http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ en Copyright 2009 Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:04:49 -0500 ISTANBUL, Turkey _ After decades of conflict and repressive policies, Turkey is taking crucial steps toward introducing a peace initiative to resolve longstanding unrest among its Kurdish population. But for any plan to succeed, it cannot simply be another state-run, unilateral initiative, which fails to take into account local grievances. It must http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/24/a_boost_in_kurdish_turkish_relations.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/24/a_boost_in_kurdish_turkish_relations.html Yigal Schleifer Tribune Media Services Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:04:44 -0500 Few civil rights documents have been cited more often by more people with differing points of view than the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered Aug. 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.Defenders of individual rights _ those who believe in colorblind government and personal merit _ frequently cite the line, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/24/dr__king_s___dream___46_years_later.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/24/dr__king_s___dream___46_years_later.html Jonathan Bean Tribune Media Services Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:04:39 -0500 The following editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News on Friday, Aug. 21:___Considering Mexico's long history of nearly unbridled corruption, there were no surprises last week when separate reports emerged of illicit activities within that nation's customs service and even at the Mexican Consulate in Dallas. President Felipe Calderon's http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/24/mexico_s_corruption_battle.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/24/mexico_s_corruption_battle.html Tribune Media Services Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:04:34 -0500 The following editorial appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Friday, Aug. 21:___"Death panel" fear-mongers are too late.The much-maligned end-of-life counseling to encourage advance directives has been paid for by Medicare since 2005. People age 65 are entitled to a "Welcome to Medicare" exam that includes a physical and mental assessment, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/24/end_of_life_discussions_are_already_in_medicare_program.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/24/end_of_life_discussions_are_already_in_medicare_program.html Tribune Media Services Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:04:29 -0500 Dolphins are dying to entertain us. That's the message of a devastating new documentary, "The Cove," which sheds light on a dirty secret of the marine-park industry.Every year between September and March, more than 2,000 dolphins are slaughtered in the small fishing village of Taiji, Japan, where "The Cove" was secretly filmed. Most of the http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/24/what_marine_mammal_parks_don_t_want_you_to_know.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/24/what_marine_mammal_parks_don_t_want_you_to_know.html Lisa Wathne Tribune Media Services Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:04:24 -0500 Days after viewing "District 9," a quirky but compelling film set in South Africa that reveals much about human behavior, I cannot shake its troubling images and lessons. This mock documentary vividly presents what can happen when we succumb to our worst fears, insecurities and tendencies in dealing with those (in this case, extraterrestrials) http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/24/remnants_of_apartheid_still_exist.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/24/remnants_of_apartheid_still_exist.html John C. Bersia Tribune Media Services Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:04:20 -0500 The sad truth is that the Democrats can't govern even when they have all the marbles in their pockets. It doesn't appear that they even know how to fight back when the stakes were never higher.President Barack Obama is off to Martha's Vineyard to work on his golf and tennis games when he ought to be staying home working on his bare-knuckle skills. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/with_health_care_reform_on_life_support__mr__obama_goes_on_v.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/with_health_care_reform_on_life_support__mr__obama_goes_on_v.html Joseph L. Galloway Tribune Media Services Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:05:07 -0500 What's the most important nation in the Middle East right now?Is it Saudi Arabia, with the world's largest oil reserves? Is it Israel, one of the region's only democracies? Is it Egypt, long the political power broker?No, the most important nation in the Middle East is Syria, a poor nation with few natural resources and a second-generation http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/syria_emerges_as_top_country_in_mideast.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/syria_emerges_as_top_country_in_mideast.html Joel Brinkley Tribune Media Services Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:06:13 -0500 Being a good Samaritan should not be a crime. Nor should preventing immigrants from dying of dehydration.But on Aug. 11, Walt Staton of No More Deaths, an Arizona-based humanitarian organization, was sentenced to 300 hours of community service for "knowingly littering." His so-called litter consisted of water bottles he left in the Arizona desert http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/bad_samaritans_at_the_border_.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/bad_samaritans_at_the_border_.html Yolanda Chavez Leyva Tribune Media Services Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:03:55 -0500 BAGHDAD _ While the recent local election may have seen the rise of an opposition powerful enough the challenge the current two-party hegemony that dominates political life in Kurdistan, the vote did nothing to resolve the differences that continue to divide northern Iraq and Baghdad.Issues such as control of the northern oil fields, Kurdish http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/kurdish_vote_fails_to_resolve_differences_with_baghdad.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/kurdish_vote_fails_to_resolve_differences_with_baghdad.html Faleh Hassan And Basim Al-shara Tribune Media Services Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:03:51 -0500 The following editorial appeared in the Miami Herald on Thursday, Aug. 20:___Confused over whether the Obama administration is sticking to its guns on the need to have "public option" for health insurance? Welcome to the club.For months, President Obama seemed pretty adamant over the need to give consumers a choice of having either a public or http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/__public_option__in_reform_debate_should_not_be_discarded.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/__public_option__in_reform_debate_should_not_be_discarded.html Tribune Media Services Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:03:46 -0500 Washington likes to style itself as the center of the political universe, but this summer the real action is in the states. At town hall meetings, voters are giving their elected representatives plenty to think about.Many lawmakers and the Obama administration have made it clear they want to pass massive health-care legislation that includes a http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/the_dangers_of_government_run_health_care.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/the_dangers_of_government_run_health_care.html Robert E. Moffit Tribune Media Services Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:03:41 -0500 The following editorial appeared in the Miami Herald on Thursday, Aug. 20:___"A lie can travel around the world while the truth is just putting on its shoes."The controversy over the so-called "death panels" is proof of the enduring nature of Mark Twain's famous observation.In truth, there are no "death panels" in the proposed legislation to http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/__euthanasia__hoax_should_not_block_sensible_reform_provisio.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/__euthanasia__hoax_should_not_block_sensible_reform_provisio.html Tribune Media Services Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:03:36 -0500 DALLAS _ CIFTA _ the 1997 small-arms trafficking treaty drafted with the help of the Clinton administration _ is bad as a matter of principle and policy.When the United Nations tried to get the Bush administration to push the treaty through the Senate, it refused. John Bolton, then undersecretary of state for arms control, said the United States http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/unwise_gun_treaty_erodes_u_s__sovereignty.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/unwise_gun_treaty_erodes_u_s__sovereignty.html H. Sterling Burnett Tribune Media Services Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:03:32 -0500 BOGORO, Congo _ For six years, the bones and skulls lay unburied in a field just outside the village. For six years, they have been a reminder of the appalling atrocities that occurred here in February 2003, when militiamen killed and raped a number of civilians. Those not killed were sometimes locked in rooms filled with corpses.For six years, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/unburied_remains_a_reminder_of_massacre_in_the_congo.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/unburied_remains_a_reminder_of_massacre_in_the_congo.html Jacques Kahorha Tribune Media Services Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:03:27 -0500 The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Thursday, Aug. 20:___Last year about this time, a group of more than 100 college presidents caused a stir by launching a push to lower the drinking age to 18. Their goal: to cut down on the pernicious, sometimes lethal problem of binge drinking on campus.The presidents called it the http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/drinking_101.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/drinking_101.html Tribune Media Services Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:03:21 -0500 I'm still trying to get my head around the idea that a public school can ban a student from wearing a T-shirt with the First Amendment printed on the back.Where is that written in the Constitution?"Congress shall make no law ..." isn't really an anything-goes license for expression. But surely even limits on students' speech must themselves abide http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/standing_the_bill_of_rights_on_its_head.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/21/standing_the_bill_of_rights_on_its_head.html Linda P. Campbell Tribune Media Services Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:03:16 -0500 Last spring, I wrote from Kabul about the controversy over a law that would have restored Taliban-style restrictions on women and legalized marital rape. President Hamid Karzai remanded the law for further study after an international furor. But late last month, with an eye toward gaining conservative religious votes in Friday's presidential http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/20/slow_gains_for_afghan_women.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/20/slow_gains_for_afghan_women.html Trudy Rubin Tribune Media Services Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:03:51 -0500 Overshadowed by the tumult and shouting at those town meetings, the great 2009 debate on health-care reform is entering its end game.Those weekend statements in which Obama administration officials opened the door to dropping a government-run alternative to private health care are no real surprise, frankly, except perhaps in timing. A key health http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/20/democrats_see_end_game_for_health_care_debate.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/20/democrats_see_end_game_for_health_care_debate.html Carl Leubsdorf Tribune Media Services Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:03:46 -0500 As President Obama and Congress struggle to bend the rising cost curve in order to make health care available to all Americans, the history of the first great expansion of health-care coverage when Lyndon Johnson drove Medicare and Medicaid through Congress in 1965 offers some critical lessons.In the Johnson administration our focus was almost http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/20/bending_the_curve_requires_health_care_reform__not_just_sick.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/tms/politics/2009/Aug/20/bending_the_curve_requires_health_care_reform__not_just_sick.html Joseph Califano Tribune Media Services Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:03:42 -0500