Bring back managed trade to help workers’ safety

If all it took were official cajoling, public shaming, technical assistance or corporate promises, factory jobs in Bangladesh and other developing countries wouldn’t be so deadly.

IRS tax-exempt rules are the real scandal

It’s strange how “scandal” gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the “scandal” of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status.

Putin’s power grab trumps nanotechnology

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s changing attitude toward two giant government-led high-tech projects sends a troubling message about his third term in office: Maintaining power is more important than modernizing the economy.

First Amendment protects more than press

The Obama administration announced last week that it is throwing its support behind the press shield law that has been stalled in Congress since time immemorial. Critics insist that the administration, suddenly mired in scandal, is simply trying to curry favor with the news media, but the proposal deserves to be judged on its merits.

How to lose a fight online

In Scottsdale, Ariz., there is a restaurant so far gone that even Gordon Ramsay’s shouting cannot save it. In fact, the owners of Amy’s Baking Company so terrified the man behind “Kitchen Nightmares” that he decided to quit working with them rather than endure them any longer.

The real scandal of Benghazi

Yes, Virginia, there is a Benghazi scandal.

A half-century later, commencement wisdom Wisdom at commencement

In a season of commencement speeches, those trying to impart a measure of wisdom to college grads would do well to consult President John F. Kennedy’s American University speech, given 50 years ago next month.

How nonprofits cane to acquire tax-exempt status

The uproar over allegations of politically motivated investigations by the Internal Revenue Service shouldn’t be surprising given Americans’ long love affair with nonprofits and their strong disdain of partisanship, especially within bureaucracies.

The curious case of the black viral star

We knew it was coming. The formula is practically scientific: Disaster strikes; poor black person foils it (preferably in a roller set) or escapes, then gives a live interview jam-packed with ridiculous quotes that even Beyonc can’t resist; the Internet memes flood Facebook; and the fame countdown starts at minute 15.

U.S. must fight harder against TB

In 2011, tuberculosis killed 1.4 million people worldwide, almost as many as died from HIV/AIDS. And death isn’t the only damage TB does.

U.S. government spies on reporters all too often

On Monday, the Associated Press revealed that some of its reporters were recently spied on by the Justice Department in what it called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion.” The feds secretly obtained AP journalists’ phone records as part of what is believed to be an ongoing investigation into leaks of classified information. But it’s not the first time U.S. authorities have adopted draconian surveillance tactics to uncover journalists’ confidential sources.

Accused U.S. spy’s tool get laugh from Russians

Two wigs, one blond, one dark. Three pairs of glasses. Two knives. Two envelopes containing 500 euro notes. One flashlight. One can of mace. One compass. One paper map of Moscow. One ancient Nokia phone. One letter in Russian, addressed “Dear friend.”

GOP continues to anger Hispanics

Amid the scandal-mania, it has gone somewhat under the radar that the Florida state director of Hispanic outreach for the Republican National Committee, Pablo Pantoja, recently resigned his position and left the GOP. Indeed, Pantoja changed his party affiliation to Democrat.

There is only one Kermit Gosnell

Kermit Gosnell, the notorious Philadelphia late-term abortionist, has been convicted. A jury found him guilty of murder for killing three babies after failed abortions, and of involuntary manslaughter for causing a woman’s death.

IRS unites nation with shoddy treatment of tea party groups

Finally, a small cadre of busybody bureaucrats has discovered a way to bring this divided country together.

Adopt new attitude toward adoption

In today’s America, a single woman facing a surprise pregnancy is likely to consider just two options: abortion or single motherhood. The third choice, adoption, carries such a social stigma that domestic placement of infants has plummeted — even as the number of parents desperate for a baby grows.

Creating roadblocks to nuclear arms reductions

Not that we need one, but last week offered another example of congressional dysfunction, this time on defense.

The dirty secrets of the CIA’s War on Terror

In April 1975, Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, impaneled a special investigative committee to look into shocking accounts of CIA dirty tricks. The Church Committee ultimately published 14 reports over two years revealing a clandestine agency that was a law unto itself — plotting to assassinate heads of state (Castro, Diem, Lumumba, Trujillo), carrying out weird experiments with LSD, and suborning American journalists. As a result, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning the assassination of foreign leaders, the House and Senate established standing intelligence committees, and the United States set up the so-called FISA courts, which oversee request for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign agents.

How to tell if college presidents are overpaid

The Chronicle of Higher Education tells us the median salary of public university presidents rose 4.7 percent in 2011-12 to more than $440,000 a year. This increase vastly outpaced the rate of inflation, as well as the earnings of the typical worker in the U.S. economy. Perhaps, most relevant for this community, it also surpassed the compensation growth for university professors.

Last hope for bipartisanship dies

In the past couple weeks, in interviews with House and Senate staffers for the Republican leadership, there has been a depressing message: Nothing is going to get done while Obama is in office. Again and again, the same mantra could be heard. Partisanship and election jockeying for 2014 and 2016 is going to keep everything locked up.

Four steps to curb military sexual assault

The news that sexual harassment and assault in the military are more common than ever — not just that the number of reported incidents has climbed in the past two years but also that an estimated 26,000 personnel experienced unacceptable sexually aggressive and threatening behavior from their military colleagues — should come as no surprise to the Pentagon’s leaders: They have had the raw data for weeks. Moreover, the steps necessary to turn this situation around do not require months of study or reflection: These, too, should be well known to civilian and military leaders.

Elizabeth Smart says pro-abstinence sex ed hurts rape victims

In 2004, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her Salt Lake City home, held captive in the mountains and raped repeatedly for nine months. Since her escape, she has emerged as an advocate for human-trafficking victims — and recently, a critic of abstinence-only sex education. When Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins University panel recently, she explained one of the factors deterring her from escaping her attacker: She felt so worthless after being raped that she felt unfit to return to her society, which had communicated some hard and fast rules about premarital sexual contact.

Pell grants shouldn’t pay for remedial college classes

Everyone, from President Obama to Rep. Paul Ryan to Bill Gates, seems to have an idea for improving the federal Pell Grant Program for higher education.

Liberal anger only makes Ted Cruz stronger

Rude, entitled, arrogant and off- putting: That’s how the conventionally wise in Washington are characterizing Ted Cruz, the conservative new senator from Texas. It’s a better description of the critics themselves, who are inadvertently helping Cruz build his national fan base.

NRA doesn’t deserve any sympathy

Usually when a senator suffers a big public defeat, he slinks off to lick his wounds. He rarely retwists the arms that didn’t bend his way. Colleagues don’t like to be seen switching. Were they horribly mistaken the first time? Don’t know what they believe?

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