Lessons from Virginia for the GOP

BY ED GILLESPIE

After losing Virginia's governorship for the first time in eight years, some Democrats are trying to console themselves that Virginia is at its core a ``red'' state. This ignores not only that they won back-to-back governorships but also that Democrats defeated a sitting senator in 2006, took control of the state Senate in 2007 and won an open Republican Senate seat and three House seats in 2008 while carrying Virginia's electoral college votes for the first time since 1964.

Medical tourism: Outsourcing your health

BY JUDY DUGAN

At a luxury hotel conference center in Los Angeles last week, ``international hospitals'' from Singapore to South America set up half an acre of colorful display booths in an attempt to attract more business from American insurers and employers. Glossy brochures and videos offered hip replacements, cancer treatments and cardiac care in Turkey, Thailand or Costa Rica. Send a patient and a companion on business class, the basic pitch went, and we'll give them deluxe private rooms, a concierge and a driver. You'll still save half or more of the U.S. cost -- tens of thousands of dollars.

An unusual prescription for healthcare

BY STUART B. LEVY

In looking at healthcare reform, Congress and the Obama administration are missing a key remedy that could help keep Americans healthy, prevent disease and hold down costs. We urgently need to reduce the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that cause new and hard-to-treat diseases, and we can start with food animal production.

Don't target Afghan farmers

BY MOYARA RUEHSEN

There is concern that our continued efforts in Afghanistan are being undermined by widespread corruption within the administration of President Hamid Karzai. What few people are talking about is the opium cultivation and heroin production that is fueling this corruption. But should we do anything about it? Can we do anything about it? Not really.

Saving the last lions of Africa

BY DEREK JOUBERT

Just 50 years ago there were close to a half-million lions in Africa -- about 450,000 in all. Today there are between 16,000 and 23,000. And yet, unlike elephants (a far more numerous species), lions have no protection under the international accord governing such matters.

Huge deficits require tough decisions

BY JOHN FEFFER

We're close to our spending limit on the nation's credit card. The bank bailout, the stimulus package, the Iraq War, and the overall military budget: each is costing over $500 billion. Now the Obama administration is looking at two more hefty charges: a national health care plan and a surge in Afghanistan. It's time to make a decision. We can't do both guns and gurneys. After all, we're looking at a $1.6 trillion government deficit for 2009.

By HAROLD MEYERSON

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At the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh this week, American labor will see a changing of the guard. John Sweeney, head of the federation since 1995, is stepping down, and Rich Trumka, Sweeney's deputy for the past 14 years, is ascending to the presidency.

BY YUKIO OKAMATO

quiet revolution in Japan

WASHINGTON -- Some revolutions bring about a dramatic change in government without general strikes or fierce street demonstrations. Such a revolution just took place in Japan, where half a century of almost uninterrupted conservative rule under the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) abruptly ended with the recent elections. In its place, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) will try to establish a European-style labor-party government.

We need a cyber-czar

By JAMES D. ZIRIN

In May, President Barack Obama completed his long-awaited ``cyberspace policy review,'' concluding that cyberspace is a strategic asset that must be safeguarded from attack as a national security priority. He recalled how hackers had gotten into his own campaign servers, and he worried that crucial infrastructure, public and private, was vulnerable to hackers, cyber terrorists and even other governments.

BY NAME

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On Aug. 16, pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Ariz., told his congregation that he prays for the death of President Obama. In a sermon titled ``Why I Hate Barack Obama,'' Anderson preached: ``I'm not going to pray for his good, I'm going to pray he dies and goes to hell.''

Do journalists deserve subsidies from government?

By ROBERT W. MCCHESNEY and JOHN NICHOLS

President Obama, a self-declared ``big newspaper junkie,'' fears he might be forced to go cold turkey. ``I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding,'' he said last month to newspaper editors who asked about the crisis that threatens their industry and journalism in general.

The nation's `pay czar' is largely impotent

BY SARAH ANDERSON

When President Obama named a ``pay czar'' in June, he raised hopes that the era of out-of-control executive pay may be over. Unfortunately, the pay czar's recently released rulings did little to alter a compensation system that was a key cause of the economic crisis.

Here's what some TV shows really sell

By N.E. MARSDEN

After a U.S. senator was shot on Fox's drama 24 this year, another character blurted out the make and model of the assassin's submachine gun. The German brand had been prominent in so many episodes of 24 that gun-enthusiast bloggers, among others, speculated whether the company was paying to advertise on the show.

Can Obama play hardball with Iran?

BY ROBERT KAGAN

Watching the Obama administration launch its ``new era of engagement'' over the past 10 months, most seasoned observers have pondered two questions: First, if engagement fails, will the Obama team ever acknowledge that it has failed? And what then?

GI Bill looking like an IOU

By LINSAY ROUSSEAU BURNETT

In the military, I learned to expect screw-ups, especially when it came to money. So maybe the Department of Veterans Affairs is just trying to ease my transition to civilian life by doing things the military way in its handling of Post 9/11 GI Bill education benefits.

A sentence too cruel for children

BY ALAN SIMPSON

Rather than serving in the U.S. Senate for almost 20 years, or having so many other wonderful life experiences, I could have served a longer sentence in prison for some of the stupid, reckless things I did as a teenager. I am grateful to have gotten a second chance -- and I believe our society should make a sustained investment in offering second chances to our youth.

ACORN doesn't deserve its bad rap

BY PETER DREIER

For 40 years, the community organizing group ACORN has been a strong and effective voice for low-income Americans. It has registered more than 1 million citizens to vote. It has provided counseling and other assistance to help Americans buy and keep homes. It has fought on behalf of working people for fair treatment by employers, banks, mortgage companies and payday lenders. It played a leading role in organizing the victims of Hurricane Katrina to gain a voice in the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast.

Nobody wins in Afghan runoff election

BY RAJAN MENON

Politicians love photo ops. So when Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., appeared alongside Hamid Karzai as the beleaguered Afghan president announced that he would agree to a runoff election, it was hardly surprising. Kerry was doing what politicians do.

The secret of San Cristobal

BY BRIAN LATELL

Forty-seven years ago, on Oct. 22, President John F. Kennedy revealed that the Soviet Union was secretly installing strategic nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba. More than 40 were to be emplaced, capable of obliterating nearly every major American city. The two superpowers confronted each other at the brink of nuclear holocaust.

Who's afraid of the free market?

BY HAROLD MEYERSON

As everybody knows, the two biggest battles on Capitol Hill -- reforming healthcare and regulating Wall Street -- have unleashed massive campaigns from the enemies of free markets.

Build a legacy in America's backyard

BY ARIEL DORFMAN

Of all the regions in a dangerous and intractable world, forgotten Latin America might paradoxically offer President Barack Obama the best opportunity to influence events so that the ``hope for the future'' embodied in his Nobel Peace Prize becomes a reality.

Risking a rights disaster

BY WAZHMA FROGH

As an Afghan woman who for many years lived a life deprived of the most basic human rights, I find unbearable the thought of what will happen to the women of my country if it once again falls under the control of the insurgents and militants who now threaten it.

Stalking victims live with fear

BY TRACEE HAMILTON

I was lucky, if you can call it that, to have been stalked before the digital age. Nearly 30 years ago, a stalker had to rely largely on land lines and the U.S. mail to instill fear, and a stalking victim had to rely largely on herself and her friends for protection.

Don't blame Gloria Steinem

BY BARBARA EHRENREICH

Feminism made women miserable.

This, anyway, seems to be the most popular take-away from ``The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,'' a recent study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers that purports to show that women have become steadily unhappier since 1972. Maureen Dowd and Ariana Huffington greeted the news with somber perplexity, but the more common response has been a triumphant ``I told you so!''

Obama's meeting that wasn't

By FRED HIATT

``Our concern is that the Obama administration is perceived to be softening on human rights.''

If that comment came from a human rights lobbyist, you might not pay too much mind. But I heard it from Anwar Ibrahim, a Malaysian leader who is one of the world's foremost spokesmen for Islamic democracy -- and who is himself under threat from authorities at home. If Anwarsays that people throughout Asia and the Middle East are wondering about President Obama's commitment to human rights, the administration ought to pay attention.