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  • Egyptians have lost faith in Morsi

    As Mohammed Morsi prepares to mark his first anniversary as president Sunday, Egypt is bracing for a fresh wave of protests.

  • Texas filibuster on abortion bill only the start

    In just 11 hours Tuesday, Texas lawmaker Wendy Davis went from relative obscurity to national fame as the symbol of resistance to harsh antiabortion laws. Davis, a Democrat from Fort Worth, filibustered a proposal that would place new restrictions on abortion clinics and ban the practice after 20 weeks.

  • A life sentence no child deserves

    A year ago this week, the Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that it is unconstitutional to impose on a child a mandatory sentence of life without parole. The court stopped short of striking down all life-without-parole sentences for children but required that judges consider a child’s maturity, home environment, role in the crime, potential for rehabilitation and other key factors before ordering this harsh penalty.

  • For Edward Snowden, odd bedfellows

    The global hunt for Edward Snowden is damaging U.S. interests in ways that go far beyond the intelligence data he leaked.

  • When the world’s sugar daddy turns sour

    The president of the United States is in Africa. Nelson Mandela is on life support. John Kerry is in Israel. Syria festers. America is somehow shocked that its plan to rely on the goodwill of the Taliban and Hamid Karzai to solve Afghanistan’s problems isn’t working. Edward Snowden seems to have spent the past week playing in the Moscow road company version of the Tom Hanks movie “The Terminal.”

  • The left’s four fiscal fantasies

    There is a rising chorus on the left that our fiscal conversation should be declared over and plans for meaningful entitlement reforms mothballed. These voices argue that we can have substantial new spending on public investments, a secure safety net, no middle-class tax increase — all without addressing entitlement spending.

  • Voting Rights Act brought major economic benefits, too

    The Supreme Court’s rejection this week of a central element of the 1965 Voting Rights Act took aim at a measure that not only broke down barriers to political participation in the South but also made significant contributions to the economic well-being of black Southerners and to the region as a whole.

  • Hezbollah leader’s political demise is closing in

    The rebel forces in Syria have reported that in the recent bitter fighting in the strategic town of Qusair, they saw very few Syrian army troops, and that they were beaten back mainly by Hezbollah militiamen. But these victories — important as they may be in themselves — won’t save the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and no less significantly, they will have a largely detrimental effect on the future of Hezbollah and its leader.

  • Is Newark mayor Cory Booker too Jewish for Senate?

    The question before the voters of New Jersey is a simple one: Is Newark Mayor Cory Booker too Jewish to be a U.S. senator?

  • Why the court struck down DOMA

    Now the shoe is on the other foot, and it is time for the court to strike down a federal statute in order to advance a liberal policy goal rather than a conservative policy goal. Justice Antonin Scalia’s paean to the democratic process in his dissent sounds a little hollow, coming in the wake of his votes to strike down affirmative action programs and Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act — both of them the result of the democratic process, as much as DOMA was. Meanwhile, none of the liberals pipe in to explain how to reconcile the outcome of this case with the concerns about democracy that they expressed in dissenting opinions in the other cases. (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in Shelby County, Ala.: “That determination of the body empowered to enforce the Civil War Amendments ‘by appropriate legislation’ merits this Court’s utmost respect.”)

  • Chaos in the Texas Legislature

    Democracy had a bad night late Tuesday/early Wednesday in a Texas Senate chamber where both sides worked to avoid the moral high ground. Both succeeded.

  • Paula Deen story dishes up Southern food for thought

    Now we know that Paula Deen has used the N-word.

  • First-world climate change problems

    One of the cruelest ironies of global warming is that a problem largely caused by wealthy countries will be predominantly felt by the world’s poorest. Whether it’s coastal flooding in Bangladesh or deserts expanding across Africa, these consequences can seem distant to those lucky enough to enjoy the air-conditioned automobiles and factory-farmed meat of the global north. But 1 percenters won’t go completely unscathed. Here are five ways climate change will affect the lifestyles of the rich and comfortable in coming years.

  • Paula’s worst ingredients

    Paula Deen is where sass meets crass, where the homespun and folksy curdle into something with a sour aftertaste.

  • The American Dream, detained

    My name is Antonio, and I came to this country from Guatemala in search of a better life for myself and my family. I left my home to make one here because I believed that if you work hard in America, you can make something of yourself.

  • Colleges should chase geographic diversity down to Zip codes

    For decades, colleges and universities have pursued geographic diversity in their student bodies. Web pages proudly trumpet that this year the college has students “from all 50 states and from over 80 countries” (Harvard University) or that “the students come from throughout the United States and the world” (Stanford University). Even public universities use these formulations. At the University of Michigan in 2011, students came from “81 of 83 Michigan counties, all 50 states, and 54 countries.”

  • Obama pursues disarmament folly

    President Obama has announced the next step in his quixotic quest to achieve a nuclear-free world. Speaking at the Brandenburg Gate this last week, the president proposed reductions in U.S. nuclear forces to about 1,000 deployed strategic warheads; that represents a cut of more than 30 percent from the level of the 2010 New START agreement. While the offer was placed in the context of a bilateral agreement with Russia, Obama’s words were carefully chosen. He did not rule out unilateral reductions — something the president’s top advisers have indicated might happen if Moscow refuses to reduce its forces — or pursuing an arrangement outside of the constitutional treaty process.

  • Rethinking gun control — the facts will surprise both sides

    Background checks are back. Last week, Vice President Joe Biden said that five U.S. senators — enough to change the outcome — have told him they’re looking for a way to switch their votes and pass legislation requiring a criminal background check for the purchase of a firearm.

  • Who gets admitted to college?

    At Oxford University in England, admissions criteria are clear. As the admissions director there told me recently, what matters is an applicant’s potential to succeed in the subject she wants to study. A student wanting to study mathematics, say, must nail the math entrance exam, and in an interview show the potential to be an outstanding mathematician. Whether or not she is a concert violinist, the first in her family to go on to higher education or the only female applicant in mathematics is irrelevant.

  • Why is China talking to the Taliban?

    Hamid Karzai’s derailment of the planned U.S. peace talks with the Taliban may have been a disappointment to Washington’s hopes of ending its longest war — but it disappointed Beijing, too. China welcomed the breakthrough in the Qatar process, and sees a political settlement in Afghanistan as increasingly important for its economic and security interests in the region. As a result, China’s support for reconciliation between Kabul and the Taliban has become a fixture of its burgeoning diplomatic activity on Afghanistan’s post-2014 future.

  • A clean break from Keystone

    President Obama is expected to make a decision in the next few months on the Keystone XL project. As the debate heats up, I worry that the shorthand used in talking about the issue obscures the real point.

  • John Boehner’s challenge: His job or his legacy?

    House Speaker John Boehner stopped by the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon to pitch a gathering of the National Association of Manufacturers on the Republicans’ plans for jobs and growth.

  • Republicans need immigration reset with Hispanics

    Republicans have an opportunity for a get-out-of-jail moment with the fastest-growing slice of the electorate, Hispanics.

  • High-school statistics not encouraging

    Now that high school graduation season is winding down, it’s worth taking a moment to remember that in the sea of flowing gowns lurk some unsettling statistical realities. On many measures of childhood well-being, the last decade in the United States has been one of stagnation. We remain an outlier in many ways among developed countries.

  • How to block the NSA from your friends list

    After recent revelations of NSA spying, it’s difficult to trust large Internet corporations such as Facebook to host our online social networks. Facebook is one of nine companies tied to PRISM — perhaps the largest government surveillance effort in world history. Even before this story broke, many social-media addicts had lost trust in the company. Maybe now they’ll finally start thinking seriously about leaving the social network giant.

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