| Editorial Board: Still hope for avoiding the fiscal cliff Dec 29th 2012, 00:44 THE UNITED STATES is only three days away from going over the "fiscal cliff" — with all the damage that could do to confidence in the country's capacity to manage its basic affairs — and Washington's leaders still have not agreed on even a stopgap measure to avoid the worst consequences of not reaching agreement. But there is a clear way to avert them. Read full article >>   |  | Editorial Board: Prince George's police get away with a beating Dec 29th 2012, 00:43 ON THE EVENING of March 3, 2010, two Prince George's County police officers, clad in riot gear and wielding nightsticks, beat an unarmed and unthreatening University of Maryland student named John J. McKenna during rowdy street celebrations in College Park following the university's men's basketball victory over Duke. The beating was swift, savage and unprovoked; Mr. McKenna had simply been skipping down the street when he encountered the police who slammed him to the ground and pummeled him. Eight metal staples were needed to close a wound to his scalp. Read full article >>   | | China's new hatchet man Dec 29th 2012, 00:01 Who will have the world's hardest job in 2013? There are many candidates for that role, but my nominee would be Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan, who has just been given the near-impossible assignment of combating corruption. Read full article >>   | | What to expect in 2013 Dec 28th 2012, 23:58 This year has been quite a storm. Three hundred sixty-five days in a cyclone with fierce weather on all fronts: an economy tossing around in fits and starts; politics stalled by fog and precipitation, with heavy rains arriving in the fall to wash away Republican hopes of winning the White House and both houses of Congress. Read full article >>   | | Greg Sargent: Obama to GOP: Last chance Dec 28th 2012, 23:38 President Obama, during a brief statement to the press just now, said Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are in the process of working out a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff" tax hikes, and pronounced himself optimistic about the talks. The key to Obama's statement, though, is that he spelled out the political reality Republican leaders will be left facing if a deal is not reached: Read full article >> | | Missing one of the holiest days of the year Dec 28th 2012, 23:35 I was disappointed with the front page of The Post on Christmas Day. It contained no indication that it was Christmas Day, other than the date at the top. The only Christmas-related story — about the grieving families in Newtown, Conn. — said nothing about the holiday itself or why the proximity of the shootings to Christmas made it all the more painful. This was particularly strange given that The Post had room on the page for an article about talented swimmers in the Washington area. Was this really the best The Post could do to acknowledge one of the holiest days of the year? Read full article >>   | | Disrespectful satire Dec 28th 2012, 23:34 I have subscribed to The Post for almost 30 years, and I cannot remember faux Christmas letters ["Season's Greetings from the Obamas," Outlook, Dec. 23] written by staff satirists pretending to be Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. I do not believe these presidents and their families were treated with such nauseating disrespect as displayed by the article and the associated bad cartoon printed above the pretend letter. For one thing, President Obama is a much better writer. Read full article >>   | | "The Girl Who Fell to Earth" by Sophia Al-Maria Dec 28th 2012, 23:02 Sleep under a ceiling, says an old Bedouin proverb, and your dreams will be only as high as the roof beam above you. Sleep under a sky, and your dreams will be as high as the stars. Half-Bedouin, half-American, born in a rustic valley of Washington state, Sophia Al-Maria was congenitally unable to look up as a child. It made her dizzy to glance at a tall building. Open skies made her feel like she was falling upward. Her dreams did not rise so much as plummet: She had a fear of being swallowed by stars. Read full article >>   | | "Hallucinations" by Oliver Sacks Dec 28th 2012, 22:56 As a young professor, I traveled to Vienna to visit a friend. Knowing that I'd written my first book on psychoanalysis and history, he sent me off to Freud's old apartment and office, which had been converted to a museum. One rang a doorbell to be admitted, and I was shocked when the museum attendant greeted me by name. Surely, I thought, my old friend had called ahead to play a little joke on me. Again, the attendant spoke to me by name in German, calling me "Professor Doktor Roth" — or so I thought. My wife was right beside me, and she later told me that nothing of the kind had happened. The museum employee had merely told me the price of admission. Read full article >>   | | "Chasing Doctor Dolittle" by Con Slobodchikoff Dec 28th 2012, 22:53 One day last summer, my Ameraucana hen Dolley picked up a strange green-and-yellow caterpillar. She quickly dropped it and made a series of clicking noises unlike anything I've ever heard from a chicken. Then she picked up the caterpillar, walked over to another hen, dropped it on the ground between them, made the same weird noises and picked it up again. She continued in this fashion until she had introduced the caterpillar to every member of the flock. Then she ate it. Read full article >>   | | Why charters shouldn't be 'neighborhood schools' Dec 28th 2012, 22:52 We both served on the Neighborhood Preference Task Force, which has just issued its final report. A parting gift of former D.C. Council chairman Kwame Brown, the task force was charged with recommending whether public charter schools should be required to grant an admissions preference to residents who live near them. Right now, charters are schools of choice and accept students from all over the District, while it is the responsibility of the D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) to provide neighborhood schools. But as higher-performing charter schools in their wards become the preferred choice for parents, some on the D.C. Council want "their" charter schools to fill up with neighborhood kids. Read full article >> | | Best year in Washington: Nate Silver Dec 28th 2012, 21:26 When the Fix was just a nerdy middle-schooler getting bullied by the usual local degenerates, we always comforted ourselves with the sure knowledge that one day the geeks would inherit the Earth. Little did we know that all these years later, Nate Silver — the decidedly dorky baseball nut turned political prognosticator — would become the electoral word made flesh. Read full article >> | | Good year in Washington: Bill and Hillary Clinton Dec 28th 2012, 21:23 Want to take a guess about the two most popular politicians in the final NBC-Wall Street Journal poll of 2012? Hint: They have the same last name. Yes, the answer is Bill and Hillary Clinton — two figures who have been on the national political scene so long that it's hard to remember a time when we didn't have them in our lives. Read full article >> | | Bad year in Washington: David Petraeus Dec 28th 2012, 21:23 At the start of the year, retired Gen. David H. Petraeus was flying high. He was the director of the CIA and was often mentioned as a prospective presidential candidate. He was the most recognized and heralded general of his generation, the subject of many adoring news stories and books. He had been the hero of the Iraq war, turning around an apparent disaster with the troop surge. And in 2010, he was called in to take over the Afghan war after Gen. Stanley McChrystal's dismissal. Read full article >> | | Good year in Washington: D.C. sports teams Dec 28th 2012, 21:23 Take the paper bags off your heads, D.C. sports fans. Now is our time. Consider the past year: The Nationals won 98 games in the regular season, the most of any team in the big leagues. And were it not for a blown six-run lead in Game 5 of the divisional series against the St. Louis Cardinals, we might be talking about the Nats as World Series champs. Read full article >> | | The worst year in Washington: The tea party Dec 28th 2012, 21:22 The Gadsden flag, which flew proudly over the 2010 midterm elections, now lies in tatters — rent by internal disagreements, losses among its most visible standard-bearers and a growing sense that the tea party movement, which once looked like it could transform American politics, will soon be nothing more than a blip in the country's collective memory. Read full article >> | |
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