In the New York Times, the television critic, writing about her appearance on Oprah, said "she still had the hunted look and defensive crouch" she demonstrated in the campaign. This is pretty much politics as usual. The dominant liberal media can't see beyond their stereotypes.

Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC put Sarah Palin's face atop several female bodies, one in a red, white and blue bikini and another in a tight black miniskirt and high heels. He...]]> Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0800 If a photograph is worth a thousand words, a sharp newspaper cartoon is often worth the book. One Israeli cartoonist depicts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the missus arriving at the White House to meet with Barack Obama. Mrs. Netanyahu knocks at the front door with the explanation, "We just happened to be in the neighborhood." Another cartoon depicts the prime minister pulling up at the White House, and telling the driver to wait: "I'm not sure they're at home."

With a few strokes of pen and brush, the cartoonists capture the prevailing Israeli dismay, frustration and controlled fury at President Obama's reluctance to meet the prime minister, who was in Washington this...]]> Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0800 Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. If Humpty Dumpty had been sitting on top of it, not Soviet soldiers, nor Stasi spies could put Humpty together again. It wasn't the end of history, as some liked to call it, but rather like history on a pause button that showed the world in one powerful moment that some of the evil that men do can be undone.

It is a coincidence not lost on political philosophers that the Wall fell on the same date as Kristallnacht in 1938, when the Nazi's -- with lots of help from "otherwise decent people" -- smashed windows and storefronts of Jewish homes and businesses, set fire to synagogues, and looted and plundered Jewish property, writing...]]> Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Maria Shriver is no "wife of," even though she's married to the governor of California. She's no "niece of," although her uncle was president of the United States. She credits her late mother Eunice Shriver for encouraging her "to believe we had the ability to change the world," and as the inspiration behind "The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything."

Her report won't change the world, but it does a good job of bringing together statistics demonstrating the progress of women in education and work. It's receiving lots of positive attention from men who have discovered the advantages of being husbands of working wives.

Male sensitivity joins post-feminist...]]> Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Ann McElhinney's low-budget documentary refuting the global warming hype and hysteria arrives in Washington just in time to break Al Gore's crystal ball. "Not Evil Just Wrong," the feature-length film she made with her husband Phelim McAleer, coolly reveals how Al's disguise of hot fanaticism as cold fact arrives as the Senate begins to gear up for debate on "climate change" legislation.

"We know you can't teach religion in school," McElhinney says. "But there is a religion being enforced, a green religion."

Her film illustrates just how schoolchildren have been indoctrinated with fear, loathing and foreboding, as Al's film attempts to recruit them as tiny prophets of doom....]]> Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Enough already. Barack Obama got the Nobel Prize for Hope and Hype, and now the rest is up to him. But there are more important Nobels, and this year women won three of these for scientific research. They won not for what they might do, sometime, maybe, could be or hope so, but for what they've already done. Only eight women have won Nobels in physiology or medicine, and the recognition of these women strikes down pernicious myths about women and science. These were not affirmative action awards.

Carol Greider, who shared her prize with another woman and a man, took her two children, a son age 13 and a daughter age 9, with her to her press conference at Johns Hopkins University in...]]> Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Not so long ago, rape was a capital offense, right up there with murder. When death was not decreed, convicted rapists could count on a long prison sentence. No one took rape lightly. The crime was an absolute evil, the moral equivalent of neither shoplifting nor stealing a kiss.

Our sex-saturated society -- where children are exposed to titillation they cannot fully understand and often are regarded as more knowledgeable than they really are -- has changed all that. Children are pressured to affect an air of sexual sophistication, leading to a young adult attitude of devil-may-care hedonism.

Public and personal attitudes and moral distinctions have become blurred. On the...]]> Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Austin, age 13, is touching and familiar. With his helmet of short brown hair, biggish ears and sensitive eyes, he's typical of a tender age almost on the cusp of manhood. So little time behind him, so much time ahead of him. If he were Jewish, he might be preparing for his bar mitzvah, thanking his parents for giving him life, expressing his hopes to live up to the respect they place in him.

Tender age notwithstanding, Austin has another agenda. He's on the cover of The New York Times Magazine last Sunday, telling the world what he earlier told his parents and his classmates. He's gay. Not cheerful, happy and carefree in the original meaning of that word, but as how the untender...]]> Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Autumn in Washington is often cruel. The heat and the humidity have lifted, and Congress returns more or less refreshed from summer vacation, but the pressure cooker continues to cook politics. Conversations about health care legislation and the economy continue to get top billing on the Hill and elsewhere, but Barack Obama is playing football with foreign policy. It's the season of the gridiron, after all.

The president threw a long pass over the heads of the lads from the Czech Republic and Poland, and Vladimir Putin, Moscow's very defensive back, intercepted easily. He naturally looks forward to more such floaters.
"I do anticipate that this correct and brave decision...]]> Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:00:00 -0700 The attack on America on Sept. 11 set off alarms everywhere. We were shocked to discover that few Foreign Service officers were fluent in Arabic or Farsi, the dominant languages of the Middle East. We didn't know much about Islam. Children grew up on the engrossing and romantic "Tales of the Arabian Nights," but few parents thought much about the implications of women portrayed in veils and harems, as the property of men.

College students grooved on "The Rubaiyat" by Omar Khayyam, the medieval Persian poet and philosopher, whose poetry was tailored to Western sensibility by the 19th century English translator Edward FitzGerald in "A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread -- and Thou."...]]> Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Conservatives and other parents won their point. President Obama dropped his lesson plan for the schoolchildren of America. He didn't ask what they can do for him, as he first intended to do, but what they can do for themselves and country.

"We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect, so you can help solve our most difficult problems," he said. "If you don't do that -- if you quit on school -- you're not only quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country." Nobody can argue with that.

The furor that preceded the speech was rage against the "cult of personality," and the White House did a good job of changing the subject to...]]> Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:00:00 -0700 All but hidden in the fulsome eulogies for Ted Kennedy lurk a few serious ideas worthy of more than romancing history or waxing sentimental over a death in a famous family. These ideas are about the very nature of liberalism and conservatism, the connections between personal virtue and public morality, and how emotion shapes ideology.

The passing of "the last liberal lion" comes amidst a national debate over health care "reform" that grows fiercer by the day. President Obama, who has tried to stand above the messy details of whatever emerges from Congress -- tacking first left, then right, then left again -- is about to tack this time into the fray. But there's scant room left...]]> Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0700 This is everybody's bummer of a season, particularly these rough weeks for Barack Obama. You could call this a summer of discontent, but there's nothing poetic about it. The president warns that the economy will only get considerably worse before it gets better.

"The long-term deficit outlook remains daunting," the White House said Tuesday. Unemployment is expected to surpass 10 percent soon, the deficit to swell to $1.5 trillion, and the gross domestic product to shrink by 2.8 percent this year. We may get an early frost, too.

The stimulus was supposed to make everybody feel a lot better by now. The deficit would be smaller, Wall Street greed would be tamed, and General...]]> Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0700 WILLIAMSBURG, Va. -- Colonial Williamsburg is proud of its tradesmen. You can see the carpenters walking out of the history books and down the cobblestone streets, ready to talk to visitors about how they hammered Williamsburg together, log by log, shingle by shingle, as if still in the 18th century.

These tradesmen built new homes, smokehouses, dairies, barns. They built additions and repaired old structures. Some were skilled carpenters and bricklayers, others were just learning, but together they raised rafters and roof beams, set door frames, laid floors with timber cut from nearby trees.

The colonial wages were paid to the original Williamsburg tradesmen in...]]> Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0700 The shorter days of late summer ushers in the melancholy prospect of autumn, the thoughts of returning to school, work and reality. Such anticipation makes the last moments at the beach, lake or campsite especially precious. The kids can stay up late because they can sleep 'til noon. They come and go on whim, tracking sand or mud, but dirty footprints are easily washed away with seawater. We put off thinking about the devil in the details waiting in the mundane world of everyday life. For now, conversation can be imbued with deeper insights taken at a slower pace.

But whether we're in the country or city, by the sea or pool or in the familiar comfort of the screened back porch,...]]> Fri, 07 Aug 2009 22:00:00 -0700 When my mother was in her late 80s, I took her to a lawyer's office one sunny day to sign her "living will." We read over the questions and her answers, and she signed on the dotted line. She was pleased with the decisions that she had made weeks before.

We went shopping afterward, and she bought an antique watch that caught my eye in a shop window. This was an appropriate gift, she joked, because she had named me to be in charge of her "lifetime." If the time should come that a doctor asks whether to prolong her life when all hope is gone, I need to produce her living will.

Such discussions and "signings" with older parents had become commonplace among my friends of a...]]> Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Barack Obama was a rock star on the campaign trail and his aura went undimmed in his first few months of office. But then he began taking too many curtain calls. The applause subsided, but he kept coming back to center stage to try harder to wow us. He forgot what every star must learn, that you've got to know when to get off that center stage. If you don't have anything new to say, shut up. This applies even to presidents.

He's reaching for applause lines with the same ol' same ol'. So his poll numbers begin to shrink. He pushes, and pushes, a flawed health care scheme without having anything new to add. Then he goes off script to accuse the Cambridge, Mass., cops of behaving...]]> Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Before there was multiculturalism, there was assimilation. Before assimilation, there was ethnic pride. Before ethnic pride, there was fear and frustration in the old country, with hope for a better life in America. Such is the immigrant experience. Poverty, prejudice and tyranny, a combination of hardships and fierce ambition, drove men and women to our shores, beginning with the Pilgrims.

The pilgrimage continues today. Everyone has a story tailored from personal experience.

Americans who worry that Sonia Sotomayor will take ethnic activism to a seat on the Supreme Court can nevertheless appreciate her biography, her rise from poverty within a minority Puerto Rican...]]> Thu, 16 Jul 2009 22:00:00 -0700 WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- All politics may not be loco, as one famous pundit (Michael Barone) puts it, but the ancient maxim that all politics is local is demonstrably true. Consider a feature called "Obama Watch" in the Cape Cod Times. There's nothing in it about the rising unemployment figures, the crash of the president's teleprompter, his health-care legislation or the latest on whether his diplomatic offensive is cooling fanatic fervor in the Middle East.

The big question for the president on Cape Cod is whether Barack, Michelle and the girls will follow the example of Ulysses S. Grant and Bill Clinton to Martha's Vineyard for a vacation in August. How you stand depends on where...]]> Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:00:00 -0700 You took a fine time to leave us, Sarah. Can't you imagine Kenny Rogers singing about it? We've had some bad times/ Lived through some sad times/ But this time your hurtin' won't heal. 

Sarah Palin's detractors, and there are lots of them, pile on the lower-class comparisons, ridiculing her as more country than cool: Barbie with a gun, whose got the moose on the run. They're right. That's why she has fans for being just that, among both men and women. She's authentic when a lot of pols rely on manufactured authenticity.

Stereotypes cut several ways. For conservatives who groove on family values as their primary issue, she added pizzazz to the frumpy look of...]]> Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:00:00 -0700 BERLIN -- The righteous rage in the streets of Tehran is familiar to Berliners. They recall their own demonstrations that doomed the hated Berlin Wall two decades ago. Berliners, hopeful and sympathetic, see lessons in their past for the demonstrators in the Iranian capital.

Films and photographs at exhibitions throughout the city document how "power to the people" can sometimes beat extraordinary odds. The exhibitions were planned long before the protests in Iran were a gleam in the eye of candle-carrying Iranians. Nobody here discounts the odds against the Iranian masses -- the turmoil can lead to the results of November 1989 in Berlin or to the tragedy of Tiananmen...]]> Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:00:00 -0700 You don't have to be from Venus or Mars to notice that Sonia Sotomayor was appreciated more for her Hispanic roots than for female gifts. That's how President Obama introduced her. Firsts are firsts, after all, and Sandra Day O'Connor was followed by Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and that was that for a woman expecting recognition as a pioneer.

No one any longer regards it as worth remarking when a woman becomes a doctor, lawyer, editor, astronaut or CEO. Women have shattered a lot of glass ceilings, and when nobody notices the broken glass, that's a sign of progress. If women haven't gained equality (or superiority) in numbers sufficient to please feminist advocates, few argue that women...]]> Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:00:00 -0700 LONDON -- This is not Britain's finest hour. The expense-account scandal has exposed rot at the core of the Parliament, where greedy members abused their perks to use taxpayer largess to, among other things, clean out a moat, remodel a second home, build a swimming pool and furnish private homes with luxury furniture that constituents would never see. The distinguished members merely followed the example of Willie Sutton, the famous American bank robber. They robbed the public till because that's where the money was.

Queen Elizabeth II, who repaired and drove Army trucks when she was a young princess during World War II, was not invited to the 65th anniversary commemoration of...]]> Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Nothing so polarizes the nation as a nomination to the Supreme Court. Advise and consent is often more like divide and confront, rarely eliciting our best debates. "Borking" a candidate has entered the lexicon of tactics for savaging a nominee by exaggerating positions with simplistic slurs, uttered with an attitude and tone of self-righteousness.

It's worth repeating in full Ted Kennedy's famous attack on Robert Bork when he was nominated for the Supreme Court, because it so maliciously misleads by naming those the senator said would be abused by the nominee if his colleagues dared to confirm him:

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into...]]> Thu, 28 May 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Washington is a company town, and what the company makes best is politics and policy. Sometimes the politics is "unprecedented," as certain historians called the duel between President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Obama and Cheney argued in dueling speeches over how best to keep the country safe from terrorists and about Obama's continuing campaign against his predecessor. But at root was a philosophical discussion about who we are as a nation, and how the nation can be true to both the rule of law and to the survival of the country. What should the people know about the way the country is kept safe, and when should the people know it?

Predictably, the...]]> Thu, 21 May 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Diplomacy is like courtship, with its rituals to keep passions in check. Both diplomacy and courtship pose tests to see whether a meeting of the minds can turn into a tentative relationship of the hearts and into a proper engagement leading to a union convenient to both sides. Diplomacy is courtship conducted in public and carries a lot of baggage because nations, like families, have diverging vested interests, sending contradictory and conflicting messages.

President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had their "first date" this week at the White House. It wasn't exactly a blind date -- they knew a lot about each other. But their meeting required the delicacy,...]]> Thu, 14 May 2009 22:00:00 -0700 John Edwards wears the scarlet letter on his tailored Armani suits. The bold letter "A" is not embroidered with fine needlework such as Hester Prynne sewed for herself. Neither is it reflected on his chest like the "A" the townspeople of Salem thought they saw, as in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel "The Scarlet Letter," when Arthur Dimmesdale confessed his hidden sin. But it's a ghostly letter that exposes Edwards to public shame and humiliation written in a wife's pain in Elizabeth Edwards' book, "Resilience." And what resilience she shows.

John Edwards' adultery is a post-modern morality tale, a narrative rich in insight and ripe with Old Testament power. It's relevant to the public...]]> Thu, 07 May 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Souter & Specter sounds like a vaudeville song and dance team, stuck in Cleveland and still dreaming of playing the Palace. You can almost hear their Peoria humor and see their old soft shoe.

"Did you hear the one about how John Sununu was dispatched by the original President Bush to find a slugger who would hit home runs for the conservative side on the Supreme Court," asks Justice David Souter. He executes a neat heel, toe and a tap, and grins a goofy grin. "Well, here I am. Nothing but foul balls and long fly balls to left field. Ain't I a scream?"

Arlen Specter shuffles over with syncopated stomp. "When I switched to the Democrats, all my Republican pals could do...]]> Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Hannah Arendt was wrong. Evil is never banal. Evil is fascinating, provocative and mind-focusing. Adolph Eichmann was probably a bore at a Nazi dinner party, a dull bureaucrat following orders, but his acts forever fascinate the human mind. We try but fail to understand how a fellow human could do what he did without conscience, without regret, without remorse.

What is banal is the moral preening of those who judge the way others stand up to evil, who judge those who compromise in their human fallibility to fight evil so that the rest of us can enjoy the good (and the good life). What's banal are the pundits and partisan ideologues who get their hands dirty only changing an ink...]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:00:00 -0700 A guest at a cocktail party in Cleveland Park, the fashionable Washington neighborhood of middle-class liberals ("progressives," they want to be called this year), tells about two young men of her acquaintance who happily traded military service for a college education.

One young friend is a new graduate of Duke (more than $30,000 annual tuition) and is about to depart for Afghanistan; the other has just returned from his tour of duty in Iraq. Both owe their education to the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, the once reviled "ROTC."

The guest's story sparks a lively conversation. "They didn't do it for the perks," the first guest says. "They just wanted to serve their...]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Language matters. President Barack Obama learned that in time to give the command to slay Somali pirates when they threatened imminent death for Capt. Richard Phillips, their American hostage. This was no time to go wobbly, indulge weakness in the knees, or stir a pot of mush. The highly trained Navy sharpshooters were told to shoot to kill. Mission accomplished.

Soldiers and sailors understand the value of straightforward language. Adm. David Farragut captured heavily fortified Mobile Bay, ensuring Union control of the Gulf Coast late in the Civil War, when he signaled to his fleet: "Damn the torpedoes! Full steam ahead!" No nuance there. When Gen. Anthony McAuliffe answered the...]]> Thu, 09 Apr 2009 22:00:00 -0700 When she and the president catch up on what they missed in Washington, they should read the latest performance evaluation of the Opportunity Scholarship Program, a school voucher program in their new hometown. It should be of particular interest to a mom who gives the education of children, her own and others, pride of place at the top of the agenda.

Seventeen hundred Washington children attend private school with vouchers under this scholarship program, and two of them attend Sidwell Friends School with the Obama girls. Unlike most programs and schemes in the nation's capital, this program has human faces -- all of them children's -- and the evaluation...]]> Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Michelle has planted vegetables on the south lawn of the White House, just like Eleanor Roosevelt's World War II victory garden -- and unlike Eleanor, she hasn't been accused of meddling in policy, not yet. She has overcome some of the suspicion and hostility she stirred during the campaign, particularly after she said that "for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country."

If Michelle Obama is a work in progress, so are the Americans always eager to take the measure of a new first lady. Her poll numbers have risen and her negatives have declined since they were first measured last summer. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows her favorable...]]> Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:00:00 -0700 Obama goes out of his way to seek a celebrity's attention, and he's still in his first hundred days. When he makes an off-hand jest about his bowling score and the Special Olympics -- the sort of tasteless attempt at dark humor that anyone might make within a tight circle of good friends -- the whole world hears it, and the pundits can't wait to leap. We should all "lighten up," but if a president can't resist going on television to banter with a comedian, he ought to leave the comedy to the comedian, who gets paid for sarcasm and irony.

It's a shame that the eye of the camera tempts presidents to try to be the entertainer in chief. Michelle might emulate...]]> Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:00:00 -0700 This was not the Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity crowd; there would be no knock 'em, sock 'em, beat 'em rhetoric. The audience expected something "thoughty," a speech from a conservative intellectual accustomed to looking at the big picture.

Tonight's speaker was Charles Murray, whose ideas give liberals indigestion and usually spark intelligent debate that eventually spills over into public policy. His book, "Losing Ground," published a quarter of a century ago, demonstrated how many government social programs, for all their good intentions, contributed to the destruction of social networks for poor black families. His data and analysis were the impetus for...]]> Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:00:00 -0700 In America, she represents the swiftly changing roles of women. Barbie's fun to tease, but she's as American as miniskirts and pantsuits in her flexible identities and her "growth" from sexpot to astronaut. Some of her critics say she's still a bad influence because she's too skinny and encourages anorexia, that she has run through too many "feminine" or "feminist" stereotypes, that she lends too much significance to the fantasy stages of child's play. But Barbie in the Muslim world lives no fantasy. The prosecutor general of Iran warns that Barbie is merely the moll of Batman, Spider-Man and Harry Potter in the "invasion" from the West.

In her memoir, "Reading Lolita...]]> Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:00:00 -0800 The new quarterback is calling the signals, and he'll have to face the consequences of the execution of the game plan -- if not now, soon. The tanking stock market is already his responsibility, and soon he'll face the music for how the nation's enemies react to withdrawal from Iraq, for a belated surge in Afghanistan and the rising number of casualties there.

If health care reforms only succeed in making our medicine more like Europe's, thinning the care and surrendering the edge in medical research for new cures and treatments, he'll eventually get the blame for that, too. How will the top medical schools train top people if the profession becomes one of mechanics...]]> Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:00:00 -0800 But choosing homecoming queens has never been an exercise in equity. Life is not always fair on campus, either. Many a queen was chosen because she was the girlfriend of the quarterback. Beauty counted more than grades.

The Chi Omega girls had a lock on the crown when I was a student at George Washington University simply because they were blonde and beautiful. But even then, diversity was calling, and the administration was forced to give the student body the vote. I was "the sweetheart of Phi Alpha," a Jewish fraternity, and my boyfriend persuaded his fraternity brothers to nominate me for homecoming queen. I was the diversity token of my day.

...]]> Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:00:00 -0800 He's a founding father who might have been president even though he was foreign born -- "the bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar," in the derisive description of John Adams. He was considered a "citizen" of the new United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. But he had many political enemies. Thomas Jefferson derided him, unfairly, as a secret "monarchist." Martha Washington called her tomcat "Hamilton" to mock his scandalous sexual appetite.

Despite all that, and the vicious thrust and parry of his Republican opponents, Hamilton is nevertheless one of our most important original political thinkers, and he sounds like just what we need to...]]> Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:00:00 -0800 His kind words for Republicans have become the scolding of an affronted president, the offered hand a partisan fist. He had picked Republicans for his Cabinet, had gone up to Capitol Hill to visit Republicans in their lair, even invited some of them to the White House, and they responded with "the usual political games."

"I suppose what I could have done was to start out with no tax cuts, knowing that I was going to want some, and then let them take credit for all of them." He pulled up scorn and poured it on. "When I hear from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history," he said....]]> Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:00:00 -0800 In a study of 472 Americans -- 84 black and 388 white, ranging in age from 18 to 63 -- who took a test of 20 questions before the presidential election, blacks got only 8.5 correct. Whites got 12 answers correct. After Barack Obama was elected, Ray Friedman, a management professor at Vanderbilt and one of the authors of the research, tells The New York Times, the gap between black and white became "statistically nonsignificant." The test questions were taken from the verbal section of the Graduate Record Exam.

Conceding the small sample, Ronald Ferguson, a Harvard professor who studies black-white achievement disparities, nevertheless says the study suggests that...]]> Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:00:00 -0800 After Israel announced a cease-fire, Ismail Haniya, the "prime minister of Gaza," came out of hiding and declared victory. Such chutzpah, observes der Speigel, could only be compared to the Black Knight in a Monty Python movie: "After King Arthur cuts off both of the knight's arms and legs, he tells him, 'All right, we'll call it a draw.'"

What happened in Gaza is tragic, but the satirical comparison is not far-fetched. Hamas is winning world public opinion for a seat at the negotiating table as the hue and cry against Israel's "disproportionality" continues to dominate the international media. The moral balance weighs on behalf of Hamas despite its cowardly...]]> Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:00:00 -0800 He reminded us that in a country where only 50 years ago his father wouldn't have been served in many whites-only restaurants he now dines on duck and pheasant as the guest of honor in a grand hall of the Capitol. It was quite a show, drawing on inspiration rather than interpretation from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Elizabeth Alexander recited the poem she wrote for the inaugural, giving poetic images of the ordinary people in the crowd. We caught touching verbal glimpses of a woman and her son waiting for the bus, of a farmer checking the sky for hints of rain, of a...]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:00:00 -0800 "Ask not what your country can do for you," John F. Kennedy famously said in his inaugural address in 1961, "ask what you can do for your country." What followed is often lost in memory, but no less important, addressed to his fellow citizens of the world: "Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." The Europeans could usefully hear that again.

I spent the season between November and January reading inaugural addresses. They not only reflect the man himself, but the history of the moment. Some soar with poetic cadences, others are blunt and workmanlike, still others puffed up as with wind. No doubt Barack...]]> Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:00:00 -0800 The Obama girls, like other girls in the West, are lucky. They could read the latest from Pakistan, where girls their age are forbidden to attend school. Taliban militants in the Swat Valley have banned education for all girls beyond the fourth grade, which disqualifies girl-children like Malia, who is already in the fifth grade. Educating girls, a mullah decreed, is "un-Islamic." While Obama tends the relationship with Pakistan and its contributions to the fight against terrorism, he'll be aware of how repressive the Islamic culture can be in the places where terrorists hide.

The world is watching America for flashes of insight into the power change in...]]>