I say "would be" because none of the voluminous reform bills being shuttled around the Capitol on hand trucks even tries to address a central factor that sends costs spiraling out of control, which is that each of us wants the best shot at a long, healthy life that medical science can offer. Just as all politics is local, all health care is personal. Skimping on somebody else's tests and procedures may be worth...]]> Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- Critics of Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to bring the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and four other accused terrorists to New York for trial can't seriously believe the city will have trouble handling the expected "Trial of the Century" hoopla. The critics can't really think a judge is going to give Khalid Sheik Mohammed an open microphone to spew his jihadist views, or fear that a jury -- sitting just blocks from Ground Zero -- will look for reasons to let an accused mass murderer off on some technicality.

Everyone knows that the bloodthirsty blowhard -- whom officials often refer to by his initials, KSM -- is never going to see the light...]]> Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- No force on earth can stop Sarah Palin from becoming our very own "lite" version of Eva Peron -- a glamorous and tragic legend, minus the tragedy. Eventually, some clever composer will write a blockbuster musical about her life and times. Stage directions will include: "SARAH fires gun. MOOSE dies."

It's futile to try to ignore Palin, however noble the effort may be. She's a phenomenon, and it hardly matters that so many people believe she augurs the final dissolution of American politics into a big, frothy bowl of mush. The republic will survive even her.

Anyway, she's unlikely ever to become -- shudder -- commander in chief. A new Washington Post-ABC News...]]> Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- The most dreadful burden of the presidency -- the power to send men and women to die for their country -- seems to weigh heavily on Barack Obama these days. He went to Dover Air Force Base to salute the coffins of fallen troops. He gave a moving speech at the memorial service for victims of last week's killings at Fort Hood. On Veterans Day, after the traditional wreath-laying at Arlington National Cemetery, he took an unscheduled walk among the rows of marble headstones in Section 60, where the dead from our two ongoing wars are buried.

As he decides whether to escalate the war in Afghanistan, Obama should keep these images in mind. Geopolitical calculation has...]]> Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- There's a difference between sensitivity and stupidity. If there were indeed signs that Maj. Nidal Hasan, the alleged Fort Hood mass murderer, was becoming radicalized in his opposition to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army had a duty to act -- before he did.

Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, said Sunday he was concerned that "this increased speculation" about Hasan's evolving political and religious views "could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers." Casey is right to worry about the lunatics and bigots who now will think of all Muslims in the military as potential enemies. But it only feeds such paranoia to ignore alarm bells...]]> Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- Democrats have some thinking to do after Tuesday's elections, but Republicans don't have time to think. They're too busy trying to survive the party's internal purge and avoid being shipped off to political Siberia.

Will loyal members inform on others for harboring suspiciously moderate views? Will anyone judged guilty have to wear a sign saying "Republican In Name Only" as penance? Will there be re-education camps? Will deviationists face the Enhanced Interrogation Technique of being forced to listen to the wit and wisdom of Glenn Beck, at ear-splitting volume, for days on end?

Or worse: When Sarah Palin's memoir, "Going Rogue," hits the bookstores later this...]]> Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- It's been a year since a healthy majority of American voters elected Barack Obama to change the world. Which is precisely what he's doing.

Like many people who desperately want to see the country take a more progressive course, I quibble and quarrel with some of President Obama's actions. I wish he'd been tougher on Wall Street, quicker to close Guantanamo, more willing to investigate Bush-era excesses, bolder in seeking truly universal health care. I wish he could summon more of the rhetorical magic that spoke so compellingly to the better angels of our nature.

But he's a president, not a Hollywood action hero. Most of my frustration is really with the...]]> Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- The opium poppy was introduced to Afghanistan more than 2,300 years ago by the armies of Alexander the Great. His forces were eventually driven out, like those of every would-be conqueror since. The poppy has proved more tenacious.

On Monday, three U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents -- Forrest Leamon, Chad Michael and Michael Weston, all from the Washington area -- were killed in a helicopter crash in western Afghanistan. U.S. officials have released few details about the incident. The Times of London reported that the aircraft was shot down following a raid on the compound of a prominent Afghan drug lord.

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported...]]> Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama didn't set out to be a "war president," but that's what history compels him to be. The nation and the world are fortunate that he doesn't have the reckless, ready-fire-aim mentality of George W. Bush. But Afghanistan doesn't present the kind of "false choices" that Obama, by nature, habitually rejects. The choices are real and awful, and no amount of reframing and rephrasing will make them go away.

Monday's tragic events -- 14 U.S. troops killed in helicopter crashes in Afghanistan -- remind us of the decisions Obama faces. At least he seems to recognize that he can't just let the situation drift.

But it looks as if Obama's inclination is to...]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Slashing executive salaries, bonuses and perks at the seven bailed-out companies that gorged most gluttonously at the public trough is emotionally satisfying, but it shouldn't be. It's like arresting jaywalkers while ignoring the bank robbery that's happening in broad daylight down the block.

Don't get me wrong. The Obama administration's "pay czar," Kenneth Feinberg, is right to put a lid on compensation at the Not-So-Magnificent Seven: Citigroup, Bank of America, General Motors, Chrysler, GMAC, Chrysler Financial, and the unforgettable AIG. Twenty-five of the biggest earners at each of those firms will have their overall pay cut roughly in half, and most of that...]]> Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Now we know the answer to one of the vexing questions of the modern age: Evidently, there is nothing at all that some people won't do to get on television.

As proof: balloon boy.

I realize this is, technically, a nonstory. There was no boy in the UFO-shaped helium balloon whose runaway flight across the skies of Colorado last week riveted the nation. The story of the nonstory, however, is emblematic of our times. It almost seems as if the lust for being on television is in a league with our most basic human needs and desires -- not just food, shelter and clothing but exposure, too.

It took just a few days for authorities to conclude that the...]]> Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Rush Limbaugh, are you ready for some football?

Um, I guess not.

The right-wing radio host's attempt to become part-owner of the St. Louis Rams ended Wednesday when his fellow investors cut him from the squad. Rush got the bum's rush shortly after Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the National Football League, hinted strongly that His Loudness was most unwelcome.

Controversy had focused on Limbaugh's history of incendiary and offensive remarks about race. Striking his patented tone of arrogant, bombastic victimhood, Limbaugh sought to portray his ownership bid as an urgent matter of great historical importance to the nation.

"This is not about...]]> Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Somebody explain this to me: The president of the United States wins the Nobel Peace Prize, and Rush Limbaugh joins with the Taliban in bitterly denouncing the award? Glenn Beck has a conniption fit and demands that the president not accept what may be the world's most prestigious honor? The Republican National Committee issues a statement sarcastically mocking our nation's leader -- elected, you will recall, by a healthy majority -- as unworthy of such recognition?

Why, oh why, do conservatives hate America so?

OK, I know, it's just some conservatives who've been exhibiting what they, in a different context, surely would describe as "Hanoi Jane"...]]> Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- House Democrats had better start taking the ethics allegations against Rep. Charlie Rangel seriously. I know it's difficult for those steeped in Capitol Hill's hermetic culture to understand, but a verdict of "mistakes were made" -- which a lot of Democrats would like to reach -- doesn't cut it in the real world. Strange as it seems. Seriously.

Republicans, I should note, are being baldly hypocritical in calling for Rangel, who has spent four decades in the House, to step down immediately as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee -- a position that makes him one of the most powerful men in Washington. Those same Republicans were happy to keep "Dancing with the...]]> Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 How to proceed in Afghanistan will be among the most difficult and fateful decisions that President Obama ever makes. But he's the one who has to decide, not his generals. The men with the stars on their shoulders -- and I say this with enormous respect for their patriotism and service -- need to shut up and salute.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, is entitled to his opinion about the best way forward. But he has no business conducting a public campaign to build support for his preferred option, which is to send tens of thousands more troops into a country once called the "graveyard of empires."

McChrystal's view -- that a...]]> Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Could it be that the conservative culture warriors who portray Hollywood as a cesspool of moral bankruptcy have been right all along? Not really. But in the case of Roman Polanski, the Puritan scolds definitely have a point.

Even the French government has backed off its defense of the fugitive director. Polanski, who has dual French-Polish citizenship, fled the United States in 1978 before he could be sentenced a charge of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles. He spent the past three decades mostly in France, and officials in Paris reacted angrily when he was nabbed at the Zurich airport. In more recent statements, however, French leaders have taken a...]]> Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Hasn't Roman Polanski suffered enough? Didn't he endure all those cool, gray, rainy Paris winters? Wasn't he forced -- well, not forced, but strongly enticed -- to subsist all those years on overpriced fare served up by haughty waiters in Michelin-starred restaurants? Didn't he survive for decades having his vacation options limited, essentially, to the grim monotony of the South of France?

I've got a better question: Shouldn't Polanski and his many apologists give us a break?

I'm a huge fan of Polanski's work. "Chinatown" is one of my favorite movies of all time, "Rosemary's Baby" is a masterpiece, and he richly deserved the Oscar he won as best director for...]]> Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Pretty much by definition, a man who can be described as a cad is not a wholly admirable human being. There are, however, cads whose behavior shows a certain panache, an undeniable flair, a sense of humor and a genuine, if deeply flawed, humanity. Former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, I would argue, is one of these "lovable rogue" cads.

John Edwards is not. His caddishness, it appears, has no redeeming social or political value. He's just a bad cad.

According to widely published reports, a former close Edwards aide has shopped a book proposal in which he claims that the former presidential candidate is indeed the father of his mistress' 19-month-old daughter --...]]> Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- It's hard to read Gen. Stanley McChrystal's assessment of the Afghanistan War without hearing one of those horror-movie voices that seem to come from everywhere and nowhere, a voice that grows louder and more insistent with every page: "Get out. Get out. Get out."

According to the confidential report prepared for President Obama -- obtained by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post -- the situation in Afghanistan is "deteriorating." The Taliban insurgency is "resilient and growing." Afghans have a "crisis of confidence" in both their own government and the U.S.-led NATO occupation force. The next 12 months will be "decisive," and "failure to gain the initiative and...]]> Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- What I wrote last year about candidate Barack Obama -- that to win he had to be seen as "the least-aggrieved black man in America" -- may be even more relevant now. To lead this diverse and fractious nation effectively, the president has to negotiate racial issues with delicacy, caution and tact. He has to give even his most vocal critics the benefit of the doubt.

But I don't. So I can say in plain language that Jimmy Carter was right in essence, but wrong in degree. It seems clear to me that some -- but not "an overwhelming portion," as Carter claimed -- of the "intensely demonstrated animosity" toward Obama is indeed "based on the fact that he is a black...]]> Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- It's been a year since the financial system collapsed like a botched souffle, and the sense of acute crisis has eased. The wizards of Wall Street are raring to get back to business as usual -- and if we let them, we'll have only ourselves to blame when the next meltdown comes.

The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve get too little credit for skillfully managing this terrible recession in a way that has kept it from turning into an all-out catastrophe. Too-big-to-fail financial institutions were put on life support or eased into oblivion in creative ways that involved massive injections of taxpayer funds -- but prevented massive defaults. The auto industry, a...]]> Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Anyone who watched Wednesday night as President Obama explained his health care reform proposals to Congress saw a chief executive making what sounded like a genuine appeal for bipartisanship -- and his opponents behaving like a bunch of spoiled first-graders. Obama should ignore them, even if they hold their breath until they turn blue.

House Republicans were particularly ostentatious in showing their disrespect not just for Obama but for the office he holds. The outburst by Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina -- who shouted "You lie!" when Obama said his plan would not cover illegal immigrants -- was only the most egregious display of contempt. Rep. Eric Cantor of...]]> Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 One of President Obama's goals in his speech Wednesday night "“ unacknowledged, perhaps, but central "“ must have been to make the intransigient Republican opposition to health-care reform look rude, petty, disingenuous, counterproductive and fundamentally dishonest. My verdict: Mission accomplished, thanks to lots of Republican help.

Obama pointed out how Republicans such as Sens. Orrin Hatch, John McCain and Charles Grassley supported earlier reform measures that expanded health coverage and care. He dealt with all the canards that opponents have thrown in the path of reform. No, it's not a government takeover of health care. No, it's not going to break the...]]> Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- The rule among politicians in Washington used to be that when the provincials become restless, as they are now, the safest thing to do is run to the center. But as this sour and unsettled summer ends, the political center looks like the white line running down the middle of a busy street -- a foolish place to stand, and an excellent place to get run over.

President Obama might want to keep that image in mind, not only as he navigates the health care endgame but also as he charts his way through the rest of his ambitious and promising agenda. He is a master at threading the needle by rejecting what he calls "false choices." But some choices are made of concrete and...]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Torture is a delicate business. The aim is to injure but not incapacitate -- to inflict precisely enough pain and terror to break a subject's will, but no more. To calibrate the proper degree of abuse, the torturer must have an accurate sense of how much agony the subject's mind and body can tolerate.

In the Bush administration's program of "enhanced interrogation," this expertise was provided by doctors and psychologists -- professionals who are supposed to heal and comfort. A new report by Physicians for Human Rights assembles the evidence and reaches a sickening but inescapable conclusion: "Health professionals played central roles in developing, implementing and...]]> Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Los Angeles seemed like a good idea at the time. It was a good idea, actually -- the setting is spectacular and the weather is perfect. No wonder millions of people decide to live there, and it's only logical that some of them would build their homes in the canyon-creased hills that look out across the vast urban basin to the infinite sparkling sea.

But every year, some of those canyons will burn. It's a cycle of destruction and renewal that will inexorably run its course unless humankind intervenes -- which means that intervention is a good idea. That means not just moving heaven and earth to put out the fires that do start, but also doing everything...]]> Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- That the nation is so moved by the passing of Edward Moore Kennedy testifies to his skill, grace and determination at playing a role that must have been infinitely more difficult than it sounds: a prince fated never to be king.

Ted Kennedy was the youngest of nine children in a family whose ruthless patriarch was intent on building an American dynasty. The old man, business titan Joseph Kennedy, was a king. Ted's older brother Jack, the handsome young president, was a king. The other two brothers, Joe and Robert, were slated for the throne but died too soon. Ted made a run for president, but with the air of someone who didn't really believe he was meant to win. He...]]> Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- History's demands can seem inconvenient, unfair or unreasonable. But they can't be ignored. The Obama administration has a legal and moral duty to determine whether crimes were committed in the Bush-era detention and interrogation of "war on terror" prisoners -- and, if so, to prosecute those responsible.

President Obama has made clear that "he thinks that we should be looking forward, not backward," as spokesman Bill Burton said Monday. Obama has taken admirable steps toward assuring the nation and the world that the worst abuses -- waterboarding, indefinite detention, Abu Ghraib -- will not happen again.

Obama's latest move, lodging responsibility for...]]> Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Here's the least surprising news of the week: Americans are souring on the Democratic Party. The wonder is that it's taken so long for public opinion to curdle. There's nothing agreeable about watching a determined attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

A poll released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center reports that just 49 percent of respondents have a favorable view of the Democrats, compared to 62 percent in January and 59 percent in April. This doesn't mean, though, that Americans look any more kindly upon the Republican Party -- favorability for the GOP has been steady at 40 percent throughout the year, according to Pew.

What it does mean,...]]> Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- It's true that politics is the art of the possible, but it's also true that great leaders expand the scope of possibility. Barack Obama took office pledging to be a transformational president. The fate of a government-run public health insurance option will be an early test of his ability to end the way Washington's big-money, special-interest politics suffocates true reform.

Without that option, what Obama now calls "health insurance reform" still would be better than no reform at all, I think. But frankly, it's becoming hard to tell. So many genuine reforms have already been taken off the table -- fully universal coverage, the ability to negotiate prices with the...]]> Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- We're told the economy is on the mend, but we still see six-figure job losses every month. The health care debate has become so polarized that even if it ends in breakthrough legislation, chances are that opponents will still be irate and supporters more exhausted than overjoyed. The deficit is gargantuan, bipartisanship is nonexistent, the prison at Guantanamo is still open and the war in Afghanistan looks like a potential quagmire. The summer has become a bummer.

But anyone sliding into a slough of despond should keep things in perspective. Almost every day, there's some reminder of how far we've come since President Obama's inauguration -- and how much worse...]]> Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Could it be the heat that's making people so angry and unreasonable at those town-hall meetings on health care? Might it just be the effect that Raymond Chandler described so brilliantly in the opening lines of his 1938 short story "Red Wind":

"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen."

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Red-faced retirees are railing...]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- If there's been a more clinically insane political phenomenon in my lifetime than the "birthers," I've missed it. Is this what our national discourse has come to? Sheer paranoid fantasy?

I'm talking about the people who have convinced themselves that Barack Obama was not really born in the United States, and thus is ineligible to be president. Even some commentators who usually are among Obama's most rabid critics have acknowledged that this idea is simply nuts. Yet it persists, out there on the farthest fringes of the right-wing blogosphere. Oh, and also on CNN, which is usually a little closer to reality.

It has been definitively shown that there is not a...]]> Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- If race were the only issue, there would be much less hyperventilation about Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s unpleasant run-in with the criminal justice system. After all, it would hardly be the first time a black man had unjustly been hauled to jail by a white police officer. The debate -- really more of a shouting match -- is also about power and entitlement.

This is a new twist. Since the triumph of the civil rights movement, minorities have been moving up the ladder in politics, business, academia, just about every field. Only in the past decade, however, has a sizable cohort of African-Americans and Latinos broken through to the tiny upper echelons...]]> Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- President Obama's speech Thursday marking the 100th anniversary of the NAACP's founding was widely reported as a "tough love" message directed at black America. "I've noticed that when I talk about personal responsibility in the African-American community, that gets highlighted," Obama said in an interview Friday. "But then the whole other half of the speech, where I talked about government's responsibility ... that somehow doesn't make news."

Fair enough, but he misses the point. The real news wasn't in the content but the visuals: the nation's leading black civil rights organization being addressed by the nation's first black president. Obama could have read...]]> Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- The only real suspense in the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is whether the Republican Party will persist in tying its fortunes to an anachronistic claim of white male exceptionalism and privilege.

Republicans' outrage, both real and feigned, at Sotomayor's musings about how her identity as a "wise Latina" might affect her judicial decisions is based on a flawed assumption: that whiteness and maleness are not themselves facets of a distinct identity. Being white and male is seen instead as a neutral condition, the natural order of things. Any "identity" -- black, brown, female, gay, whatever -- has to be judged against this supposedly...]]> Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- What can you say about a public official who ridicules those who would take the "quitter's way out" -- as she faces reporters to announce that she's quitting? A governor who claims that "the worthless, easy path" would be to serve out the remaining 18 months of her term? An ambitious politician who says that "life is too short" to worry about, you know, boring things such as responsibility or duty?

You can say that all of us who ever took Sarah Palin seriously -- or pretended to take her seriously -- should be deeply ashamed. And you can say that John McCain should publicly apologize for putting the nation he loves at risk by choosing Palin as his running mate....]]> Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Many performers can impress or delight, but only a few can astonish. Michael Jackson did it twice. The first time was October 1969, when the hit single "I Want You Back" introduced a cherubic 11-year-old boy who sang with unbelievable maturity, soulfulness and swing. The second was March 1983, when the prodigy -- now grown tall, thin and angular -- moonwalked through an electrifying "Billie Jean," leaving a national television audience slack-jawed at how effortlessly he defied the laws of physics.

Jackson's personal trajectory, though, was excruciating to watch. I've never put much stock in the idea that genius always devours those whom it favors. Jackson had flaws and weaknesses,...]]> Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- We are blessed to live at a time when violent acts of hatred based on race, ethnicity or religion have become rare, at least in this country. As the act of terrorism committed Wednesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum should remind us, though, rare doesn't mean nonexistent.

James W. von Brunn, the 88-year-old white supremacist who allegedly took a rifle into the museum and killed security guard Stephen Johns, is more than a bitter, demented old man. He is a known figure in the domestic hate industry, a venom-spewing polemicist whose Web site offered readers the chance to download the opening chapters of his racist, anti-Semitic tome for free -- and to buy the...]]> Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- I used to fear that President Obama was overestimating the power of his personal history as an instrument of foreign policy. Now I wonder if he might have been underestimating.

In several interviews during the long presidential campaign, Obama mentioned the potential impact in other countries of seeing an American president with an appearance and a life story like none of his predecessors. He spoke of how the Muslim world especially, addressed by a president who had a Muslim father and who spent years of his childhood in a Muslim country, might be more inclined to believe that the United States is not an enemy of Islam.

But nations tend to act on the basis of...]]> Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- President Obama should be applauded for taking climate change seriously, recognizing that the phenomenon can be traced to the burning of fossil fuels and intensifying the search for viable solutions. In one of its centerpiece initiatives, however, the administration may be digging a very expensive dry hole.

I mean that literally. The plan is to meet ambitious targets for limiting emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse" gases through development and widespread use of an unproven technology known as -- prepare for your eyes to glaze over -- carbon capture and storage. That clunky phrase has a simple meaning: Siphon off the carbon dioxide from the smokestacks...]]> Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- We were a GM family when I was growing up, back when Americans could be roughly divided into clans according to which of the Big Three automakers they patronized. My father was convinced that cars made by General Motors were better than those made by Ford or Chrysler, though he never really explained why. I learned to drive in a 1964 Buick LeSabre that wallowed its way through turns like an ocean liner, offering precious little margin of error to a neophyte behind the wheel. Perhaps to compensate for that failing, the ride was as soft as a pillow.

I guess we're all GM families now. With the company's bankruptcy filing on Monday, we the people have become majority...]]> Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, is a proud and accomplished Latina. This fact apparently drives some prominent Republicans to a state resembling incoherent, sputtering rage.

"White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich ranted Wednesday on Twitter. My first reaction was that politicians above a certain age should never be left alone in the danger-strewn landscape of social networking. My second thought was: Whoa, Newt, what's that about?

Rush Limbaugh also -- predictably -- bellowed endlessly about how Sotomayor was a "reverse...]]> Tue, 26 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Which reality do you inhabit, Obama World or Cheney World? If it's the latter, remember that storm clouds are always gathering. Don't forget your umbrella.

In Obama World, it's always morning. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping and the pollen count is low. In Cheney World, it's perpetual twilight. Somewhere in the distance, a lone wolf howls at the rising moon.

In Obama World, human beings are flawed but essentially decent and rational. Most will behave in a way consistent with enlightened self-interest. In Cheney World, humanity's defects are indelible and irredeemable. Absent evidence to the contrary, evil should be assumed to lurk in every heart....]]> Tue, 12 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Can't we send Dick Cheney back to Wyoming? Shouldn't we chip in and buy him a home where the buffalo roam and there's always room for one more crazy old coot down at the general store?

For the final act of his too-long public career, Cheney seems to have decided to become an Old Faithful of self-serving nonsense. His latest in a series of eruptions came Sunday on "Face the Nation," when he continued to press his revisionist case for torture -- and, for good measure, counseled his beloved Republican Party to marginalize itself even further from public opinion and common sense.

"It's good to go back on the show," Cheney told host Bob Schieffer at the beginning...]]>