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What's on your plate for 2011 matters
“What’s on your plate this year?” caught my attention in the current issue of Oprah Magazine. While the article is about food, it could very well be about what you decide to do in the New Year ahead. Both are important.
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Noble ideals, a shameful history
A man in a small Virginia town once told me about life in his closely-knit community.
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The president and the 'vision thing'
On joyous Inauguration Day 2009, the last thing anyone imagined was that Barack Obama would have trouble with "the vision thing."
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Ebonics is still a hot-button issue
Americans reacted with our usual cool-eyed calm to news that the Drug Enforcement Administration intends to hire Ebonics translators.
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Higher education is no silver bullet
We're No. 12. The United States has dropped from first in the world to 12th in the percentage of young people with college degrees.
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Politics and the 14th Amendment
To hear Senate Republicans, pregnant women around the world can't hop on planes fast enough to get to the United States to give birth. Their babies then become instant American citizens, thanks to the 14th Amendment.
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Soak the rich? Maybe not now
During the 2008 campaign, three little words summarized the Democrats' plan for George W. Bush's expiring tax cuts: Soak the rich.
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All we need is mojo
If we Americans "get our mojo back over the next several months," President Obama said on The View, "then I'm absolutely confident that we are going to be doing terrific."
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Listen, Mr. President: A teachable moment on race
Vilified, then vindicated, Shirley Sherrod did what Americans do in such circumstances. She made the rounds of TV and cable talk shows.
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Fit for ears: Indecent speech, the FCC and the pig
Dear Big Brother, thanks for your help keeping the pig out of the parlor all this time, but we aren't living in 1978 anymore. You're excused.
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Becoming our best selves and our best nation
As a schoolboy, I absorbed the legends of my country, and idolized its heroes. In my reading and my imagination, I explored the wilderness and pioneered civilization with Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett and Kit Carson and Lewis and Clark.
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The Gulf is Obama's Appalachia
Barack Obama was not yet born in 1960 when young John F. Kennedy, campaigning for president in West Virginia, saw hungry children, men without jobs or hope and streets with boarded-up houses.
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'Year of the woman' a label for yesteryear
Commentators are trumpeting a "Year of the Woman!" in politics. Again. This has less to do with the fact that several high-profile women won in last week's primaries than with the news media's penchant for hanging labels on events. Not by chance have scandals since the 1970s been known as a -- gate. It gives the news an easy story line.
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A debate over flowers for Dixie
Ah, Memorial Day--pools, picnics, parades, and everybody gets to weigh in on the Memorial Day controversy.
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Allow scientists to be scientists
To try to keep scientific research free of politicians' whims, the National Science Foundation is an independent government agency, not an arm of the White House. By design, NSF's director has a six-year term that does not coincide with presidential-election years.
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A New York story for the court
Elena Kagan, President Obama's latest choice for the Supreme Court, was the first woman dean of Harvard Law School and first woman solicitor general of the United States. By all accounts, she's smart, good with people, open-minded and a bridge-builder.
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Playing blame game shapes cultural divide
"They always blame America first," Jeane Kirkpatrick, 1984, describing Democrats.
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Money for science, dollars well spent
The phrase "money well spent" is not one we automatically associate with the federal government these days. The national mood is sour, people are angry and there's much to rue about how our tax dollars are spent.
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A Line in the Salt: Is Uncle Sam gearing up for a new battle in Saltville?
As the federal government gears up for a battle over salt, it's worth reviewing what happened the last time the government tried to cut off salt supplies.
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Products of Twitter, no passing fad, are now being recorded for posterity by the Library of Congress Tweeting Into History
My friends who have resisted Twitter, hoping it's just a gnat in the face of communication, got bad news this week.
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Promoting energy independence
On Nov. 7, 1973, amid gas lines and fear that winter heating oil would be scarce, President Richard Nixon declared Project Independence 1980.
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When health-care reform was dying, Madam Speaker found a pulse Pelosi's Big Gavel
"Whenever men screw up, they call on a woman to bail them out."
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Census as American as NASCAR
Every 10 years since 1790, the federal government has counted Americans, and every 10 years some of us wail that the census is a new and nefarious plot to invade our privacy.
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Let grumpy chief justice eat cake
First, President Obama scolded the Supreme Court in his State of the Union Address. Then, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. suggested that the annual address has "degenerated into a political pep rally," and he might stop attending.
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Why no-mail Saturdays should be a dead letter
I'm surprised how easily people embraced the idea of no-mail Saturdays.
Deal of the Day
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