Now the president and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates are desperately trying to jerk the spotlight away from a dysfunctional Afghan decision-making process in which chaos has preceded choice, complicating every possible...]]> Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- Eric Holder -- distinguished prosecutor, judge, foe of public corruption, basketball enthusiast, mentor to disadvantaged youth -- seemed a reassuring choice for attorney general. When Holder affirmed during his confirmation hearing that America remains at war with terrorists, Sen. Lindsey Graham enthused, "I'm almost ready to vote for you right now."

So how did Holder become the most destructive member of Barack Obama's Cabinet?

Holder launched his tenure by showing disdain for the work of career federal prosecutors when it fit his ideological predispositions. In 2004, a task force from the Eastern District of Virginia investigated allegations of misconduct...]]> Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- The genocide in Darfur is no longer a trendy, breathless global cause. But the women of Darfur haven't gotten the message.

On May 15, a woman near the Al Hamadiya Camp in Zalingei was collecting firewood. Three armed men in khaki uniforms raped her, stabbed her in the leg, inflicted genital injuries and left her bleeding. She spent 45 days in the hospital. In 2003, the same woman had been raped and shot while fleeing her village.

Her story is contained in a recent, exhaustive, chilling report on Sudan, written by a panel of experts at the United Nations. A U.N. official told me, "We have not talked to a single woman (in Darfur) who has not stated that sexual...]]> Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- The decision on President Obama's Afghanistan strategy -- expected during the next few weeks -- finally seems close. After a process attacked as dithering and praised as deliberative, all the serious options appear to include a larger American commitment.

America's best military minds have argued that rescuing the situation in Afghanistan requires a decisive shift in strategy and an increase in resources. The Afghan population needs more protection, which would make local leaders more secure and cooperative, which would produce more actionable intelligence. It is the virtuous cycle that succeeded in Iraq. But, as in Iraq, it requires more troops.

The size of...]]> Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- During long campaign swings in Virginia's recent gubernatorial campaign, Bob McDonnell's staff would count the cars that sported both Obama and McDonnell bumper stickers. These ideologically confused motorists turned out to be an important demographic. On Election Day, according to exit polls, about one in 10 voters who supported Barack Obama in 2008 said they voted for McDonnell, the Republican.

Cable television debates offer a choice between extremes. Competitive statewide elections are a fight for the middle. This is the contest Republicans won on Tuesday.

Given the breadth of Obama's victory a year ago, Republicans had no choice but to seek the support of...]]> Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- As I was talking recently with the founder of a large American corporation, the conversation turned (inevitably) to health care reform. His employees in their 20s, on average, cost the company about $1,500 a year in health bills. Those in their 50s cost at least 10 times more. The effect of proposed health care reform -- which limits the ability of insurers to charge higher premiums for older adults -- would be, he said, a large shift of America's health care burden to the younger generation.

This is not an unintended consequence of reform; it is the whole purpose. It is not a side effect; it is the main funding mechanism.

Precisely because younger people have...]]> Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- R. Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate for Virginia governor, seems poised to lose the jewel in President Obama's political crown.

In November 2008, Obama was the first Democrat since Lyndon Johnson to win the electoral votes of the Commonwealth. Obama's victory was a case study in how he might transform American politics, building an alliance of new voters and suburban Southerners to defeat Republicans at the heart of their power.

A year later, the Virginia governor's race displays a Democratic promise gone crusty and stale. The Republican candidate, Bob McDonnell, threatens to turn a lead into a rout. Democratic leaders, getting a head start on...]]> Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- There have been various attempts over the decades to bury moral philosophy -- to dismiss convictions about right and wrong as cultural prejudices, or secretions of the brain, or matters so personal they shouldn't even affect our private lives.

But moral questions always return, as puzzles and as tragedies. Would we push a hefty man onto a railroad track to save the lives of five others? Should Petty Officer 1st Class Marcus Luttrell, in June of 2005, have executed a group of Afghan goatherds who, having stumbled on his position, might inform the enemy about his unit? (Luttrell let them go, the Taliban attacked, and three of his comrades died.)

These examples...]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Sheik Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, possesses a wonderfully exotic title, a scholarly manner and the unique burden of issuing about 5,000 fatwas a week -- the judicial rulings that help guide the lives of the Muslim faithful. On a recent visit to the United States, he explained to me the process of "resolving issues of modern life." And modern life offers Gomaa and his team of subordinate muftis plenty of fodder for resolution, from the permissibility of organ transplants, to sports gambling, to smoking during Ramadan, to female judges, to the use of weapons of mass destruction, to mobile phone transmitters on the top of minarets.

This is perhaps the...]]> Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- There are 18 states, as columnist Mark Shields recently pointed out to me, that have gone Democratic in each of the last five presidential elections. Of the 36 senators who represent those states, only two are Republicans. Both are from Maine, one of the last, storm-lashed, surf-pounded footholds of the Yankee GOP. So it is hardly shocking that the lone Republican supporter of Democratic health reform on the Senate Finance Committee should be Maine's Olympia Snowe.

Snowe has taken a beating in the conservative media as part of the "turncoat caucus" and for being a RINO -- Republican in Name Only. But such criticism fails to take a syllogism into account. The GOP...]]> Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- When you are Bill Gates -- directing a foundation with assets larger than the GDP of 104 countries -- your enthusiasms get amplified on a global scale. Six or seven years ago, Gates read a book by Gordon Conway, "The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the Twenty-First Century," which argued for a second green revolution, this time in Africa. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has since devoted several hundred million dollars to this cause. It is now on the policy agenda of the president, the secretary of state and the G-20, which recently pledged $22 billion to help poor farmers increase their productivity.

During a recent conversation, Gates described...]]> Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's Nobel Prize for climate change -- the Nobel committee credited him with "creating a new climate" -- was useful in at least one way. It exposed the truest of the true believers -- those who believe that the tonic of Obama's presence deserves the Nobel Prize for medicine, that his magnetism merits the Nobel Prize for physics, that his charisma demands the Nobel Prize for personal chemistry.

Even Obama could not claim that he personally deserved the award. "I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments," he said -- which was simple realism, not false humility. Those who credit Obama's nine undistinguished months for this honor...]]> Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Creigh Deeds, the Democrat running for governor of Virginia, may not be much of a candidate, but he has a future as a political commentator. During a recent interview, Deeds explained his trouble gaining political traction: "Frankly, a lot of what's going on in Washington has made it very tough. We had a very tough August because people were just uncomfortable with the spending; they were uncomfortable with a lot of what was going on, a lot of the noise that was coming out of Washington, D.C."

Some of this is blame-shifting. Deeds has made plenty of mistakes that can't be attributed to the national political environment, including a tendency to make policy proposals...]]> Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Mel Martinez's recent resignation from the United States Senate was for personal and family reasons. But the departure of the Republican Party's most visible Hispanic leader crackles with political symbolism.

Martinez does not consider himself disillusioned, but he is "frustrated." "There are lots of Hispanics to the right of you and me on immigration," he told me, "but they think, 'Republicans just don't like us.'" Martinez makes clear that a number of his Senate colleagues were "conservative, but not inflammatory." Other elected Republicans, however, made "pretty divisive use of immigration policy. It is more a matter of tone, of how you talk about immigrants. It...]]> Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- On June 7, 1981, Israeli F-15s and F-16s took off for the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq, after the pilots were emotionally briefed that "The alternative is our destruction." In fact, Prime Minister Menachem Begin had no idea if the raid would stop the Iraqi nuclear program or merely slow it. But slowing it was reason enough.

Since the George W. Bush administration, the American military has assessed that an attack against Iran's nuclear facilities would only delay the development of its program. "The reality is," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said recently, "there is no military option that does anything more than buy time. The estimates are one to three years or...]]> Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- As President Obama approaches a decision on the way forward in Afghanistan -- the most historically consequential choice of his presidency so far -- military leaders seem impressed with his decision-making process. During the next few weeks, Obama has scheduled considerable time to be personally involved in discussions. In the White House economy, presidential attention is the most valued commodity -- coveted, hoarded and stolen. Obama's engaged, deliberate style has fans in the military.

But there are also risks when arguments about military strategy are too public for too long. An enemy can try to influence the outcome of a debate with attacks and propaganda....]]> Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 I've refrained from commenting on President Obama's address to the United Nations General Assembly because the speech made me angry. And most postings -- or letters, or e-mails -- written while angry are better discarded or deleted. But this address grows more disturbing on further reading. Some major presidential speeches deserve to be remembered, quoted and celebrated. Some deserve to be forgotten. A few deserve to be remembered and criticized, because they dishonor the history of presidential rhetoric.

Obama's rhetorical method in international contexts -- given supreme expression at the United Nations this week -- is a moral dialectic. The thesis: pre-Obama America is a...]]> Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- The transformation of Germany in the 1920s and '30s from the nation of Goethe to the nation of Goebbels is a specter that haunts, or should haunt, every nation.

The triumph of Nazi propaganda in this period is the subject of a remarkable exhibit at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (where I serve on the governing board). Germany in the 1920s was a land of broad literacy and diverse politics, boasting 146 daily newspapers in Berlin alone. Yet in the course of a few years, a fringe party was able to define a national community by scapegoating internal enemies, elevate a single, Messianic leader, and keep the public docile with hatred while the state committed...]]> Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Two Octobers ago, the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal, one of America's highest civilian honors, in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Speaker Nancy Pelosi talked of a "special relationship between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the United States." Said Sen. Mitch McConnell: "We have reached out in solidarity to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people, and the Chinese government needs to know that we will continue to do so." President George W. Bush urged Chinese leaders "to welcome the Dalai Lama to China. They will find this good man to be a man of peace and reconciliation."

This October, on a scheduled visit to the United States, the Dalai Lama will...]]> Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 CHICAGO -- The streets of West Garfield Park provide a distant vista of the Sears Tower and closer views of corner drug dealers, abandoned buildings still defended by barbed wire and trash pickers pushing shopping carts on their slow rounds. It is a place, in T.S. Eliot's image, of "rats' feet over broken glass." It is also one of the two or three Chicago neighborhoods receiving the most ex-offenders back from prison. Their welcome is uncertain, but their success is essential.

America's incarceration rate -- massively higher than other democracies and the highest in our history -- has been arguably effective in reducing crime. It also means that about 650,000 men and women return...]]> Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- There is a segment of society for whom traditional family values are increasingly irrelevant, and for whom spring-break sexual liberationism is increasingly costly: men and women in their 20s.

This is the period of life in which society's most important social commitments take shape -- commitments that produce stability, happiness and children. But the facts of life for twentysomethings are challenging. Puberty -- mainly because of improved health -- comes steadily sooner. Sexual activity kicks off earlier. But the average age at which people marry has grown later; it is now about 26 for females, 28 for males.

This opens a hormone-filled gap -- a decade and...]]> Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- In 1950, Lionel Trilling could write, "In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition." In 1980, as the Reagan revolution was starting, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan concluded, "Of a sudden, the GOP has become the party of ideas."

Where now is the intellectual center of gravity -- the thrill of innovation, the ideological momentum -- in American politics? Not in the party of Obama.

This failure of imagination was on full display during Barack Obama's address to Congress. In a moment that demanded new policy to cut an ideological knot, or at least new arguments to restart the public debate, Obama...]]> Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- President Jimmy Carter once sent a note to an adviser extolling the importance of crisis to leadership. "When a president has authority to act unilaterally (as in a crisis), his leadership can be exerted. Otherwise, compromise, delay and confusion are more likely. It's our system. I like it."

Politicians, like the rest of us, are often victims of their wishes. Carter was eventually smacked by the waves of crisis he sought to ride.

But encouraging a sense of crisis is a traditional tool of executive leadership. And using a joint session of Congress to address a single domestic issue is the most dramatic expression of this approach.

Carter did it...]]> Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- We are seeing the stirrings of a cross-ideological revolt against American military involvement in Afghanistan.

On the right, some who accepted the Cold War as a great moral cause view the war on terror as a bother -- even as a dangerous excuse for global social engineering. Such tinkering, the argument goes, is particularly doomed in Afghanistan, brimming with warlords both primitive and invincible. And because Afghanistan is now Barack Obama's war, no partisan motive remains to support it.

On the left, some view every conceivable war as a "war of choice" that should never be chosen. With Iraq miraculously unscathed by the attentions of the anti-war movement...]]> Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- The incompetence of President Obama's health care reform effort is undeniable, and unexpected.

A supremely competent candidate and campaign usually indicate a talent for governing and communications. But on central issues such as the public option and financing methods, the Obama team has been wavering and contradictory. The president's summer recess legislative deadline was hasty and unserious. (As Mississippi Republican Gov. Haley Barbour points out, Obama spent more time picking out the White House dog than he permitted for comprehensive health reform.) Obama allowed the House to lead with a bill that is ruinously expensive, financed by a massive accounting trick...]]> Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- The late-night hotel desk clerk in Salem, Va., -- after my long drive from Washington down the Shenandoah Valley -- wanted to talk political philosophy. He intended to support Republican Bob McDonnell for governor in November on Madisonian grounds. "I vote both parties, but I don't want anyone having all the control." Obama, in his view, needed to be checked and balanced.

This is the durable tendency of Virginia politics. Since 1977, the political party that has won the presidency has, in every case, lost the Virginia governorship in the next election. This pattern of cussedness is holding, at least for the moment. McDonnell, Virginia's former attorney general, is...]]> Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- At first it seemed plausible that President Obama had a communications problem on health care -- to which the solution was always more and more Obama. But exposure did not translate into persuasion.

Then it seemed useful to diagnose a partisan problem, blaming a small minority of congressional obstructionists and town hall crazies for frustrating the will of the majority -- until polls showed a majority opposing Democratic approaches to health reform. More Americans (according to a recent Washington Post poll) now think that health quality, costs and their own insurance coverage will get worse under Obamacare than believe these things will improve.

In fact,...]]> Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- This week, as the health care reform debate reached new levels of divisiveness, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that America's health system is achieving wonders of longevity. Due to falling mortality in nearly every cause of death, a child born in 2006 is likely to live almost 78 years. This still lags behind some other countries that lack the cultural tradition of the chicken-fried steak. But American life expectancy in 1959 was 70 years. In 1909, it was only 51.

We have technology to thank for much of this gain. But somehow it is difficult to be simply grateful. The same technology that has extended our lives has also complicated them. It...]]> Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- During live television coverage of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, novelist Gore Vidal famously called William F. Buckley a " crypto-Nazi." To which Buckley famously replied (in addition to other choice words), "Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered."

Buckley later apologized. He also explained: "Can such men understand the causes of anger in others? Understand the special reverence we need to feel for that which is hateful? I do not believe that anyone thought me a Nazi because Vidal called me one, but I do believe that everyone who heard him call me one without a sense of shock, without experiencing...]]> Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Eunice Kennedy Shriver was a civil rights hero, and unique even in that select company. Most civil rights revolutions are made by rhetoric and law -- ignited by protest, summarized in memorable speeches and confirmed at bill signings. In founding the Special Olympics, Shriver led a revolution of sport and competition that forever changed the way Americans view people with intellectual disabilities, and the way that many of the intellectually disabled view themselves. It was America's most joyful civil rights movement -- a revolution of play.

Half a century ago, as she began her activism, images of the mentally retarded (as they were then called) were anything but...]]> Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama's political honeymoon is now over.

It was steamy and nice while it lasted. The 44th president was elected as a voice of reason transcending stale ideological debates and a symbol of unity in a nation long afflicted by bigotry. He seemed, on brief public acquaintance, to be pragmatic, positive, steady, moderate and thoughtful. In the months following his election, Obama expanded his support well beyond the coalition that had voted for him in November, attracting many seniors and white men -- working-class and college-educated -- who had supported John McCain.

But, as Ron Brownstein argued last week on NationalJournal.com, recent polls have revealed...]]> Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- The RV arrived at a corner near Marvin Gaye Park, also known to locals as "Needle Park." A steady procession of addicts came to the door, mounted a few steps and sat down. One by one, they dropped used needles into a container and received new needles in return, along with alcohol wipes and the small, bottle cap-like "cookers" in which heroin is heated.

Reggie Jackson, Teefari Mallory and Hazel Smith -- staff members at PreventionWorks!, Washington's largest needle exchange program -- are at the park twice a week, offering clean needles to prevent disease transmission, condoms, drug treatment referrals, AIDS testing and a few kind words. "You still play the guitar?"...]]> Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- In the venerable tradition of summer, my wife and I sent our two children -- a tween and a young teen -- off to camp last week. Both boys had butterflies, evidenced by their distracted silence in the car to the airport and the pained, nervous wave from beyond security. But this year there were no tears.

At camp, they gain many pointless, essential experiences -- of unfiltered starlight, and outdoor showers, and musty cabins, and spiders in odd corners, and the morning mist off a lake, and belligerent mosquitoes (my youngest claims to have once counted 40 bites), and sweltering evenings when sleep comes hard, and the glorious, eye-watering pleasure of watching a...]]> Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration lacks a foreign policy ideology as a matter of ideology. Speaking recently at the Council on Foreign Relations, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted, "rigid ideologies and old formulas don't apply." The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- tempered by pragmatism, proud of its ad hockery and willing to consider everything on a case-by-case basis.

But even lacking an ideology, the administration does have a doctrine. The defining principle of President Obama's foreign policy is engagement with America's adversaries. Much of the president's public diplomacy has been designed to clear a path for such talks --...]]> Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- There was a time when international trade was the subject of poetry. In "Locksley Hall," Alfred Tennyson "Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails / Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales."

Recently, however, trade has inspired more resentment than verse. During a recession, the threat of foreign competition can seem more real and present than the opportunities of foreign markets. According to the World Trade Organization, 30 countries have imposed trade-restricting measures since the onset of the economic crisis. China included a "Buy Chinese" provision in its own stimulus package. The U.S. Congress has variously...]]> Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- After a dominating political victory, as in 2008, the expectations of a party's most ideological elements are raised. With sufficient boldness, and sufficient ruthlessness, anything seems possible.

But the American two-party system has a self-correcting mechanism that is Madisonian in its balance and elegance. A party becomes more dominant by becoming more diverse. Losing parties shrink toward their ideological core, as Republicans have done. Winning parties expand to encompass more of the ideological center, the undeniable Obama achievement. But this places centrists in positions of legislative influence, which enrages activists who feel the moment for ambition has...]]> Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- There was a scandal this week concerning the Supreme Court, though it didn't concern the nomination of its newest member.

The New York Times Magazine printed a candid interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, including this portion:

Q: "Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid abortions for poor women?"

Justice Ginsburg: "Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. (Harris v. McRae -- in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for...]]> Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- According to one survey, just 7 percent of elite American scientists believe in a personal god -- the kind to whom you pray. About 8 percent, however, affirm their belief in personal immortality -- indicating that some egos are so large that they fill eternity.

Should it matter that President Obama's nominee to be director of the National Institutes of Health -- the Supreme Court nomination of the scientific world -- is part of the believing few?

Francis Collins presents a perfect test case. His qualifications are beyond dispute. As a pioneering "gene hunter," he helped identify the genetic markers for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington's disease...]]> Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Being an educated, professional woman in Afghanistan could not have been easy at any time during the last few decades. I recently met with a group of female government officials, brought to Washington by USAID and the U.S.-Afghan Women's Council. One, during the Taliban years, had run an underground school in her home for the criminal purpose of teaching girls. Another had built a community development program employing 25,000 Afghan women before she was put under close guard by the Taliban. Her home was looted, and her children were threatened with kidnapping.

Afghanistan is a country were women have made significant progress -- but only compared to a...]]> Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Around midnight on April 15, 1912, there were a few minutes when Capt. Edward Smith of the Titanic realized his ship was going down -- six watertight compartments breached, less than two hours to float -- yet his passengers slept in happy ignorance. A historical fate hardened while most of the participants dreamed on.

The jobs report last week opened a long gash beneath the waterline of President Barack Obama's legislative agenda. Few yet realize it, but a scramble for lifeboats is about to begin.

On closer inspection, the economic news, which seemed bad, is even worse. Not only did unemployment rise to 9.5 percent but wages fell, undermining the consumption...]]> Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- It may seem strange to Americans, so close to our independence celebration, that Iraqis should break out the fireworks when our troops withdraw. We are not accustomed to being cast in the British role. In Iraq, nearly every achievement seems colored by ambiguity. But we are seeing achievement nonetheless.

The recent American withdrawal was not a decisive military shift. Our units will no longer conduct unilateral military operations. Except for Baghdad and Mosul, however, this has been the situation in Iraq for months. American troops will still be visible on the streets in a supporting role alongside Iraqis. And American quick-reaction forces can provide assistance...]]> Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- With the cap-and-trade bill passing the House of Representatives last week by seven votes, the eight Republicans who supported it were bound to feel some rapid, political warming. Conservative Internet and radio accused them of single-handedly passing President Obama's "cap-and-tax" legislation, which is a myth; Speaker Nancy Pelosi likely would have forced the requisite number of Democratic votes in the absence of Republican backing. But these eight Republicans were still termed "traitorous."

It is typical that we praise independent judgment and political nerve in our elected officials -- until they actually show those qualities.

Admittedly, this was not the...]]> Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- In early 2005, the advance of freedom in the Middle East had an air of inevitability. Hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Beirut to demand an end to Syrian occupation. Eight and a half million Iraqis voted with purpled fingers. Even Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak permitted a multiparty election. People talked of an "Arab Spring."

By 2006, what had seemed inevitable was dismissed as incredible. Iraq had descended into civil strife, apparently aided by elections that reinforced sectarian divides. Voting in the Palestinian territories brought Hamas to power. Mubarak, the old angler, reeled back most of the freedoms he had granted.

Some American conservatives...]]> Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- I have always disliked dogs. All animals, really -- but especially dogs.

Perhaps this has roots in the traumas of childhood, when a German shepherd seemed as fearsome as a grizzly. I still jump when a dog barks. I did my best to avoid Barney and Miss Beazley, who created a hostile work environment in the Oval Office. All my life I have been suspicious of living things with teeth and instincts but without conscience. Even the smallest dogs, it seemed to me, might take vengeance on their human oppressors if their tiny paws allowed.

And then came a Havanese puppy named Latte, who melted the prejudices of 45 years on a summer afternoon.

For those who know...]]>