| The 'failed' expectations of Charles Dickens Dec 27th 2012, 02:58 Christmas and Charles Dickens have gone together at least since the wonderful Dingley Dell chapters of "The Pickwick Papers," while a somewhat later book, the one with "Carol" in the title, is now as integral to the holiday as Handel's "Messiah" and last-minute shopping. Biographers have recorded that in the Dickens household, the novelist — "the Inimitable," as he was grandiosely called — regularly made a great production of the season between Christmas and Twelfth Night, packing the evenings with lavish dinners and private theatricals, the latter featuring the writer's children. Read full article >>   |  | Editorial Board: John Kerry: Well-suited to be secretary of state Dec 27th 2012, 00:42 IN NOMINATING Sen. John F. Kerry for secretary of state, President Obama observed that "in a sense, John's entire life has prepared him for this role." Mr. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, has been an activist in foreign affairs since his arrival in the Senate in 1985. A consistent advocate of U.S. leadership, he has forged personal ties with top politicians in scores of countries. Even his failed 2004 presidential campaign left him with experience managing a large organization and its daily challenges. Read full article >>   | | Editorial Board: UDC begins a new path without Sessoms Dec 27th 2012, 00:39 ALLEN L. SESSOMS took over leadership of the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) four years ago with grand ideas to transform the school into a prized flagship institution, on a par with the best of this nation's public universities. Mr. Sessoms's vision — as with those of many of his predecessors — was out of step with the realities of the troubled school or, for that matter, the needs of D.C. residents. The abrupt decision to fire Mr. Sessoms last week is a sign that the university's trustees may finally be serious about right-sizing the university and giving it a viable mission. Read full article >>   | | Tax fairness and the wealthy Dec 27th 2012, 00:29 A central question for leaders confronting our fiscal crisis is fairness in the tax system — in particular, whether the wealthiest Americans are paying their fair share. While there appears — or, at least, appeared — to be some agreement between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner that taxes on the wealthy must go up, the amount of the increase remains undecided. Many argue that the wealthy are already paying a disproportionate share of taxes, a view that new data from the Internal Revenue Service appear to support. Missing from the conversation, however, is an appreciation of the way these data fail to accurately describe the true income of the wealthiest Americans. Read full article >> | | Republicans rejecting their own ideas Dec 27th 2012, 00:28 We know that the House of Representatives has been unable to reach a sensible deal to avoid unnecessary fiscal trouble at the first of the year because of right-wing Republicans' aversion to tax increases. Read full article >> | | The door-opener to America Dec 27th 2012, 00:26 At the end of this year in which election results reinserted immigration into the political conversation, remember that 2012 is the 150th anniversary of "the first comprehensive immigration law." This is how the Homestead Act of 1862 is described by Blake Bell, historian at the Homestead National Monument of America near Beatrice, Neb., one of the National Park Service's many educational jewels that make the NPS one of just two government institutions (the other is the U.S. Marine Band) that should be exempt from any budget cuts, for all eternity. Read full article >> | | For safety's sake, let's get guns in schools Dec 26th 2012, 23:07 Christopher Nicholas presented a harrowing situation in his Dec. 21 letter: "Desperate and terrified teachers involved in pitched gun battles in our school hallways, classrooms and gymnasiums." But what he missed is that the teachers would be acting in response to an already desperate situation: a crazed gunman in a school bent on killing as many people as he could before someone could arrive with the means to stop him. Read full article >>   | | Tinkering with the free market Dec 26th 2012, 23:07 The Dec. 21 editorial "Profits and losses" missed a major point in calculating the costs of bailouts only in terms of returns to the government. One of the largest costs of bailouts is the moral hazard they induce by shielding imprudent investors from the consequences of risk by not allowing them to fail. Such precedents only lay the groundwork for even greater imprudent risk-taking, especially as enterprises deemed too big to fail grow in size, subsidy and political connections. Read full article >>   | | Statehood for D.C. doesn't have to be a dream Dec 26th 2012, 23:07 The satire in response to the D.C. statehood act proposed by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) was a riot ["The New Columbia," Style, Dec. 22]. Like most satire, it included a sure truth, one that applies to all statehood efforts today and in the future: "It has no chance of passing." Happily for the District's residents, there is another way. Read full article >>   | | Jonathan Bernstein: The brave new world of Cabinet nominations Dec 26th 2012, 21:55 How should a president deal with the new ground rules of Cabinet nominations? Reid Wilson of National Journal argued yesterday that Congress now has too much influence over a president's choices, noting how frequently nominations have been derailed over the last 20 years. Indeed, the real change dates a little further back than that, to the successful Democratic opposition to George H.W. Bush's nomination of John Tower as defense secretary. With Chuck Hagel's possible nomination for the Defense Department now up in the air and Susan Rice already withdrawn from consideration for the State Department, some are arguing that Barack Obama must make a stand if he is to negotiate successfully for anything. Ed Kilgore, meanwhile, takes a different position, arguing that Obama may be getting otherwise controversial nominees through by first floating someone who gets knocked down. Read full article >> | | 'Nutcrackers' wherever you go Dec 26th 2012, 18:20 WARSAW I ran into my friend Dorota at "The Nutcracker" a few days ago. As the orchestra began to play the familiar bars of Tchaikovsky's overture, she sighed. "I've seen it every year for the past 10 years," she confessed. "Finally I thought I could skip it this year. But then my daughter got a part in the children's chorus . . . ." I nodded in sympathy. Then the curtain rose, revealing a spectacular piece of scenery: the Vistula River and the snow-covered skyline of 19th-century Warsaw in the background. Snow was falling, and children seemed to be skating on what appeared to be real ice. Read full article >>   | | Jamelle Bouie: Why kicking the can is still the best option on the 'fiscal cliff' Dec 26th 2012, 17:23 While it's lost in much of the conversation, the fact of the matter is that the "fiscal cliff" was an engineered crisis, designed by congressional deficit scolds as a way to force lawmakers into crafting a debt-reduction deal. As it turns out — and as you could have predicted last year — there's little that can be done to bridge the large gap that separates Democrats and Republicans on the issue. And while the two sides may find a way to avoid the cliff, it also clear that, at this point, odds are low for a "grand bargain." Here's the Wall Street Journal : Read full article >> | | Jamelle Bouie: Why Democrats insist on upper-income tax hikes Dec 26th 2012, 14:45 A week from now, the United States will probably "go over" the "fiscal cliff," and begin to implement a series of tax increases and spending cuts that will — over the course of the year — take a large bite out of economic growth. A deal to avoid the cliff is still possible, but unlikely; Republicans remain opposed to upper-income tax increases, regardless of size, and even if they come with cuts to entitlement spending. Read full article >>   | |
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