Holder makes a reasonable decision

BY JIM COMEY

Reasonable minds can disagree about Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 perpetrators in a Manhattan federal court. But some prominent criticisms are exaggerated, and others place undue faith in military commissions as an alternative to civilian trials. 1258758777

Let's stick with mammograms

BY OTIS W. BRAWLEY

On Monday, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force took a step backward in the fight against breast cancer. The task force announced that it would no longer recommend routine mammograms for women between the ages of 40 and 49, a group that accounts for about one out of six breast cancers. The recommendation is based on data that find that mammograms do reduce the risk of death in these women, but apparently not enough deaths to recommend that all women 40 to 49 should be screened.

Diplomacy best when dealing with Iran

BY MARK BOWDEN

Two days after Iranian students overran the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage 30 years ago this month, Pentagon brass met in a secret briefing room called ``The Tank'' to consider rescue options. 1258758777

Fighting a health-insurance coercion clause

BY GEORGE F. WILL

In 2006, long before there was an Obama administration determined to impose a command-and-control federal health care system, a young orthopedic surgeon walked into the Goldwater Institute here with an idea. The institute, America's most potent advocate of limited government, embraced Eric Novack's idea for protecting Arizonans from health care coercion. In 2008, Arizonans voted on Novack's proposed amendment to the state's Constitution:

Execution: We still can't get it right

BY MIRIAM ARONI KRINSKY

It has been a year and a half since the Supreme Court ended the nationwide moratorium on lethal injections, finding that Kentucky's three-drug protocol had adequate safeguards to protect inmates from ``cruel and unusual'' punishment.

If conservatives ran healthcare . . .

BY MAGGIE MAHAR

If you're a progressive like me, and you're upset by the Stupak amendment, which bars federally subsidized insurance from covering abortions, consider this: What if we had a single-payer health-care system and someone like Jeb Bush or Sarah Palin were running the country?

Castro's long goodbye

BY ANN LOUISE BARDACH

On July 27, 2006, Fidel Castro nearly died during emergency intestinal surgery to stem internal bleeding caused by chronic diverticulitis. Since then, Cuba-watchers and obituary writers have been on high alert awaiting his demise.

Bypassing the aid trap in Pakistan

BY GLENN HUBBARD

Congress recently approved $7.5 billion in aid to Pakistan for social and economic development. The bill incited controversy by requiring that the U.S. secretary of state report to lawmakers on whether Pakistan's civilian government keeps effective control over its military, because many observers accuse some in the Pakistani military of having tolerated or even aided Islamic extremists since the 1980s.

No doomsday on the Maya calendar

BY MARY JO MCCONAHAY

The world may not end two years from now, despite Internet predictions and this week's blockbuster disaster movie, 2012.

On screen, the final day in the 5,126-year Maya calendar brings global destruction, and Los Angeles slides inexorably into the sea.

Quiet down, Michael Steele

BY JONATHON CAPEHART

Washington Watch host Roland Martin asked Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on Sunday to name two issues that ``speak to black voters that Republicans have a shot at.'' Steele replied, ``Education and the economy. Education and jobs. Education and small business.''

Does Karzai want to negotiate peace with the Taliban?

BY TOM HAYDEN

Fifty-nine Americans died in October fighting to protect the corrupt Afghan electoral process that resulted in a second five-year term for Hamid Karzai. Since July and the run-up to the August election, 195 Americans were killed and more than 1,000 were wounded, a higher casualty rate than during the 2007 military surge in Iraq. A principal purpose cited by U.S. President Barack Obama for sending 17,000 more combat troops to Afghanistan earlier this year was to protect the election, which, according to most observers, Karzai stole.

Is a flawed healthcare bill better than no bill?

BY ESRA KLEIN

Marcia Angell, a single-payer supporter and former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, says she doesn't believe the House health-care reform bill is better than nothing. Instead, she writes in the Huffington Post, it ``throws more money into a dysfunctional and unsustainable system, with only a few improvements at the edges, and it augments the central role of the investor-owned insurance industry.'' The fact that we need to do something does not mean we need to do this. ``I would rather see us do nothing now,'' Angell concludes, ``and have a better chance of trying again later and then doing it right. ``

We're not going back to the moon

BY PAUL AKERS

When almost the first word a child says, as she points to the night sky, is `` moon,'' you feel duty-bound to cultivate that interest, if not to start putting aside tuition money for Young Astronauts Camp. So on the 40th anniversary of the first Apollo landing, I was happy to watch, with my granddaughter Julia, age 9, NASA-channel films of the manned moon missions.

GOP wins taint Obama's image in Europe

BY BOGDAN KIPLING

We are speeding toward climate ``catastrophe,'' U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned the World Climate Conference in Geneva two months ago.

The seas could rise 7 feet and wash over coasts, river deltas and low-lying islands, and the time to prevent the threatening flood is now, the U.N. leader said as he implored the world's leaders to sign a new climate agreement when the so-called Kyoto II conference meets in Copenhagen from Dec. 7 to 17.

Public challenge, private courtship

BY JAMES MANN

With the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the tape of Ronald Reagan's famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate is likely to be played and replayed. ``Mr. Gorbachev,'' he declared, ``tear down this wall!''