Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee, and all that

The first Queen Elizabeth was standing under an English oak tree when she learned that she had become queen.

Federal ban on snakes lacks bite

Recently, a powerful lobby spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat a bill that would have enhanced public safety, safeguarded the environment and curtailed cruelty to animals. Who is this giant wielding such influence? BP? The NRA? Halliburton? Nope, it’s none other than the U.S. Association of Reptile Keepers, which fought a bill that would have made some species of dangerous snakes illegal to import and sell. The group griped and hyped for three years until the list was gutted by more than half — four species have been banned rather than nine.

Military preparedness does not come cheap

Here’s something for critics of the country’s defense budget to ponder: After I was confirmed as secretary of the Navy in May 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked me and the other service secretaries to work with Congress to gain approval for a pending supplemental appropriation to the defense budget. This was not a war supplemental; it was still four months before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The Pentagon was simply running out of money.

For Planned Parenthood, backlash pays off

Last spring, Cecile Richards’s BlackBerry buzzed with an unexpected text message. It was from her son Daniel, a college student in Pennsylvania. He was heading off to Toledo, having organized a bus trip of friends to attend a rally supporting Planned Parenthood. The message came as Congress was debating ending the group’s nearly $100 million in federal funding.

Bullying women

You’d think the political process had turned into one big, sexy GoDaddy Super Bowl ad, with all the focus on breasts, bellies and even butts this week.

California college not alone in admissions mischief

The news that Claremont McKenna College submitted false SAT scores for incoming freshmen to U.S. News & World Report (and other outlets, including the Department of Education) is causing a ripple of shock throughout higher education.

Buddy Holly: The music lives

The Jan. 20 death of 72-year-old rhythm-and-blues legend Etta James, just three days after the death of her mentor, bandleader Johnny Otis, is a sad reminder that the early pioneers of rock-n-roll are a dying breed.

A false portrait of sexual violence in the United States

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a study suggesting that rates of sexual violence in the United States are comparable to those in the war-stricken Congo. How is that possible?

Rushdie falls victim to Indian intolerance

In 1984, criticizing George Orwell for having advocated political quietism to writers, Salman Rushdie asserted that “we are all irradiated by history, we are radioactive with history and politics.” He added: “Politics and literature . . . do mix, are inextricably mixed, and that . . . mixture has consequences.”

Have voters ditched family values?

The first Washington sex scandal I remember following involved Daniel Crane, a Republican congressman from my home state of Illinois, who was censured in the (first) House page scandal in 1983.

Obama defends bailouts, handouts and cop-outs

State of the Union addresses provide insight into the vision of America embraced by the president, and in that regard Tuesday’s address by President Obama didn’t disappoint.

Top 10 trends in global freedom

One might expect, given last year’s headlines across the Middle East as well as promising political developments in authoritarian countries from Myanmar to Cuba, that 2011 was a banner year for freedom. The reality is more complicated. The year was indeed noteworthy for some significant and potentially even historic achievements, but many societies endured intensified repression.

Sexually, what’s a girl to do?

When I was a teenager in the 1970s, the hottest thing on girl radar was Judy Blume’s young-adult novel Forever. My family was living in Ireland on a sabbatical year when it came out, and so a friend packaged it up (in actual brown paper) and sent me a copy from Berkeley. In Ireland at that time, not even adults could have bought a book like Forever, let alone girls in their summer dresses. Every time I re-encounter the book, I expect to find an amusing curio, a reminder of a more innocent age. And each time I am surprised again — shocked — at how explicit and intentionally erotic a book it is.

Europe’s debt crisis likely to end badly

There are two main schools of thought on what may happen next with Europe’s debt crisis. Some well-informed people strongly believe that everything will work out just fine, and without much of an economic slowdown. Other, equally well-informed people believe just as strongly that the euro area will break apart in a traumatic manner. When it comes to predicting Europe’s future, not many people occupy the middle ground.

Put Fannie and Freddie on federal books

When Congress voted on Dec. 23 to fund a temporary extension of the payroll-tax holiday in part by requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their fees, it effectively ended the fiction that the two mortgage-financing giants are part of the private sector.

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