Later doctors told later kings that bleeding was of no medical benefit. The kings did not thunder: "Off with your head. My health care will not be rationed." They said: "Great. I hated that."

But they were not stuck in America's health care debate, where foes of reform greet any effort to curb unnecessary treatments with...]]> Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0800 Amtrak riders passing through New London, Conn., can catch an odd sight in an otherwise picturesque New England setting: a fancy corporate center standing next to a street grid emptied of nearly all its buildings. This used to be the Fort Trumbull neighborhood, a working class enclave that would have been largely forgotten had it not been central to a controversial 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on eminent domain -- the government's right to take private property for public use.

New London had wanted to replace the area's weathered cottages and auto-body shops with a cityscape more amenable to the corporate types at the new Pfizer research park. The city bought some of the...]]> Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0800 Nearly every Republican these days calls for tax cuts and lower deficits, and in the same sentence. Point out that these goals clash -- that taxes pay for government and not paying for government causes deficits, and the Republican counters, "We must shrink government, instead."

Sure. And you're just the boys to do it.

There hasn't been a balanced budget since the last Democratic administration. During the George W. Bush years of mindless tax-cutting, the national debt doubled, and GOP claims to fiscal rectitude became a bizarre joke. The last fig leaf fell off this summer when Republicans demagogued efforts to save over $100 billion by ending subsidies for the private...]]> Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0800 In Las Vegas, house prices have dropped 55 percent since peaking in August 2006, and the foreclosure rate is seven times the national average. Gigantic new condo towers sit nearly empty (real-estate pros call them "see-through buildings"), and unemployment tops 13 percent. The recession has sent casino revenues plunging 20 percent from two years ago.

"Up until the '90s, we never suffered with the downturn of the economy," William Thompson, a professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and an expert on the casino business, told me.

The sad plight of "Sin City" is a morality tale for other municipalities seeking economic salvation through gambling. And it is against this...]]> Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0800 It is the duty of every pundit to be all-knowing on what the recent elections mean for the future of American politics. They may have only three dots to connect -- and two dots may have been state-level contests mostly about local issues -- but the confident ones plot detailed maps of political change.

The "story" out of the recent gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey is that independents are angry at Democrats and voting for Republicans (though the opposite happened in upstate New York's congressional race). True, independents crucial to Obama's win in both Virginia and New Jersey handed victory to Republican candidates. But does that reflect their views on the debates...]]> Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0800 The Tea Party wing of the Republican Party had the perfect strategy for upstate New York's 23rd congressional district:

1. Support a candidate who doesn't live in the district -- in this case, Conservative Douglas Hoffman. Savage the local Republican choice, Dede Scozzafava, and hound her into dropping out.

2. Condemn the local Republicans who had picked the moderate Scozzafava as being "insiders." And have the finger-pointers be Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson. (Guess no one would ever accuse them of being insiders in upstate New York.)

3. Refer to the issues that concern voters in the "North...]]> Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0800 Iranian students are engaging this week in Round Two of their street-level struggle for reform. Round One took place last June, when young people protested the fixed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

About 30 people died in those huge demonstrations. That was a remarkably low number given the brutal tendencies of the hardliners and the in-your-face challenge of the protestors. The old leaders had clearly pulled the choke-leash on their Basij paramilitaries. They understood that they were not dealing with downtrodden masses that they could mow down without enormous consequences.

The maxim "demographics is destiny" helps explain this careful behavior by the side...]]> Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Exactly who made Bernadine Shimon think that she could buy a new house shortly after declaring bankruptcy and losing another home to foreclosure? The American taxpayer, that's who.

Without a Federal Housing Administration willing to guarantee a $125,000-plus mortgage, this Denver-area schoolteacher's recurring "dream of homeownership" could not come to pass. Shimon's down payment was a tiny 3.5 percent.

This single mother is so strapped that she had to cash in her retirement savings to come up with the 3.5 percent. Her case was cited in a New York Times article about, not surprisingly, the sad shape the FHA finds itself in.

Of course, no sane private lender would...]]> Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0700 The public option, we hear, is about to take earthly form. While congressional leaders working to combine five health care reform bills will determine its final shape, a government-run health plan to compete with the private offerings will almost surely become reality. And the specter of a populist uprising against it will haunt centrist Democrats no more.

It's been quite an ordeal. Several Democrats from fairly conservative parts of the country have been held captive by tales of widespread anger against what is merely a sensible means for containing health care costs.

Republicans have filled their heads with ghost stories about the public option. Largely written by the...]]> Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0700 The Ken Burns series "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" got me thinking about one of America's worst ideas, the war on drugs. Particularly ill-conceived is the crusade against marijuana.

That bad idea is now threatening the good idea, as Mexican drug cartels -- hampered by a tighter border -- swarm over large swaths of U.S. public land to grow pot. There they dump toxic chemicals, dam streams, clear natural vegetation and leave piles of trash. Marijuana growers building a campfire set off the recent La Brea fire, which scorched 90,000 acres of Santa Barbara County.

Businesses serving tourists warn visitors against armed drug gangs protecting their crops. Last June,...]]> Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Social Security is a glossy piece of paper on which nearly every politician wants to finger-paint an agenda. But Social Security has no need of ornament. It is a very grown-up program. Put some other toy into the political playpen.

Come January, for the first time since 1975, Social Security payments will not be ratcheted upward for inflation. The reason is simple: no inflation.

But now President Barack Obama is pushing Congress to send every senior a $250 check to compensate for ... for ... for what? For the fact that some Social Security recipients expect a "raise" every year, whether or not it is warranted? They saw a 6 percent hike in their benefits last year. But that...]]> Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0700 The recent award of Nobel Prizes in biology and chemistry to three women dredges up Larry Summers' suggestion in 2005 that differences in the female brain may account for the dearth of top women scientists. Now President Obama's economic adviser, Summers was then speechifying as president of Harvard.

Carol Greider, who just won a Nobel for biology, recalls being astounded by the remark. "I thought he couldn't possibly say that," the Johns Hopkins biologist told me. "I looked up the transcript, and he really said that."

Summers' defenders attacked Nancy Hopkins, the MIT biologist who walked out in protest when he made the controversial statement. Writing in The Harvard...]]> Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0700 I must be the only "foodie" who didn't love "Julie & Julia," the movie about Julia Child and the office worker she inspired, Julie Powell. Am I allowed?

And even though I grow heirloom beans and patronize local cheese makers, I remain dry-eyed over the imminent closing of Gourmet magazine. Put bluntly, I'm fed up with the transformation of the culinary arts into spectacle, spending and sport. For that, Julia Child and Gourmet share some blame.

The Julia Child fan club can back off. I liked her and have spent hours peeling pearl onions per her directions. Every Julia recipe I've done has turned out great. And I commend her for bringing fine cooking into American homes...]]> Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0700 In terms of health coverage, one date separates the most secure Americans from the least secure: a person's 65th birthday. Age 65 is when one qualifies for Medicare, the government insurance program for the elderly and disabled. It's become a source of intergenerational strife -- not so much between the old and young as between the old and the nearly old.

Baby boomers may not welcome their advancing years, but they do see 65 as kicking off one kind of glorious liberation -- freedom from fear of getting sick without good health coverage. Until then, they are the workers most likely to develop medical problems and, therefore, the group private insurers most avoid.

The...]]> Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0700 What you need to know about Michael C. Finton is that he parked a van in front of a federal building in Springfield, Ill., believing it was loaded with explosives. He then twice made cell phone calls that he thought would detonate the bombs.

Finton never made contact with any real al-Qaida operatives, only FBI agents pretending to be such. The creepiest part is that Finton was a fry cook from Decatur whom neighbors called a "nice young man" -- and he seemed to be perfectly willing to kill hundreds in a flamboyant act of terrorism.

The recent arrests of several suspected domestic terrorists remind us that the threat is not entirely the product of a hostile outside world. It...]]> Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:00:00 -0700 "Rome was not built in a day," Montana Democrat Max Baucus said with resignation after the Senate committee he heads voted to reject a "public option." A government-run health plan that would compete with private insurers' offerings, the public option is a means to curb spiraling health care costs.

It's more than a little weird that something designed to ease the burdens of American business and contain federal deficits was opposed by supposedly conservative Republicans and moderate Democrats. Then again, the ruckus over the public option is more about ideology than reality and, in many cases, is merely payback to the medical-industrial complex.

The public option is "a...]]> Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Nearly as unappetizing as the video of ACORN workers explaining how to run a prostitution business, cheat on taxes and import underage streetwalkers from Central America is the presence of Michael Moore's mug on TV screens everywhere.

Having helped throw the 2000 election to George W. Bush -- moderate Democrats had to be punished -- Moore is now promoting his new movie on the evils of capitalism. The bankers he embarrasses on camera should also be thanking him for their best years.

Democrats were elected to fix the health care mess and address other problems that the Republicans ran away from. "Now is the time," as President Obama likes to say, and flare-ups caused by the...]]> Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Every time the economy swoons and the racks groan with the weight of unsold women's clothing, purveyors of fashion talk up "investment dressing." Investment dressing entails buying a few well-constructed garments that will endure both physically and stylistically for several years.

Needless to say, the fashion business hates the concept, but it has no choice when customers are holding fast to their wallets. During the boom years, women's clothing resembled subprime mortgages. They were outrageously designed and not made to last.

Not everyone in the business quite "gets" the point of investment dressing. One of the classic items is the "little black dress" -- a simple black...]]> Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:00:00 -0700 The debate over what kind of health care system we should have often includes the kinds others have. The programs in Canada and France have received special attention, and so those countries' efforts to fix their own programs should be of interest.

No health care system is set in stone. Whatever emerges from Congress will also be a work in progress.

Start with Canada. Under Canada's single-payer system, the government writes all the checks for core medical services. This is socialized insurance, not socialized medicine. Canadian doctors work for themselves.

The quality of health care in Canada is generally high, and people needing urgent care get it immediately. But...]]> Wed, 16 Sep 2009 22:00:00 -0700 "Obama's Speech Doesn't Turn the Tide," reads an ABC News headline about new poll results on public reaction to the president's address on health care reform. An interesting take, given that the tide doesn't need turning.

The ABC/Washington Post poll found the public evenly divided in being for or against the reform proposals, with the support firming. Democrats should find the poll results encouraging, given the lies, half-truths and confusion that reform's foes have sown across America all summer.

Another new, actually amazing, survey just appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine. It found that 73 percent of physicians support a public option -- the government-run...]]> Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:00:00 -0700 President Obama was on Wall Street, calling for a new regulatory regime to prevent a financial panic like the one set off a year ago. "We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess that was at the heart of this crisis," he said.

But there are doubters. Far from the granite canyons of southern Manhattan comes sharp criticism about the plans for new regulations and, not unrelated, who would do the regulating. The skeptics argue that the too-big-to-fail philosophy that saved the hides of CitiGroup, Bank of America and AIG remains in force and will make another meltdown inevitable.

The president of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, Thomas Hoenig,...]]> Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:00:00 -0700 In their tireless efforts to kill health care reform, right-wingers have fanned fears that it would attract illegal aliens. This sideshow is rather twisted because, actually, the reforms would do the opposite. They would help curb illegal immigration.

Start with Canada to see how this works. Canadians have universal coverage, a big immigration program and almost no undocumented workers. These things are not unrelated. Government-guaranteed medical care is a big reason why Canada doesn't tolerate illegal immigration. No country can long afford a large subclass of poor workers that pays little in taxes and collects full benefits.

To quote conservative economist Milton...]]> Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:00:00 -0700 America will soon mark the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The replays of burning buildings and piercing screams will bring back jagged memories of that horrific day.

This would be a useful time for U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to rethink his decision to go back over cases of CIA prisoner abuse -- and consider the political damage it will cause Democrats and their agenda. Unfortunately, Holder seems determined to grandstand on a piece of history that is troubling but over.

He's already put former Vice President Dick Cheney back on the airwaves. Cheney is again defending "enhanced interrogation techniques," asserting that they helped prevent...]]> Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Many astounding details surround the story of the California rapist who kidnapped an 11-year-old and kept her captive for 18 years. None shocks more than the raw fact that Phillip Garrido was not locked up, the key lost.

In 1976, Garrido abducted and raped 25-year-old Katherine Callaway Hall. Thirty-three years earlier, Garrido had abducted and raped 25-year-old Katherine Callaway Hall. The woman says she was taken to a warehouse where Garrido trapped her for eight hours among carpeting apparently arranged to hold a sex prisoner. By luck, a passing police officer saw something amiss at the warehouse and entered. The terrified Hall ran out naked.

Garrido was sentenced to 50...]]> Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Flip the calendar pages -- as they do in the old movies to show passage of time -- and stop at Nov. 2, 2010. That will be Election Day. How Congress handles health care reform will influence which party gets to party that night.

Democrats should remember that this is the only poll that really counts. The current mood swings on medical reform reflect the public's confusion, exposure to lies and genuine questions about what the final legislation will look like.

By Nov. 2, 2010, the reform, or lack thereof, will be clear to everyone. And the lies about how certain changes would play out will have been rendered toothless. That's why Democrats should forge ahead and do what they...]]> Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0700 They called him "The Liberal Lion." Ted Kennedy deserved that title, though with some asterisks added. There's no reconciling Kennedy worshippers with the Kennedy haters. But those who can deal with shades of gray will pay tribute to the legendary Massachusetts senator who championed landmark legislation through bipartisan cooperation -- but whose sense of family privilege didn't always serve the interests of democracy.

No one can deny Kennedy's contributions. He pushed through the Civil Rights Act, Freedom of Information Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Through his odd-couple relationship with Utah conservative Sen. Orrin Hatch, Kennedy helped win major AIDS...]]> Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0700 In the beginning, "Jon & Kate Plus 8" had a sweet charm. The little ones would scamper and shout toddler things, as their harried parents tried to keep order.

This was Americana for the 21st century. Fertility treatments let Jon and Kate Gosselin have a set of twins, then sextuplets. And reality television gave the rest of us a kitchen-eye-view of a very chaotic family in Wernersville, Penn. The show became a huge hit for the TLC cable network.

Now that Jon and Kate Gosselin have split up, we must question whether a family undergoing divorce should be subject to such detailed public scrutiny -- but also whether these cameras ever should have been put in the faces of...]]> Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Early on as New York mayor, Ed Koch went to battle against entrenched interests that were bankrupting the city. The yelling and screaming was such that reporters asked him whether he was interested in having a second term. Koch responded that he didn't care about a second term, which was why he was going to have one. And he did.

Democrats should remember that as they go it alone on health care reform. It should be obvious by now that Republicans are bent on sabotage.

The last straw was Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley's giving credence to the "death panel" nonsense. (Grassley was supposed to be one of the reasonable Republican negotiators.) Party leaders just shot down the idea of...]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0700 "Death panels"? I'll tell you about death panels. My husband faced one some years ago, and it didn't involve any government bureaucrat. It was run by our private insurer, the sort of corporate entity that foes of health care reform say will give you anything you want.

My husband was diagnosed with liver cancer. We were "insured" by United Healthcare. The deal was as follows: You had to use doctors on its list, but if you needed specialized care outside the network, United's health-maintenance organization would pay for it. Fair enough.

A liver expert within the network said point blank that for my husband's case, there was but one place to go, a specialized chemotherapy...]]> Wed, 12 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Craig Anthony Miller earned brief fame by screaming something about the Constitution in the face of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter. A woman followed with the same scripted rant. The subject of the meeting in Lebanon, Pa., was to be health care, and the goal of the organized mobs was to disrupt it.

A Republican-turned-Democrat, Specter is not universally beloved in either party. But there he stood, straight-backed and square-jawed, before all the hollering. He even tried to respond to the shreds of coherence detectable in the attacks. Specter looked good.

Lazy pundits have portrayed such scenes at this month's town hall meetings as evidence of a growing army of opposition...]]> Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Let's talk about greedy geezers. The term displeases me because I find the vast majority of older people to be wonderfully generous and concerned for others. But there's a noisy minority of elders who spend all day obsessing over what they're owed and resenting any government program that's not about them. They are greedy geezers.

A woman in her 70s called to complain that the "cash for clunkers" program does not offer a special deal for seniors. She was incensed that her car has gas mileage that is too good to qualify for the rebate. "Why don't they do something to help the seniors get the cars?" she asked angrily.

An older man griped that people over 65, even if they had...]]> Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0700 In an entertaining but silly political game, partisans score points by comparing statistics of so-called red states and blue states. Conservative Ross Douthat does that in a recent column, "Blue-State Blues." Aroused, liberals came back with their own numbers, many of which did not prove much, either.

Douthat holds that conservative red states have managed their economies better than liberal blue states. His evidence: Of the eight states with unemployment rates 11 percent or higher in June, seven voted for Barack Obama last November.

Brother. First off, what makes them blue states? Of the more than 4 million votes cast in North Carolina, Obama received only 14,177 more than...]]> Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0700 This is what I told my friend Frank: Under the "cash for clunkers" program, you could get more money for your '93 Mercury Grand Marquis than it was worth -- up to $4,500 if you used it to buy a new vehicle with much better gas mileage.

"What would they do with the Merc?" Frank asked.

"Throw it in the hopper," I responded.

"You mean, destroy it?"

"Yeah."

No way. The big red Marquis was his steed -- swift as Secretariat, companionable as Mr. Ed. Would Roy Rogers let Trigger be ground into hamburger?

But when Frank saw how quickly others grabbed the deal -- the $1 billion Congress allocated for the program was used up in a week -- he thought again....]]> Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Some attacks on health care reform are so ludicrous that you don't think they need answering. A recent example invokes an evil plot to save money by knocking off the elderly. Though nuts, the charges have gotten so much attention that someone has to actually say, "No, they're not killing Grandma."

The fake claim is being peddled by "conservatives" who condemn both spiraling Medicare costs and any effort to contain them. Their goal is to stop proposed health care reform by spooking beneficiaries and those approaching retirement.

I'll tell you what ought to really scare the elderly and the soon-to-be: the prospect that health care reform could fail. More on that...]]> Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:00:00 -0700 The popular TV series "Weeds" is about a widowed suburban mother who deals pot to preserve her family's cushy California dream. Not a few Californians would like to see the theme writ large for their state.
California has legalized medical marijuana, its cannabis crop is valued at $17 billion a year, and people there smoke pot openly. But the state can't collect a penny of revenues from the enormous enterprise.

As California faced budget Armageddon, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for "a debate" on the potential of tapping marijuana as a source of tax revenues. That's all he can do, because federal law still criminalizes marijuana use.

Harvard economist Jeffrey...]]> Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:00:00 -0700 It's high noon on health care reform. Time to identify the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Let's start with the Bad: Obama's passive leadership. The president didn't want to come down from the mount with stone tablets detailing what reform would look like. That's what Hillary Clinton did 16 years ago and is said to have sunk her plan. The alpha-dog approach angered both the economic interests and lawmakers.

But Obama still could have offered more detailed guidelines that chose which interests to disappoint and that the public could understand. Legislators would have then had something to work with.

The president's hesitancy only empowered the lobbyists. Not knowing what...]]> Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:00:00 -0700 "Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008," read the headline in Mother Jones magazine. You can imagine the snark that followed.

It takes no special aim to make fun of culinary obsessions over artisan goat cheeses and organic baby squashes -- though you wonder why fixations on baseball statistics and iPhone apps are not similarly mocked. In America, a fascination with food is still regarded as an effete indulgence.

But writer Paul Roberts has set up the "alternative food crowd" mainly as a straw-man army against which he scores easy political points:  True, the organic movement has created some environmental contradictions.
True, the models pushed by "activist...]]> Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Back when the boomers were babes, the girls would strut and preen around a stylish health food restaurant in Manhattan. No one took much note of a 70ish woman in comfy shoes who would sit quietly along the wall at lunch. She was Greta Garbo.

Garbo famously enjoyed her privacy and accepted her place in cinematic history as a young beauty. She was no Norma Desmond, the demented silent-movie star clawing for a comeback in the 1950 film noir classic "Sunset Boulevard." Still, you'd think that simply being a regular would have afforded Garbo more attention at a restaurant.

This story came to mind on reading baby boom actress Geena Davis' interview with The Daily Beast Website....]]> Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:00:00 -0700 One of America's toughest problems is being solved right before our unseeing eyes. As Mark Sanford strayed, Michael Jackson departed and Sarah Palin quit, the Obama administration was quietly putting law, order and the national interest back into our immigration system.

New York Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer says he will offer a comprehensive immigration bill by Labor Day. But don't look there. Look at the administration's ongoing program to confront employers of illegal immigrants in a low-key way.

So far this year, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency has audited the hiring records of over 650 companies suspected of using illegal labor and moved against the...]]> Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Some years ago, I shared cocktails along San Antonio's River Walk with Richard Estrada, the legendary columnist for The Dallas Morning News. Estrada would trace the nuances of the Mexican-American experience while framing it in the long sweep of American history.

I recall saying that U.S.-born Latinos didn't seem so much a racial minority to me as just another ethnic group. He responded with a definitive "yes."

Estrada died in 1999, and I try to imagine his take on the New Haven firefighters' case -- mainly the matter of Ben Vargas, the firefighter of Puerto Rican heritage who joined 17 white firefighters in suing the city. They opposed New Haven's decision to discard a...]]> Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Why are cities growing faster than the rest of the country?

That's happening and reverses a decade-long trend, according to new U.S. Census figures. Gainers in 2008 included such diverse locations as Chicago, Los Angeles, Columbus, Ohio, and Lincoln, Neb. The Census found that cities losing people, such as Cleveland, were shrinking at a slower rate.

(With an 8.2 percent increase in people, New Orleans was the fastest-growing city but is of course a special case. Its current population of 312,000 people remains 173,000 belong the pre-Hurricane Katrina level.)

Will this development last? There are two explanations for it. One would suggest a continuation, the other...]]> Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Americans agree on health care. Ask them, "Who should pay for it," and they all answer, "Not me." But follow up with, "Who, then?" and you have a fight on your hands.

Wal-Mart has greatly improved the quality of the conversation with its newfound support for requiring employers to help pay for their workers' health coverage. Its bombshell statement astounded the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Retail Federation.

Five years ago, Wal-Mart led the "not-me coalition." The name of the game was ensuring that most of its employees' health-care costs landed on other shoulders.

Georgia complained that Wal-Mart had sent 10,000 of its workers' children into the state...]]> Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:00:00 -0700 An open-minded individual, I am willing to support an adulterer for elective office. But my ability to look past marital infidelity depends on how much humiliation was heaped on the wife. The details matter.

And measuring their importance is hard to do. The unfaithful rarely conduct their affairs in a clean, compartmentalized matter.

For a wife, having a husband actually fall in love with a mistress must be the worst. When he chatters at length about his passion for the other woman, the pain can be excruciating. By this measure, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's crime is grave, exceeded only by that of former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Not only did Giuliani sing the...]]> Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:00:00 -0700 An 11th Commandment could read: Thou shalt not cheat the meek. Morality is reason alone for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency to shield the little guys from the lending barracudas -- as well as from their own bad decisions (some of them, anyway).

There's also the matter of how these toxic loans were laundered into debt-linked securities sold around the world. Such risky vehicles brought the world to the brink of financial Armageddon.

A well-designed consumer-oriented agency would tame the tricky subprime mortgages and loans with exploding interest rates. Like St. Patrick, it could drive the snakes out of the fine print. Products would be regulated and some practices...]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:00:00 -0700 President Obama has a green light and open eight-lane highway for health-care reform. But somehow the guy can't put his foot on the gas. He hedges in neutral while some fellow Democrats muck up policy and Republicans demagogue them into mush.

A commanding 85 percent of Americans want "fundamental changes" in American health care, according to a recent New York Times-CBS News poll.

On the allegedly controversial "public option" -- a government-run plan that would compete with private insurers -- 72 percent are in favor. And that includes half of self-identified Republicans.

What is Obama afraid of? He apparently dreads repeating the mistakes of the Clinton health...]]>