airport scanners -- planning to overwhelm the nation's already overwhelmed airport security system on Wednesday. The day before Thanksgiving, even without crazies clogging the works, makes for the busiest, most chaotic flying day of the year -- a perfect time for self-important prudes to sabotage everyone else's travel plans. | 11/23/10 12:47:48 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Not all madrassas teach hate

When I first entered the large Kuddamuddin Madrassa in Lahore some years ago, it seemed to be full of light-hearted boys kicking around soccer balls or hanging out in clusters between classes. The four story brick and stucco building in the old city, with its ornate window frames and doors, could have been built a hundred years ago – long before the Islamic revival that has led to conflict around the world. | 11/22/10 06:15:53 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: Olbermann, Beck, O'Reilly and Hannity aren't journalists

Too many people think Keith Olbermann’s prose — and that of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly of the Fox three-ring circus — is real news. At best, these poseurs are carrion feeders who feast off tidbits from the carcass of the news, then belch out batches of baloney most remarkable for their adherents’ willingness to swallow its perceived “truthiness.” | 11/20/10 06:26:23 By - Ken Robertson

Commentary: ABC, Breitbart, Olbermann and media credibility

It is seldom a good thing when the news becomes the news. We've seen that twice in recent weeks. First there was ABC News' ill-fated flirtation with blogger Andrew Breitbart.

In the face of heavy criticism, ABC backed off its decision to make Breitbart part of its election-night coverage. How prominent a role he was to have played is a point of contention between the two parties; ABC has said it cancelled the plan because Breitbart kept exaggerating the role he'd been asked to play. | 11/15/10 11:19:07 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Is pardoning The Doors' Morrison really going to be Crist's legacy?

The Lizard King's pardon would be the emblematic achievement of an insipid career. No one still cares whether a drunken Jim Morrison dropped his pants on stage at Dinner Key Auditorium on March 1, 1969. The subsequent fit of civic outrage, long faded from popular memory, has aged into the perfect non-issue issue for Lame Duck Charlie. An old, quaint controversy over the deportment of The Doors' long-dead front man has become politically safe for the likes of Charlie Crist. | 11/12/10 06:17:46 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: How does Vice President Perry sound?

Rick Perry on the 2012 ticket? Heck, he might have made it in 2008. Months before John McCain won the Republican presidential nomination, early favorite Rudy Giuliani said Perry was "on the top of everybody's list" of running mates. | 11/08/10 06:17:15 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Midterm elections and the terrible toos

Call Election 2010 the year of the Terrible Toos. As in too many polls, too many attack ads and hit-mail pieces, too much anonymous and underreported money and too many ballots still uncounted. None of this is new. And maybe we are too close to the just-completed election (except for those uncounted ballots, of course) to make comparisons. But it does seem that all four trends are advancing from bad to worse. | 11/06/10 06:41:01 By - Peter Callaghan

Commentary: Hey Mitch McConnell, 1994 is a 'mistake' worth repeating

Even before Republicans' Election Day triumph, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell was cautioning members of his party in Congress not to repeat the mistakes they made after their historic midterm landslide in 1994. The "single most important thing we want to achieve," McConnell has said, "is for President Obama to be a one-term president." | 11/04/10 13:17:28 By -

Commentary: TV remote's mute button came in handy this election season

As the days tick down drearily toward the mid-term elections, the mute button is our friend. Every time a political commercial comes on television, millions of Americans are lunging for their remote controls to turn off the volume. This is a perfectly reasonable response to a nauseating blizzard of snarky lies, breathless exaggerations and ludicrous promises that will never, ever be kept. | 11/02/10 12:45:44 By - Carl Hiaasen

Commentary: What I learned from Gov. Mark Sanford

I was so excited when Mark Sanford was elected governor. Finally, it seemed, we had a governor who looked systematically at the state’s problems and proposed solutions he thought would work, even if they weren’t popular, rather than poking his finger into the wind to identify the configuration of the populist mantle he would wrap himself in. A governor who understood that our state’s fundamental challenges were interconnected and required structural changes rather than sound-bite solutions. | 11/01/10 06:11:20 By - Cindi Ross Scoppe

Commentary: 'Don't ask, don't tell' from a WWII vet's point of view

Calvin Fritz, of Belleville, has an interesting viewpoint on the controversy over the military's policy of "don't ask, don't tell." Fritz, 84, served aboard the USS St. George, a seaplane tender, in the Pacific Ocean near the end of World War II, and he said he knew guys who were homosexual and proudly served their country. | 10/26/10 13:27:13 By - Wally Spiers

Commentary: Medicare is something we should all worry about

Several years ago grandparents Dawnia and Ray Clements got a letter from their family doctor. It said the clinic to which they had gone for years would no longer take their Medicare. So they called another doctor they had seen before. That doctor, who wasn't taking new Medicare patients, agreed to take them on. But then a letter came from that clinic too. And the Clementses found themselves without a doctor. Want to make the political hot air about health care real? Try being over 65 and doctor-less in Alaska. | 10/25/10 11:50:08 By - Julia O'Malley

Commentary: Diversity isn't easy, but it's necessary

Multiculturalism has completely failed.

That's the assessment of Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, in a recent speech before the youth wing of her conservative political party, the Christian Democratic Union. The idea that disparate peoples can ``simply live side by side and live happily with each other'' has failed, she said. ``Utterly failed.'' | 10/25/10 11:27:03 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Our election ads are scaring the Martians

Pity the poor Martians orbiting our planet who get all their civics lessons from campaign ads. They must think we're one savage species. Two weeks from Election Day, TV is crackling with political attacks. Their purpose is to introduce you to the candidates and inform you of the issues. They go like this: A devious moron is running against me whose imbecility is thicker than livermush. A single vote cast that way will lead to chaos, pestilence and warts. | 10/22/10 08:50:03 By - Mark Washburn

Commentary: Literature in the age of e-books

When I interviewed Mario Vargas Llosa a few days ago on the occasion of his well-deserved and long overdue Nobel Prize in literature, one of the things that most caught my attention was his opinion about electronic books. He made no secret about his anxiety over the future of literature in the age of the e-book. | 10/21/10 12:30:13 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: A little government regulation goes a long way

I have a few questions for all you folks who screech about big government and over regulation.How would you like your eggs? Sunny side up? Worried about turning on the gas stove to heat those babies up? Planning a trip to the Gulf of Mexico any time soon? Don’t forget to bring the Borax to scrub away the oil and other grime — from your fish. | 10/20/10 12:09:00 By - Bob Cuddy

Commentary: Everyone has a part in ending bullying of gays

Yes, it's progress. But it's progress against an ailment that has hurt too many people for too long. And progress is slow. Tuesday a federal judge in California banned enforcement of a law that kicks openly gay soldiers out of military service. But this hopeful news came after a series of gay suicides and a horrific attack on a gay man in New York. | 10/15/10 13:11:04 By -

Commentary: Immigration is Perry's favorite election year emergency

Right on schedule, Texas Gov. Perry lashed out last week at sanctuary cities. He always talks about immigration before elections. Just not afterward. Perry has been governor of Texas since last century. As Democratic opponent Bill White has said, Perry has had years to do something about immigration. | 10/12/10 14:46:42 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Gay bashing's deadly side

It is hard to believe that in this century, and in this highly developed country, a rash of suicides has spread among adolescents who are relentlessly harassed for their sexual orientation or gender identity. Several young people have had to die to bring to the national spotlight the devastating emotional and social consequences of gay-bashing that goes on not only in schools but also in colleges, and now in the cyber world. It's as if the Taliban were in charge of our society's rules. | 10/11/10 12:34:35 By - Daniel Shoer-Roth

Commentary: Time for doctors to prescribe exercise

The prescription pad is a powerful tool. And doctors need to start using it for more than just ordering medications. They need to prescribe exercise. | 10/10/10 06:13:43 By - Joe Moore and Edward M. Philips

Commentary: GOP deserves a Nobel Prize for political alchemy

If there were a Nobel Prize for political alchemy, there would be no doubt about who this year's winner would be. According to all the prognosticators, the Republican Party is about to turn a very large lump of steer manure into electoral gold.

The lump has a name — "A Pledge to America" — and a history. This manifesto of Republican beliefs harkens back to the "Contract with America" that was issued in 1994 just before Republicans took control of both houses of Congress. The Pledge is focus group tested to duplicate the success of the Contract. | 10/08/10 09:29:48 By - Dennis Jett

Commentary: Is John Edwards' road to redemption in reality TV?

There's hope for John Edwards after all. If Rod Blagojevich can appear on a television reality show, Texas' Tom Delay can shake and shimmy on "Dancing With the Stars" and a philanderer such as New York's former Gov. Eliot Spitzer can get his own show, then surely Edwards can rebound from his monumental fall from grace after the revelation of his affair with a jezebel he met on a New York street corner. | 10/06/10 14:38:44 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: Rick Sanchez's rollercoaster career

He's been publicly buried so many times and has always clawed his way back out of the graves: an FBI investigation, a drunk-driving conviction, even being whipped in the ratings by Japanese cartoons. But can Rick Sanchez survive his meandering rant about Jewish control of the media, an ethnic slur that has already claimed his job? | 10/06/10 08:45:10 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: Calling all bluffs in Middle East peace negotiations

An observer making a genuine effort to understand the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations might end up pulling out his hair in frustration.

On the surface, nothing makes sense. Just a few weeks after starting, the talks look like they might collapse. The ultimate goal is an agreement on the creation of a Palestinian state, something Palestinians insist they desperately want. And yet, it is the Palestinian side that threatens to walk out. Israelis beg them to stay, as if negotiations were a big favor to Israel. It is Israel, after all, that would have to give up land, remove its citizens and risk its security to achieve peace. Israeli behavior, however, also has something of a schizophrenic appearance. | 10/05/10 08:41:36 By - Frida Ghitis

Commentary: When fears that visiting ER will lead to financial collapse

The excruciating pain hit about midnight — an indescribable, side-wrenching feeling that pummeled me again and again. The attack arrived suddenly, and I was fraught with panic, not knowing why I was in such agony. I knew I needed to see a doctor — stat! Then just as suddenly as my pain arrived, so did my worries about how much a visit to the emergency room would cost. It seemed strange that I would be so preoccupied with money in a moment of intense distress. | 10/04/10 13:10:25 By - Bobby Caina Calvan

Commentary: Congress punts on Bush tax cuts, middle class

Members of Congress this week passed a bill to keep the government running through November, and then they packed their bags to leave town. Most will scurry home and start campaigning in earnest. But they're heading home without addressing the issue of the Bush-era tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of the year. Nor will they address any other controversial issues until after the elections. They didn't even pass a federal budget. | 10/01/10 14:24:54 By - James Werrell

Commentary: Colbert's testimony proves Congress doesn't get it

It must have been a dream come true for Stephen Colbert, the Comedy Channel talk show host, who is not really a talk show host but a comedian playing an eccentric talk show host who's sort of a Fox News commentator with a few extra I.Q. points.

He was invited to Congress (a House subcommittee on labor) to testify about the plight of farm workers, having been one of the celebrities invited by farm workers' organizations to spend a day as a laborer. That was enough to get him the invite to Capitol Hill, where members of the House and Senate just love to rub elbows with celebrities. | 10/01/10 08:45:29 By - Jim Jenkins

Commentary: Senate should confirm Judge Diaz before recess

When President Barack Obama assumed office in Jan. 2009, the Fourth Circuit had openings in four of its 15 judgeships. Accordingly, it was urgent that the White House promptly fill these vacancies. The administration has instituted procedures to foster selection, but two seats remain open 20 months later. A helpful illustration of this issue is the Nov. 4, 2009, nomination of North Carolina Superior Court Judge Albert Diaz. The Senate must immediately confirm Judge Diaz whose nomination has languished since the Judiciary Committee unanimously approved him in Jan. 2010. | 09/28/10 11:22:55 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: Texas GOP targets its own

Texas Republicans have nearly finished off the Democrats. Now they're going after one another. First, a ministers group led in part by Texas pastors criticized U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, urging Texans to replace him with a "Tea Party candidate" because Cornyn spoke at a fundraiser for gay and lesbian Republicans. | 09/28/10 09:18:20 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Congress must end 'don't ask, don't tell'

A skilled Air Force flight nurse got the justice due her in a Tacoma courtroom Friday, but military order took a beating in the process. Maj. Margaret Witt of Spokane won her fight to be reinstated four years after the military discharged her for being gay. U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Leighton ruled that her presence did not adversely affect unit morale or cohesion. It was the first judicial application of the so-called "Witt standard," established by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2008 as a caveat to the military's 17-year-old "don't ask, don't tell" policy. | 09/27/10 14:41:53 By -

Commentary: If the recession is over, is this a 'crapconomy'?

The recession has been over since June 2009? Really?

If it's not a recession, then what is this thing that feels like A) a depression to the poor and jobless, B) stagnation to those of us in the middle and C) another day in paradise to the CEOs and hedge fund managers raking in millions? | 09/27/10 10:56:18 By - Mike Hendricks

Commentary: When justice loses to mob mentality

It was once a staple plot of TV westerns: There's been a vicious killing. Everybody knows who did it — or thinks they know — and the posse wants to string the varmint up. No need for the bother of a trial. The crime was outrageous, people are furious. So get the rope, find a tree. Watching, you'd be glad we've moved beyond frontier justice, glad the howling of the mob can no longer stampede us into condemning an innocent man.

Anthony Graves would beg to differ. | 09/27/10 10:53:49 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: DREAM Act deserves a proper debate

Thousands of U.S. students have a dream. It's a dream they thought might move closer to reality this year through legislation giving them a path out of legal limbo. But the U.S. Senate this week used a procedural vote to stomp on that dream, with lots of huffing and finger pointing about "playing politics" weeks before Election Day. | 09/24/10 14:30:38 By -

Commentary: GOP's 'Pledge to America' is all platitudes, little substance

There are precious few new ideas in the GOP's 21-page "Pledge to America" campaign manifesto. There's a dismaying dearth of detail on how Republicans would actually balance the federal budget or tackle politically toxic challenges on Social Security and Medicare. And there's certainly no real road map for an economic recovery that would create the millions of jobs the country desperately needs. Instead, the legislative blueprint is full of platitudes about returning to America's founding principles, of attacks on President Barack Obama and of poll-tested, tired talking points designed to appeal to tea party activists and other disaffected Americans. | 09/24/10 11:54:30 By -

Commentary: Spending insane amounts on lobbyists

No other county in America fritters away money on Washington lobbyists like Miami-Dade. Forty-nine states spend less. This is not news. Miami-Dade has held this inexplicable distinction for seven years. But in 2010, with a $444 million budget shortfall and a property tax hike looming, the notion of Miami-Dade outspending all the counties and all the cities and all but one state seems beyond absurd. | 09/23/10 12:54:35 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: The road to ending hunger

A young child recently asked my friend a simple question that left us feeling pain and impotence: "Why are people hungry?"

We know how to replenish soils, enhance crops and apply fertilizer, pesticide and water for maximum yield. We know how to properly harvest, protect, dry, and fumigate crops. We know how to package, store, ship and market food for maximum income to farmers and maximum benefit to consumers. But we have failed to bring the science and the wisdom of the 21st century to millions of farmers still trapped in ancient techniques. | 09/22/10 08:38:38 By - Ben Barber

A Q & A guide to McClatchyDC's new commenting service

We've changed to a new article commenting service called Disqus. Disqus offers many new options to watch, follow and share comments, and it allows you to sign on to McClatchyDC using your Facebook, Twitter or Disqus accounts, if you wish. | 09/21/10 14:53:02 By -

Commentary: We've been down this road before

We've been down this road too many times before. We've got to get a hold of ourselves and think through what some of us are saying. How can we Americans, a nation founded on the principle of freedom from and of religion, tar more than a billion-plus believers as subhuman zealots? We can't blame an entire belief system for the insane actions of a few. Which too many Americans are doing nowadays. | 09/20/10 12:49:01 By - Mike Tharp

Commentary: Offshore oil rig safety must be industry's focus

By Sunday, mud and cement will permanently seal the Macondo Well of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig that blew up on April 20th, killing 11 people. But we can't bury what it uncovered.

The unverified state of sub-sea safety-critical systems poses a looming threat to the men and women working on offshore drilling rigs and production platforms, to the environment, and to the financial security of the oil industry itself. | 09/17/10 14:20:45 By - Tony Hall

Commentary: Russo is brains behind Tea Party Express

Sal Russo rocked back in his chair, put his scuffed shoes up on his desk and prepared to watch Karl Rove analyze the latest political shocker — a win by insurgent Christine O'Donnell against the establishment Republican candidate in Delaware. Russo, a consultant whose roots in Sacramento stretch back to Gov. Ronald Reagan's days, took a direct hand in O'Donnell's victory Tuesday. He is the brains behind the Tea Party Express, one of several campaign operations that lays claim to representing the tea party movement. | 09/16/10 12:17:18 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Time to fill lower federal court vacancies

The federal courts recently passed a significant milestone when United States Circuit Judge Stanley Birch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit retired after two decades of dedicated service. Judge Birch's action meant that the bench has 101 vacancies out of the 858 appellate and district court judgeships. These vacancies, which are eleven percent of the positions, undercut the delivery of justice. | 09/13/10 14:29:10 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: 9-11 — another day of infamy

Today, we mark the ninth anniversary of the attack that changed our world. Sept. 11, 2001, was a day as infamous as Dec. 7, 1941, and, in immediate consequences, even more deadly. Pearl Harbor plunged us into World War II; Sept. 11 forced us into a "war on terror," which led us to war in Afghanistan. Our goal was to end the Taliban rule there that harbored international terrorists and to seek out Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of global terrorism. | 09/11/10 06:49:36 By -

Commentary: Curb intolerance by building personal relationships

We met on a bus. Rosila Ishmael was a recent graduate of one of Malaysia's universities. She was angling for a job on a newspaper. I was taking a break from newspaper work to live in her country as a volunteer for a nonprofit group. I think about her these days, as commentators around the world discuss mosques and extremism and the differences among us. | 09/11/10 06:19:18 By - Barbara Shelly

Commentary: Time to rethink how we commemorate 9-11

Saturday, the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, should be a time for solemn remembrance. But perhaps it can be much more. People of all faiths (or none) were touched by the tragedy, directly or indirectly, and its commemoration is an appropriate time for countering the kind of religious intolerance that warped the terrorists' view of the world and allowed them to rationalize their unthinkable actions. | 09/10/10 14:28:01 By -

Commentary: Beyond Rep. Joe Wilson's expense reports

It might very well be that U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson has done nothing wrong during his numerous taxpayer-funded trips to war zones, but he has done plenty wrong in his ham-handed attempts to delegitimize an ongoing ethics investigation into the matter. | 09/10/10 13:51:42 By -

Commentary: Bush taking things seriously now -- except for himself

Two months before a book tour and his return to the national TV cameras, George W. Bush spun stories and joked Tuesday for a welcoming Fort Worth audience. No need to make snarky remarks about the former president and Texas Rangers owner, now a north Dallas resident. He's fully willing to tell jokes on himself. | 09/09/10 06:30:35 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: America is leaving the ruins behind in Iraq

The end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq was declared Tuesday by President Obama at Fort Bliss, Texas. That's where I did Army basic training from Jan. 13 to March 8, 1969. Bliss, a misnomer for anybody who did sit-ups, push-ups and leg-lifts on its gravel parking lots when it still trained recruits and draftees, has become a crucial base for the war in Iraq. | 09/05/10 13:51:06 By - Mike Tharp

Commentary: Oh my God, another 'mosque' issue

The issue of the "World Trade Center Mosque" has generated a great deal of controversy recently. Opponents of the project should be alerted to the fact that there is another religious center of a group with connections to terrorism even closer to a place that has been bathed in the blood of the victims of terrorism. | 09/03/10 13:07:53 By - Dennis Jett

Commentary: The pricetag on U.S. elections

As a visitor from Germany, I find it astonishing that elections in this country can be decided by who is able to buy the most advertising time out of his own pocket. Seeing is believing, though. Florida's gubernatorial and U.S. Senate primary races leave the impression that public offices come with a price tag. Experience? Brains? A good political idea? That is so yesterday. Today, it's all about money. In Germany, by contrast, campaign spending is strictly regulated and ad time is allocated. | 09/02/10 11:38:06 By - Henning Engelage

Commentary: Hard line on immigration will cost Republicans

You don't have to be a political wizard to figure that Democrats will put out ads in Hispanic media in coming weeks painting Republicans as the anti-Hispanic party that wants to enact Arizona-styled laws throughout the country and that is calling for denying U.S. citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented residents. And they will have plenty of primary-race TV footage to back up their claims. | 08/26/10 17:04:16 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Avoiding a Middle East apocalypse

Predictions of doom for the Middle East have kept people awake since back when the Bible first made its way up the bestseller list. Thousands of years later the tradition lives on, this time centering on Iran's nuclear program and what Israel or the United States may or may not to do stop it. | 08/23/10 10:29:35 By - Frida Ghitis

Commentary: Lies and election season lunacy

The reason certain politicians and their enablers in the media start irrational arguments like the one over the "ground zero mosque" is to divert attention from things that really matter. Like the fact that millions of people are out of work and millions more worry that they may be out of a job soon. What our leaders need to be focusing on is how to get us out of this financial quagmire. Instead, they squabble over symbolism because that's easier than accomplishing something. | 08/21/10 06:23:33 By - Mike Hendricks

Commentary: Gingrich, others are fearmongering over Cordoba Center

Maybe the August news shortage is what has caused the airwaves to spill over with hysteria over a proposed Islamic center in Manhattan, two blocks from the site of the 9-11 attack. Maybe it's the hostile partisanship infecting our national discourse. Whatever it is, or why, when Newt Gingrich starts equating Muslims with Nazis, something ugly and ominous is afoot. | 08/18/10 14:39:03 By -

Commentary: We have no right to judge

He had no right to judge.

That, in a nutshell, is the gist of last week's uproar over a ruling by Vaughn Walker. Walker is the federal judge, originally appointed by Ronald Reagan and generally regarded, according to the Associated Press, as "a conservative with libertarian leanings," who struck down Proposition 8, California's ban on same sex marriage. | 08/16/10 09:52:47 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Those ungrateful liberal Dems

In a recent interview with The Hill, the White House press secretary lashed out at what he labeled "the professional left." Gibbs was talking about liberals, especially those on cable TV, who complain that President Obama has caved to centrists and conservatives on too many issues. Pardon me if I join Gibbs in his bewilderment over the ingratitude of the left. While Obama's performance has been less than perfect, he certainly has delivered in a big way — notably on health care reform, new fair-pay legislation for women, financial regulations for Wall Street, student loan reform and a recovery act that kept the nation from sliding into a depression. | 08/16/10 04:59:11 By - James Werrell

Signs point to heaven with humor

Driving to Albemarle this week, I had to chuckle with admiration when I passed the sign in front of West Stanly Baptist Church. NEED A LIFEGUARD? OURS WALKS ON WATER. | 08/14/10 14:12:41 By - Tim Funk

Commentary: What to make of JetBlue's sliding Steven Slater?

Steven Slater is a hero. The JetBlue flight attendant acted out the fantasy of millions of working people. He told off the jerk who had cussed him out, then he quit his job in style — grabbed a beer, popped the emergency slide on the plane, and glided off to freedom. Take this job and shove it, I ain't working here no more. | 08/12/10 14:01:00 By - Tommy Tomlinson

Commentary: Gates makes right call on defense cuts

Defense Secretary Robert Gates looked at the future of budget politics and saw a major squeeze looming. To maintain the current force structure, the defense budget must rise by up to 3 percent a year, but current projections call for only a 1 percent increase. | 08/12/10 13:47:25 By -

Commentary: Despite Obama's pledge, our Iraq commitment hasn't ended

This should be a day of jubilation in America, but I can't rejoice over the latest news about Iraq. When I consider that more than 1 million Americans have served in this ill-advised and totally unnecessary war since 2003, I am reminded that more than 4,400 of them died and thousands more were severely damaged. | 08/09/10 11:38:48 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: Letter to McClatchy DC Editors

In his July 21 McClatchy article, "State Department Planning to Field a Small Army in Iraq," Warren Strobel repeated the old canard that "...this is no longer just the foreign service officer standing in the canape line, and the military out in the field." He added the line: "The State Department, better known for negotiating treaties and delivering diplomatic notes, will have to fend for itself in what remains an active danger zone." These are particularly egregious statements that fly in the face of heroic service in recent years by thousands of — often unarmed — Foreign Service personnel in danger posts around the world. Strobel's use of the term "army" is also wildly innacurate; State is planning for some hundreds of new security personnel, a far cry from the nearly 40,000 soldiers that comprise an "army" in the US military. | 08/04/10 11:53:36 By - Susan R. Johnson

Commentary: Torture memos — Accountability everywhere but here?

Eight years ago on Aug. 1, armed with two legal opinions that gutted the prohibition against torture, CIA agents and contractors began the month-long "enhanced interrogation" of Abu Zubaydah in a secret CIA dungeon in Thailand. Today, nobody argues that Abu Zubaydah wasn't tortured. Yet we have done practically nothing: no prosecutions or investigations of senior officials who oversaw the torture program, no meaningful acknowledgment or redress for the victims of our torture program. | 08/02/10 06:14:24 By - Jameel Jaffer and Larry Siems

Commentary: Delaware District Court vacancies need filling fast

This week, the federal courts marked an important milestone when United States District Judge Joseph Farnan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware retired after a quarter century of dedicated service. | 07/30/10 15:19:56 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: What happened to Obama's 'post-racial' America?

Weren't we supposed to enter a new age of tolerance with the election of President Barack Obama? His half-black, half-white ancestry and broad support across racial lines suggested that at last Americans judged each other on the content of our characters — not the color of our skin or our tribal affiliations. Instead, in just 18 months of the Obama administration, racial discord is growing and relations seem to have been set back a generation. | 07/29/10 11:30:40 By - Victor Davis Hanson

Commentary: Why WikiLeaks' 'War Logs' are no Pentagon Papers

The WikiLeaks documents on the Afghanistan war have brought suggestions such as this one [1] (from The New York Times, the newspaper that published both) that they represent "the Pentagon Papers of our time." Not quite. | 07/27/10 11:35:05 By - Richard Tofel

Commentary: For reporters, the rules at Guantanamo change daily

Guantanamo is a place the Pentagon likes to call the most transparent detention center on Earth. Hundreds of reporters have visited there, they say, since the first al Qaida suspects arrived eight years ago. They skip the part about how few go back more than once — stymied by the sheer frustration at the rules, the hoops, the time, and the costs of doing basic journalism. | 07/27/10 08:56:45 By - Carol Rosenberg

Commentary: Obama, Hitler and wingnuts — Oh my!

President Obama, Adolf Hitler and Chairman Mao. Three peas in a pod, right? Mao ordered millions of his own people murdered. Hitler committed genocide and started a world war that left tens of millions of corpses. Whereas Obama pushed through national health care, bailed out the auto industry and slapped new rules on Wall Street.

Lots of similarities. | 07/26/10 10:45:20 By - Mike Hendricks

Commentary: Sherrod saga offers a lesson in overcoming hate

If it's possible to make lemonade from the sour lemons of the Shirley Sherrod affair, it might be this: Sherrod's insightful words about struggling with and overcoming racial animus, about not living with hate, and about looking beyond race to an understanding that "there's no difference between us" — that we must work together to help each other — are now accessible to a lot more people. It's a message many need to hear. | 07/23/10 13:20:22 By - Fannie Flono

Commentary: Time to confirm Jane Branstetter Stranch for Sixth Circuit

The U.S. Senate must confirm Sixth Circuit judicial nominee Jane Branstetter Stranch before its August recess. The Judiciary Committee approved her eight months ago this week, and she has waited longer than any nominee for a floor vote. | 07/23/10 08:20:12 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: Graham puts country before party with Kagan vote

Throughout the first two centuries or so of our nation's history, what Sen. Lindsay Graham did on Wednesday when he voted to confirm President Obama's appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court would have been thoroughly unremarkable. What would have been remarkable would have been for a senator to do otherwise — to vote against confirming a nominee who did not have serious ethical, legal, mental or intellectual problems. | 07/22/10 14:44:51 By -

Commentary: 'Refudiate' and the birth of ShakesPalin

Just when I thought no joke about our former governor would ever make me laugh, because, like most of you, I'm so tired of you-know-who I can't even bring myself to type her name and all related humor seems more played out than a Miley Cyrus song, there appeared, sometime on Monday, a phenomenon on Twitter known as ShakesPalin. ShakesPalin's roots were planted during a Fox News appearance, something to do with the Tea Party and racism, where she allegedly used a made-up word — the linguistic love child of refute and repudiate — "refudiate." | 07/21/10 10:21:57 By - Julia O'Malley

Commentary: U.S. will follow Europe's lead on solar energy

America was the world's leader in alternative energy research in the 1970s, but that came to a sudden halt when incentives, subsidies and research funding were slashed after President Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. Since then, most solar innovation has come from Europe, with huge advances being made in Germany, Austria and Scandinavia. | 07/21/10 08:28:15 By - Tom Eblen

Commentary: Glenn Beck's truth

A scene from the near future as a businessman meets a graduate of Beck University — the online university that TV host Glenn Beck founded in 2010 so people could learn the real truth they don't get in your so-called 'universities.' | 07/14/10 09:08:25 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Securing the wild, wild Web (and networks, and e-mail …)

It's a wild cyber world out there, and it's getting wilder every day. The good news is that the government has recognized the threat, and a year ago a new cybersecurity coordinator position was created in the White House. The challenge is that the job is enormous in scope and responsibility. | 06/25/10 19:20:08 By - Lt. Gen. Harry Raduege, USAF (Ret) and the Honorable Tom Davis

Commentary: Protect cell phone location data from government abuse

Today the House is holding hearings on cell phone location tracking. We urge the House Judiciary Committee to work to modernize electronic privacy law to ensure that location information is safeguarded from government abuse. The framers of our Constitution foresaw the danger of widespread surveillance and adopted the Fourth Amendment to protect against it. | 06/24/10 11:53:46 By - Catherine Crump

Commentary: Breaking the lower federal court vacancy logjam

Because 100 of the 858 appellate and district judgeships remain vacant, eroding the prompt, inexpensive and fair resolution of cases, the Senate should swiftly confirm President Obama's 26 remaining lower court nominees by reestablishing its longstanding tradition of confirming well-qualified, non-controversial nominees soon after the Judiciary Committee approves them. | 06/22/10 07:58:55 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: President Obama, BP and the law

At a White House meeting Wednesday President Barack Obama and BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg reached a tentative agreement under which the company would create an independent $20 billion fund to pay claims for the spill, which would be administered by Kenneth Feinberg, the administration's "pay czar". The tentative agreement raises myriad questions of authority and practical implementation, however, that must be answered. | 06/16/10 17:06:48 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: Snatching defeat from victory in AIDS crisis

There is a new and growing danger that advances in the global war on AIDS might not be sustained. Part of the problem is the sheer weight of numbers. Meanwhile, money for treatment is drying up. Because of the global recession, some international donors are threatening to cap their financial support. | 06/15/10 09:53:24 By - Ban Ki-moon

Commentary: It's time to move toward a cleaner energy future

Here's the lesson of this moment: fossil fuels come with a price far beyond what we pay for gasoline at the pump or what we pay on our utility bills. The U.S. can lead the world in clean technologies, just as we led the first industrial revolution. But we must move quickly. The next industrial revolution is already underway. | 06/15/10 09:38:17 By - Fred Krupp

Commentary: Surest path home for our troops is success

These are troubling times in Afghanistan, though there are signs of hope. Securing Taliban-controlled areas and then staying focused on transitioning security from NATO to Afghan forces is a difficult but necessary task. | 06/15/10 09:24:15 By -

Commentary: Political lunacy makes S.C. tough to love

Could South Carolina politics be any nuttier than it is now? Two S.C. political operatives have announced that they've had affairs with Republican front-runner Nikki Haley, who is married with two kids. One operative, Larry Marchant, happened to be a consultant for the campaign of Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who's running against Haley. Haley is also the daughter of immigrants from India, which is where another Bauer supporter — state Sen. Jake Knotts — comes in. Knotts, speaking on an Internet talk show, called her a "raghead." (He called President Barack Obama the same thing, completing an Idiot's Daily Double.) | 06/08/10 13:31:13 By - Tommy Tomlinson

Commentary: We're only outraged about oil spill that we can see

It's Day 47 of what we regard as an utterly unacceptable environmental disaster. We watch in horror as the first tar balls wash onto the Florida Panhandle's sugar-sand beaches. It's Day 32 in Akwa Ibom. Not that anyone in the Niger River Delta has bothered to count the days since an offshore spill added another million gallons of crude to an already devastated estuary. But the word "unacceptable" has no meaning in Nigeria's bleak oil fields. | 06/07/10 14:13:16 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: MMS still hasn't gotten the Gulf spill's message

Lest there be any remaining doubt, the ever-growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a seminal catastrophe. It is transforming the way Americans view offshore oil exploration, particularly drilling for oil at depths thousands of feet below the sea. Unfortunately, this sea change hasn't yet extended to the U.S. Department of Interior and its Minerals Management Service. As Shashank Bengali of McClatchy's Washington Bureau reported last Thursday, the MMS this week was prepared to let oil firms go ahead with 31 deep-water drilling plans for the Gulf of Mexico, nearly half of which the agency had approved since the April 20 explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig. | 06/07/10 11:31:19 By -

Commentary: Billions for defense, but only red tape for abused children

We doctors are a cynical bunch. Very few things shock us, but cruelty to children is one of them. If the most prosperous country in the world can afford to fight two wars, battle terrorism in far-off lands and bail out Wall Street by the billions, why can't it offer its most vulnerable and voiceless citizens anything but bureaucratic red tape? | 06/01/10 07:47:19 By - Seema Jilani

Commentary: Honoring soldiers by opposing Fred Phelps

By the end of Thursday, nearly all 50 states are expected to be in legal alignment against Fred Phelps.

This is no small feat. Despite the rather bland feeling an amicus brief signed by a bunch of attorney generals may elicit, the importance should be understood. Somehow, a short court document doesn't feel like much of a reply to the decades-long fury of Phelps, his crude signs about gays, the demeaning nature of his disruptive protests at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. | 06/01/10 06:05:00 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Rand Paul tells a tired, old story

If you notice, they have never been on our side. "They" meaning social conservatives. "Our" meaning African-American people. They have never been on our side and always, they have claimed "principle" to justify it. So remarks like the one above that got Kentucky senatorial candidate Rand Paul in trouble last week are surprising only in the sense that one is surprised to hear an oldie on the radio one hasn't heard in awhile. | 05/28/10 06:14:53 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Some advice for grads on multitasking and oil drilling

It is my pleasure to address the graduating class of 2010. There are a few points to keep in mind as you tumble toward adulthood: Three aspirin and a cigarette no longer qualifies as breakfast. Your average turn signal conveys more useful information than your standard tweet. It's still a free country. Speak your mind, but mind your speak. Multitask all you want, but when it comes to nuclear power or drilling for oil, take it one thing at a time. | 05/26/10 12:49:20 By - Mark Washburn

Commentary: Rand Paul's missteps come quickly

Wow! That didn't take long. Just about 24 hours into his victory lap, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul went on national TV and one "Oops!" later got tagged as a guy who really does have some strange ideas. Then, Paul went on national TV again Friday and voiced the strange notion that it is "un-American" of President Barack Obama to criticize BP for a little old oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Never mind all the jobs, aquatic life and beaches that will get slimed by the little old oil spill. | 05/25/10 14:05:27 By - Larry Dale Keeling

Commentary: Oh Texas, we chose this school board

So who chose the Texas state school board? We did. Our state board was on display for the nation's entertainment again last week, rewriting social studies lessons that will affect the nation's textbooks. Once again, board members made the Texas Legislature look smart. Bryan Republican Don McLeroy, the lame-duck former board chairman, wanted history books to contrast the critical "tone" of reform leaders such as Susan B. Anthony with the sunnier "optimism" of immigrants such as Jean Pierre Godet. The only problem with that was that Godet is a character in a historical novel. | 05/24/10 14:53:05 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Rand Paul lacks real world experience

It hurt a bit — listening to Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul say he sees nothing wrong with private business owners deciding who can enter their establishments even if those decisions are based on race, physical disabilities, sexual orientation, or any characteristic that marks a person as a minority. For a moment Wednesday evening while watching the Rachel Maddow Show, I was transported to a time decades ago when similar words were rolling from the lips of noted segregationists Lester Maddox in Georgia and George Wallace in Alabama. | 05/24/10 13:29:53 By - Merlene Davis

Commentary: Bobbing and weaving with Rand Paul

Not since Muhammad Ali was in his prime have Kentuckians seen a fellow resident of the commonwealth bob and weave as much as Rand Paul has done the past couple of days. But while it speaks to the worth of the relatively unknown candidate Republicans chose to pin their U.S. Senate hopes on, Paul's difficulty in giving straight answers to simple questions is the lesser issue here. | 05/21/10 15:39:47 By -

Commentary: Gulf oil spill as 'serial killer'

A flotilla of shrimp boats skimmed the waters of Brenton Bay at the mouth of the Mississippi Thursday in a desperate attempt to limit the damage to coastal marshes from the long tendrils of oil snaking in from the giant spill. Despite the operation, the escalating destruction caused by the encroaching oil was obvious. Just one day after the first waves of oil washed into the coastal marshes, stands of Roseau cane had turned black at the base and brown farther up the stalks. Just one day and these grasses were dying. | 05/21/10 11:27:18 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: GOP is making immigrants political exiles

It aches to see what's happening in Arizona and throughout much of the nation, including Florida where GOP politicians will say anything to earn "whitey" points with Tea Party voters. It's sad to see Sen. John McCain, once a true statesman who pushed for immigration reform, virtually join the Minute Men in a desperate attempt to get reelected. Never mind that more people are being caught on the border and that fewer are coming in. | 05/20/10 12:58:31 By - Myriam Marquez

Commentary: A low-tech method for Gulf oil spill cleanup

Lionel Stevenson spent most of Tuesday humping bundled lengths of bright yellow tubular floats, connected like strings of giant sausages.

"Pretty low-tech," said Stevenson, stunned that the primary defense along Plaquemines Parish's vulnerable coast from an oily catastrophe would be these plastic booms he was loading onto shrimp boats for $10 an hour. "Stone age," he said. | 05/19/10 13:25:25 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: California's political parties and the fat cats they serve

The only difference between Democrats and Republicans in California is that they answer to a different set of special interests. Regardless of their talking points, neither party cares about the people they feature in photo opportunities. Republicans don't answer to small business. Democrats don't stick up for foster kids and college students. Both parties exist for the big guys, whether it's corporate America, public employee unions or Indian gaming casinos raking in Las Vegas-sized profits. | 05/17/10 11:45:39 By - Bill McEwen

Commentary: Kagan's sexual orientation is nobody's business

An article on the Christian News Wire went so far as to demand that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan fess up about her sexual orientation "because the public has a right to know." Fact is, the public doesn't have a right to know everything about public figures, even appointees to the highest court in the land. | 05/14/10 13:20:00 By - Mike Hendricks

Commentary: Does DeMint want McConnell's GOP leadership role?

After endorsing Rand Paul in Kentucky's Republican Senate primary last Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina issued a statement saying, "Senator (Mitch) McConnell and I are on different sides in this race, but I support him as our leader." McConnell, the Senate minority leader, had endorsed Secretary of State Trey Grayson a day earlier. | 05/13/10 13:22:48 By - Larry Dale Keeling

Commentary: Arizona's degrading immigration law

An African-American teenager was driving home when a police cruiser pulled up from behind, stopping him in front of a home in a predominantly white St. Louis suburb. After he produced his license showing that he lived at the spot where the traffic stop occurred, his car was searched, the contents strewn on the neatly manicured lawn as the neighbors watched. The officer even went a step further, asking him if he was a drug dealer or gang member. That young man, a high school honor student 20 years ago, is now my husband. | 05/13/10 11:53:58 By - Julie Lynem

Commentary: In appreciation of Lena Horne

Lena Horne was one of the last links to an era fading slowly from living memory. A singer and actress of cafe au lait skin, lively eyes and an irrepressible smile, she came to fame in the 1940s and, wittingly or not, became a de facto symbol, a stand in representing millions of other African Americans shut out of the mainstream by custom and by law. She bore all their hopes and aspirations. It was unfair; it was ridiculous. It was the way things were. Lena Horne, who died Sunday at 92, had to represent. And she did — spectacularly. | 05/11/10 13:09:13 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Professor George Rekers explains it all

If Professor George gets away with this, I'm going straight to Rentgirl. It's my bad back. Not that I'm suggesting George Rekers went straight to Rentboy, the explicit website where his fellow traveler advertises a willingness "to do anything you say as long as you ask." | 05/10/10 13:31:56 By - Fred Grimm

Letter to the Editor: Bosnia is not 'Lurching to Disaster'

In his recent article, "As U.S. shrugs, Bosnia lurches toward disaster again," Roy Gutman tells a one-sided story. He portrays legitimate political debate about the right structure for Bosnia-Herzegovina as a threat to stability. Gutman mis-characterizes the goals and intentions of the Republika Srpska to bolster claims that Bosnia- Herzegovina is on the brink of conflict. It does not appear that Gutman met with any Republika Srpska officials as he prepared his article. | 05/04/10 13:00:15 By - Ralph R. Johnson

Commentary: What if we had won in Vietnam?

A father's reflection helped his Vietnamese son put the war behind.

April 30, 2010 — Thirty-five years ago today, North Vietnamese soldiers riding atop Russian-made tanks clanked through the streets of Saigon unopposed and brought an end to a long and bitter war. A week before, my mother, my three sisters, and I fled Vietnam. Our country was falling apart; our hopes for freedom in our own nation were dashed. | 05/04/10 09:18:19 By - Quang Pham

Commentary: Time to confirm N.C. Fourth Circuit nominees

When President Barack Obama was inaugurated, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit experienced vacancies in four of the court's 15 judgeships. Accordingly, it was imperative that the administration expeditiously fill these openings. The chief executive has implemented practices to facilitate selection, but three of the positions remain unoccupied fifteen months later. | 05/03/10 12:26:36 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: GOP needs to listen to these voters

On a day of marches in Dallas, the future of the Republican Party in Texas might have been taking shape at a smaller rally in a downtown Waco square. Car salesman Duke Machado, 38, of Woodway is an Air Force veteran and a disgusted Republican. Machado and fellow Republican Bert Hernandez, manager of a Waco dealership, are examples of voters the GOP needs. They're business professionals interested in limited government and restricted borders -- but not interested in deporting every illegal immigrant or dividing families. | 05/03/10 11:59:26 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Gulf of Mexico rig disaster strikes hard in Alaska

To Alaskans who were here in 1989, the scene in the Gulf of Mexico looks familiar — the scrambling spill response, the booms, the fishermen, the relentless spread of the oil. The circumstances are not entirely the same, of course. The Exxon Valdez oil spill, North America's worst, was caused by a tanker run aground, not a rig explosion as happened with BP's Deepwater Horizon. | 05/03/10 10:52:16 By -

Commentary: Finally, Archie comic book has gay character

Something has been missing in Riverdale: reality. So Archie Comics is introducing a character in a story titled "Isn't it Bromantic?" for Veronica issue No. 202. Kevin Keller is everything one might expect of the newest transfer student: blond and hunky, with a square jaw reminiscent of Ben Affleck's. This dreamboat, however, is impervious to Veronica's lust. | 05/01/10 14:55:33 By - Ana Veciana Suarez

Commentary: A call to arms in Idaho over health care overhaul?

Idaho governor candidate Rex Rammell doesn't advocate civil war. But if need be, Rammell says he would mobilize Idahoans to take up arms against the federal government. Rammell's comments center on Idaho's lawsuit against federal health care reform. Rammell sides with incumbent GOP Gov, Butch Otter about filing the lawsuit — but he disagrees with Otter's intention to comply, should the lawsuit fail. | 04/30/10 08:50:52 By - Kevin Richert

Commentary: We don't allow easy, legal immigration for Latinos

There would be nothing wrong with demanding that immigrants come to the United States legally if we allowed them to do so. But we don't -- they are coming through the back door to take jobs we offer them, because we don't allow them in through the front door. Legal immigration quotas were set more than 20 years ago, when the U.S. demand for unskilled and highly skilled workers was much smaller than today's. | 04/29/10 12:25:03 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Palin, Beck take a page out of Sharpton's playbook

We're Trading Places. From his Fox News pulpit, Rev. Right (Glenn Beck) begs God to damn America for empowering Barack Hussein Obama. Gal Sharpton (Sarah Palin) travels the country stoking the fears of white Americans telling them their country has been stolen by a mixed-race president. | 04/28/10 07:12:40 By - Jason Whitlock

Commentary: Blackwater 'just doing a job for the government'

In the secretive world of Blackwater Worldwide, nothing is what it seems. The security company's heavily armed employees, for example, were only doing their job — protecting U.S. diplomats — when in 2007 they shot up a Baghdad square, killing 17 civilians. No matter that Iraqi officials called it murder. Now, "just doing a job for the government" is shaping up as a key component in the defense offered by five former Blackwater executives to federal firearms charges. | 04/23/10 14:30:25 By -

Commentary: Here's a reason why tenure is a bad idea

When Charlie Crist vetoed the educational reform bill last week, I thought immediately of George Adamski, who in 1947 became the first American to announce he'd met with space aliens. A friendly bunch — they even gave him some tummy-ache medicine to pass along to the pope — the aliens took Adamski on several tours of the solar system in their spaceship over the next few years. In several books he wrote on the subject, Adamski said he liked the dark side of the moon best, for its thriving cities and snowy peaks. | 04/23/10 12:25:24 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: Pension reform starts from the top

With his time in office running out, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger once again is calling on the Legislature to fix California's costly public pension system. On Wednesday, the Republican governor urged lawmakers to end pension spiking, in which elected officials and high-end government employees switch to higher-paying jobs at the ends of their careers to boost their pensions. | 04/22/10 12:13:52 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Confirming Christopher Schroeder for DOJ OLP

In the coming days, Senate Democrats will seek a floor vote, possibly after invoking cloture, on Christopher Schroeder to be the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy (OLP) in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). | 04/21/10 10:25:20 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: When Tea Party rhetoric goes too far

Nothing seems to come close to her, but then again, when it comes to inflammatory, ridiculous exaggeration, few can top Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann. Speaking to a Washington tea party rally, Bachmann said the Obama administration was "the gangster government." Former President Bill Clinton calmly responded when he heard of those comments. "They are not gangsters," he said. "They were elected. They are not doing anything they were not elected to do." | 04/19/10 14:13:34 By -

Commentary: Does Iraq war resonate with U.S. citizens?

Six years ago, the conventional wisdom was that Ayad Allawi, then prime minister of the appointed Iraqi Interim Government, was a puppet of the United States. Last month, though, the Allawi-led Iraqiya alliance won, by a narrow margin, more parliamentary seats than any other coalition in national elections — and he may become the country's next prime minister. Indeed, as we look back at our years in Iraq, almost all of what once passed for conventional wisdom has been proven wrong. | 04/19/10 11:31:07 By - Victor Davis Hanson

Commentary: Quit whining about taxes

It's the day after April 15 — Tax Day! — and we're all destitute, our pockets picked clean by Uncle Sam. Right? Naw! Quit your whining. It's almost certain you got a tax cut this year. Why? Because the federal stimulus bill that the Tea Partiers hate so much reduced federal income taxes for 98 percent of all working families and individuals, according the Citizens for Tax Justice, a nonpartisan think tank. | 04/16/10 14:32:42 By - James Werrell

Commentary: Cuba is on top of Estefans' agenda with Obama

They have visited with six American presidents. Traveled from China to England to speak to ambassadors and heads of state. Seen the pope. Now Emilio and Gloria Estefan want to share the story of Cuba's 51-year dictatorship with President Barack Obama, put human rights at the top, give the island's 11 million people hope. | 04/15/10 12:18:29 By - Myriam Marquez

Commentary: Gloria, Emilio Estefan strike sour note with Cuban-Americans

If Gloria Estefan decides to sing a tune while hosting President Barack Obama at her home Thursday, she may want to consider her 1989 hit Cuts Both Ways. The Estefans may have broken more than a rule when they decided to host a cocktail reception for the president during his visit to South Florida on Thursday. Estefan, along with husband Emilio, also broke a bond that had united them with Miami's Cuban community, whose members largely oppose the president's agenda. | 04/15/10 11:12:07 By - Jackie Bueno Sousa

Commentary: High court nominees deserve a quick hearing and vote

Justice John Paul Stevens hasn't even retired yet and already there's talk about Senate Republicans filibustering President Barack Obama's next Supreme Court nominee. On Fox News Sunday, Senate Judiciary Committee member Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who became a Democrat last year after 43 years in the GOP, said Stevens should wait because gridlock could cause a Republican filibuster in this election year. Could we back up for just a minute and take a breath? | 04/09/10 15:00:02 By -

Commentary: Augusta National chairman gives a lesson in hypocrisy with Woods remarks

Who knew God made a high horse low enough for Billy Payne to saddle? On the eve of Tiger Woods' return to tournament golf, Payne, the chairman of Augusta National Golf Course, used his annual Masters news conference to add his voice to the throng of self-righteous hypocrites blasting Woods for the golfer's sexual promiscuity. | 04/08/10 15:15:01 By - Jason Whitlock

Commentary: Whitman, Poizner bring fearmongering over immigrants to gubernatorial race

A definition of demagoguery is when a politician knows something isn't really true or fair, but continues to exploit it anyway. So will Republican gubernatorial candidates Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman step up and admit they're misleading California's voters about college students who are also illegal immigrants? | 04/06/10 12:08:59 By -

Commentary: In pursuing terrorists, did Bush administration go too far?

The Bush administration's secret program of wiretapping U.S. citizens in the name of nabbing terrorists offended a lot of people because it bypassed a court system Congress set up for the purpose of overseeing such wiretaps. Even though the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court acts in secret, the administration claimed constitutional authority to spy without going to the court first. | 04/02/10 15:04:43 By -

Commentary: Whitman's millions might be boost California's economy needs

If for nothing else, Meg Whitman deserves a hip-hip-hooray for single-handedly trying to turn around California's failing economy. State election records indicate that she has spent $47 million in her effort to become our next governor — or about $2.70 for each of California's 17 million registered voters. Not to endorse deception, but voters might want to rethink what they're telling pollsters. | 03/30/10 12:29:20 By - Bill McEwen

Commentary: Legal precedents mean health care bill opponents unlikely to win

It's a highly admirable thing, really: Opponents of Obamacare say they are rising to defend liberty. In this case, it's economic liberty. There's no way, they say, that Congress has the power to make people buy something they don't want to buy, like health insurance. Thirteen states, including Texas, have raised that claim as part of a federal lawsuit meant to block implementation of the new health care law so strongly backed by President Barack Obama. | 03/26/10 14:10:49 By - Mike Norman

Commentary: Threats are not free speech

Sunday's passage of health care reform was preceded by many weeks of venomous attacks and wild exaggerations, yet it all seems so tame now in comparison. Since the vote, at least 10 House members have reported death threats, harassment or vandalism at district offices. Such violence and threats of violence are not free speech and political protest. It is intimidation, it is criminal, and it has no place in a democracy like ours. | 03/26/10 11:11:42 By -

Commentary: ACORN had issues before that infamous video

ACORN leaders are blaming orchestrated right-wing attacks for bringing down the 40-year-old liberal activist group. In truth, the organization's self-inflicted injuries had weakened it to the point that a conservative coup de grace — in the form of a surreptitious video featuring the world's unlikeliest pimp and prostitute — was all it took to kill it. | 03/25/10 11:32:37 By -

Commentary: Whitman's campaign is flying first class

A billionaire's wallet is something to behold when it opens wide. Republican billionaire Meg Whitman has attained front-runner status in the race to replace Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger by spending nine times more than her nearest rival on broadcast ads in the first two and half months of this year. | 03/24/10 12:31:41 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Replacing No Child Left Behind

The federal No Child Left Behind education act is dead. President Barack Obama drove a stake through its heart this week. Many people won't miss NCLB, even though it was widely acclaimed when it was passed in 2001 and may have been the shining achievement of President George W. Bush's White House career. It certainly was the greatest show of bipartisanship between Bush and Congress. | 03/19/10 14:16:23 By - Mike Norman

Commentary: Ending Arab-Israeli conflict requires a carrot and stick approach

There are basically four ways that wars end — when one side wins a military victory, when both sides negotiate a peace in good faith and it lasts, when they negotiate in bad faith and it does not, and finally when peace is imposed by outside parties. It seems clear that the first three are unworkable when it comes to bringing about an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is time to try a variation of the last. | 03/18/10 13:18:50 By - Dennis Jett

Commentary: Paranoia over census is over-the-top

Wingnut Nation is always having night sweats about something or other. The latest phony outrage is this nation's decennial head count. Even before the forms appeared in mailboxes this week, some critics called this census overly "intrusive." | 03/17/10 13:57:49 By - Mike Hendricks

Commentary: Another 'reset' to Obama's foreign policy?

Almost every element of Barack Obama's once-heralded new "reset" foreign policy of a year ago has either been reset or likely soon will be. Consider Obama's approach to the 8-year-old war on terror. Plans made more than a year ago to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay by January 2010 have stalled. Despite loud proclamations about trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, in a civilian court in New York, such an absurd pledge will probably never be kept. | 03/16/10 11:11:35 By - Victor Davis Hanson

Commentary: Why Marc Thiessen's wrong about 'al Qaeda 7'

Washington Post op-ed columnist and Republican speech writer Marc Thiessen continues to try to whip up public outrage over the "al Qaeda Seven," his preferred term for Justice Department attorneys who once represented Guantanamo Bay detainees. In his latest Washington Post blog, the former Jesse Helms wordsmith contends the Sixth Amendment rights to the legal protections necessary for a fair trial don't apply to the Gitmo detainees. But Thiessen is arguing perversely and backwards, from a premise rejected by the Supreme Court. | 03/12/10 15:16:08 By - Michael Doyle

Commentary: When a Texas candidate's ethnicity and voter ignorance collide

Hurst, Texas, Republican Lenny Lopez figured he'd get an earful from voters when he ran against a popular Tarrant County justice of the peace. But there was one word he never expected to hear: "Mexican!" Born in Brooklyn to parents from the U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Lopez is as American as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor or — no relation — Jennifer Lopez. | 03/12/10 14:04:12 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Graham vs. Clyburn race would be a tea party tester

What I wouldn't give for a James Clyburn-Lindsey Graham gubernatorial race. They are the two most influential politicians in the state of South Carolina. Their clout would bring excitement to a race so bland most South Carolinians haven't bothered to look up the names of the candidates. The match-up would also provide a major test for the tea party. | 03/12/10 13:48:57 By - Isaac Bailey

Commentary: How much of a politician's private life is our business?

The gentleman frequents gay bars in Sacramento.

The assertion probably wouldn't make news — except that in this case, the gentleman is a conservative state senator whose voting record on gay rights issues has consistently been "no." | 03/09/10 07:16:23 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: GOP fools me with fake census

When it arrived I knew I’d arrived. For years I had dreamed of being considered important enough to be asked to fill out the long form from the Census Bureau. It began when I finally owned a house with more than one bathroom and I wanted to tell someone. | 03/08/10 13:09:40 By - Peter Callaghan

Commentary: California bucks national trend on teen birth rates

California can rightly be proud to be bucking a national trend. Teenage girls here are giving birth in record low numbers. The opposite is true nationally. Governors dating back to Pete Wilson, along with the California Department of Public Health, deserve praise for funding a wide array of programs aimed at combating teen births. California has taken an enlightened approach with programs including abstinence, counseling, contraceptives, and state-funded abortions for unwanted pregnancies. | 03/05/10 12:30:08 By -

Commentary: Rangel should have stepped down sooner

Rep. Charles Rangel of New York finally quit as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee this week, but his resignation was neither honorable nor graceful. | 03/04/10 12:49:45 By -

Commentary: An apology to Canada

My intention in Monday morning's wrap-up column wasn't to offend Canada, the land of my ancestors, and my hosts of the past three weeks. On the contrary, I was trying to express my disappointment and surprise that, in my opinion, Canadians had failed to grasp the global mandate that being an Olympic host entails. In doing so, I reached for a comparison — and picked one in the 1936 Olympics that unintentionally may have offended the very people whose company I have enjoyed for these past days.

I apologize for offending them. | 03/03/10 12:17:09 By - Gil LeBreton

Commentary: Yucca Mountain nuclear waste decision needs broader action

Hats off to the trio of Tri-Citians challenging President Obama's decision to abandon plans for a nuclear waste repository in Nevada. But it's a curious turn of events that has individuals leading the charge against this sudden shift in the nation's nuclear waste policy away from Yucca Mountain. | 03/02/10 11:44:09 By -

A perfect ending for Canada's Games

It was perfect. No one wanted the Warmest Games to end. Warmest weather. Warmest hosts. So it was only fitting that Canada's 2010 Winter Olympics reached a crescendo with the hockey showdown between neighbors and rivals, between inventor of the game and emulator, between Canada and the U.S. It was only fitting that Canada won, 3-2, at home, in the finale, on a shot by its favorite son, causing coast-to-coast mayhem. | 03/01/10 11:51:18 By - Linda Robertson

Commentary: Checking in on Fourth Circuit vacancies

When President Barack Obama was inaugurated, four of fifteen judgeships were open on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Thus, it was critical that the new administration and the 111th Senate promptly fill these vacancies because openings in a quarter of the judicial contingent impede appeals' swift, economical and fair disposition. Thirteen months later, it is fair to ask: How are the chief executive and the Senate doing? The answer is better than they were last autumn but not sufficiently well. | 03/01/10 13:20:05 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: Paid parental leave should be a priority

When it comes to family leave policies, few rich countries are more backward than the United States. A recent study by Harvard and McGill University researchers found that this country placed dead last in providing parental leave and other supportive work conditions when compared to the world's most economically successful countries. | 03/01/10 11:49:43 By - Casey Woods

Commentary: An independent Kosova after two years

Kosova's independence — declared two years ago — is the realization of a nation's yearning and a triumph over brutal repression. We resisted through non-violent means for decades, including from 1989-1998 when I led a government-in-exile as Prime Minister. In only two years since declaring independence, Kosova has demonstrated resolute commitments to democratic processes, the rule of law, and inter-ethnic equality. Kosova's independence is a stabilizing factor for the Western Balkans, and will neither be compromised nor reversed. | 02/24/10 12:56:42 By - Dr. Bujar Bukoshi

Commentary: Against the hijacking of a Cuban martyr

Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a young poor black Cuban worker, died on Tuesday after an 86-day hunger strike to protest the brutality he had endured in prison. Since 2003 he had been a political prisoner in a detention facility deep in Cuba's interior. Zapata was the first black Cuban dissident during Fidel Castro's 50-year regime to surrender his life to protest racial oppression, the denial of civil and human rights, and political disenfranchisement. | 02/24/10 13:59:39 By - Carlos Moore

Commentary: Austin pilot Joe Stack gives the right a headache

Last week, a man flew an airplane into a government building killing and injuring more than a dozen people right here on American soil. So, was it an act of terrorism? One might think that murdering and maiming innocent people just to make a political point is enough to be considered a terrorist, but there is no rush by the left or the right to declare him that. | 02/24/10 12:14:48 By - Dennis Jett

Commentary: Female WWII pilots finally honored for service

On March 10, a Sacramento grandmother of four will share in a Congressional Gold Medal honoring women for flying warplanes a lifetime ago, when women weren't supposed to fly. At 87, Barbara Kennedy is coming to terms with a ceremony scheduled for the majestic rotunda of the U.S Capitol. How can she be a pioneer when she never considered herself one? | 02/24/10 12:22:03 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: Amazon, big oil want to avoid California's taxes

The oil industry is so last century, with its pumps, spills and exhaust. Amazon.com couldn't be more 21st century, with its cool technology that instantly delivers electronic books on sleek devices, at a discount. Images aside, there is not a dime's worth of difference between the two when it comes to taxation. They aggressively fend off any effort to impose taxes on them, and they win. | 02/22/10 12:34:29 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Boxer's Senate career looks like 'Perils of Pauline' lately

Barbara Boxer's 18-year career as a U.S. senator has resembled a "Perils of Pauline" movie serial, for those old enough to remember. Boxer always seems to be on the verge of losing her senatorial seat but, so far at least, has always managed to win another six-year term, thanks either to her pluck (her version), massive rescue efforts by the Democratic Party, and/or the ineptitude of her Republican foes. | 02/17/10 11:58:15 By - Dan Walters

Commentary: U.S. courts have been tough on terror

The political attacks over the Obama administration's handling of terrorism cases owe their persistence to the enduring power of myth over reality. The record clearly shows that civilian courts have been the most effective venue for dealing with these criminals. Almost 200 terrorists have been convicted in federal courts since 9/11, as opposed to only three under military commissions. | 02/16/10 11:59:27 By -