| The time bomb in Obamacare? Jan 19th 2013, 01:18 A willow, not an oak. So said conservatives of Chief Justice John Roberts when he rescued the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — a.k.a. Obamacare — from being found unconstitutional. But the manner in which he did this may have made the ACA unworkable, thereby putting it on a path to ultimate extinction. Read full article >>   |  | Newfound status for Saudi women Jan 19th 2013, 01:17 RIYADH, Saudi Arabia A week ago, Saudi Arabia saw something that people in the kingdom often talk about but rarely witness — a potentially important political reform. Saudi King Abdullah announced Jan. 11 that 30 women would join the kingdom's Shura Council, a consultative body of 150 persons, and that women henceforth would hold 20 percent of the seats. Skeptics cautioned that it's a symbolic move, since this is an advisory group that doesn't actually enact any legislation. But it's a powerful symbol, according to men and women here. Read full article >>   | | 'How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed' by Ray Kurzweil Jan 19th 2013, 01:12 In January 1976, Ray Kurzweil introduced the Kurzweil Reading Machine, a breakthrough system that could photograph a book (with Kurzweil's flat-bed scanner), recognize the text (with Kurzweil's omnifont character-recognition technology) and speak the text (with Kurzweil's speech-synthesis software). Fifteen years later he struck gold again, this time a program that could turn natural speech into text. Today a descendant of that technology is Apple's voice-recognizing Siri. Clearly Kurzweil knows inventions: In 1999 President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Technology. Read full article >>   | | A new term, a new Obama Jan 19th 2013, 01:08 At noon Sunday, after taking a private oath, Barack Obama begins his second term as the most visible public figure in the world. His face has appeared on more than 12,000 national nightly newscasts. Google his name, and up pop 952 million results. His Facebook page has nearly 35 million "likes." His tweets have 26 million followers, and on election night his electronic utterance — "Four more years" — was the most retweeted of the year. He was Time's 2012 Person of the Year, and Gallup found him to be the "most admired" man in the world — for the fifth year in a row. Read full article >>   | | Editorial Board: Stiffing an ally in Mali Jan 19th 2013, 01:05 THE TAKING of American hostages by Islamic militants who attacked a gas field in Algeria on Wednesday served to underline the reality that al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the jihadist factions affiliated with it pose a direct threat to the United States. The group is active not just in Algeria and neighboring Libya — where it is believed to have played a role in the fatal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi in September — but also in Mali, where militants have taken over territory the size of Texas and threatened to capture the rest of the country. Read full article >>   | | Editorial Board: D.C. schools' rate of expulsion raises questions Jan 19th 2013, 01:04 PUBLIC CHARTER schools in the District expel students at a higher rate than do the city's traditional schools. Are the charters expelling too many, or the school system too few? The answer is a bit of both; both the charter and traditional schools should examine their policies and practices. Also important is whether the District provides sufficient learning environments for students who struggle in conventional settings. Read full article >>   | | Richard Nixon, progressive Jan 19th 2013, 00:17 Regarding the Jan. 11 Style article, "To Nixon friends, his legacy is clear," on the legacy of President Richard Nixon on the centennial of his birth: I am surprised the authors did not mention Nixon's enduring domestic legislation, which created the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air and Water Acts, the earned income tax credit, Equal Employment Opportunity Act, Endangered Species Act and the Occupation Safety and Health Administration, among other progressive legislation. Indeed, in many respects Nixon was a demonstrably liberal president whose accomplishments in both foreign policy and domestic legislation were unfortunately overshadowed by Watergate. Read full article >>   | | Nixon thought he was above the law Jan 19th 2013, 00:17 Someone who knew nothing about Richard Nixon would conclude, after reading the Jan. 11 Style article "To Nixon's friends, his legacy is clear," that this was an honorable and good man who was unjustly persecuted by his political enemies. That was certainly what the paranoid Nixon thought, himself — he had an enemies list to prove it. But it was Nixon, not his "persecutors," who stained American history. It is understandable that Nixon's friends and families have nice things to say about the man, and I respect their personal feelings. For the rest of us, however, the facts are clear. Read full article >>   | | The importance of diversity Jan 19th 2013, 00:11 Throughout its coverage of President Obama's selection of his new Cabinet, The Post has done a disservice to the merits of diversity. For instance, your Jan. 10 news article "Labor Secretary Solis quits her post" noted that Hilda Solis was the first Hispanic woman to hold her position, but you didn't explain why this is important. Left implicit is the idea that diversity is good for sake of gender and racial equality. This is only part of the issue. Read full article >>   | | In Obama's White House, ambition looks a little different Jan 18th 2013, 23:49 Ambition is a strong component of the American character. From rags to riches, log house to White House, community organizer to commander in chief, nowhere is this idea more pronounced than in the American presidency. But the presidency has a complicated relationship with ambition. It takes enormous ambition to win the job, but the position is structured to restrain its expression. Read full article >>   | | 'The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America' by James T. Patterson Jan 18th 2013, 23:47 James T. Patterson takes his title from a song that was released in September 1965, "written primarily by P.J. Sloan, a nineteen-year-old admirer of [Bob] Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone,' " and performed recorded by Barry McGuire. Just about everyone associated with "Eve of Destruction" is now forgotten, and the song hasn't much staying power, but Patterson finds it significant as evidence of a shift then taking place in American popular music, away from bubble-gum soft rock and toward songs of protest: "Its lyrics, accompanied by sounds of bombs going off, were bitter, blunt, and devastatingly bleak about contemporary events, predicting that all manner of terrible developments — war in Vietnam, racial tensions, nuclear weapons — were propelling the United States (and 'the whole crazy world') toward the apocalypse." Read full article >>   | | A long-term answer to Virginia's transportation funding needs Jan 18th 2013, 23:38 Virginia needs a workable, long-term solution to its transportation challenges. That is why this month I announced the " Virginia's Road to the Future " funding and reform package to invest more than $3.1 billion in the state's transportation network over the next five years. This plan will restructure Virginia's archaic transportation funding sources and create a system that will grow with economic activity. It will also address the long-term deficiencies of the gas tax by making Virginia the first state in the nation to eliminate it. Read full article >> | | 'The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery' by Agatha Christie Jan 18th 2013, 23:24 No murders. That's the one complaint Agatha Christie fans may make about "The Grand Tour," an otherwise marvelous compendium of never-before-published letters, autobiographical excerpts and black-and-white photographs generated by Christie and her first husband, Archie, during the round-the-world tour they took in 1922. Eccentric characters abound (mustachioed majors! suspiciously solicitous servants!), as do lavish locales (ocean liners! grand hotels!). Indeed, the only thing missing from this real-life Christie adventure is the corpse in the dining car, the body in the ballroom. Read full article >>   | | 'Leonardo and the Last Supper' by Ross King Jan 18th 2013, 22:51 In the middle of the 1490s, Leonardo da Vinci was given the task of painting a religious scene on a wall in a church refectory where Dominican friars took their meals. His boss was Lodovico Sforza, the duke of Milan. The artist certainly didn't view this as a plum assignment — although it might have been preferable to painting the bedroom of the duchess, which he was also called upon to do. Read full article >>   | | 'Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865' by James Oakes Jan 18th 2013, 22:40 The Republican newspaper publisher Horace Greeley bowed to no man north of Richmond when it came to underestimating Abraham Lincoln. In the late summer of 1862, his New York Tribune was pummeling the president for dragging his feet on an expected blanket announcement freeing all slaves in the rebel states. In response to these stinging editorials, on Aug. 22 of that year Lincoln penned one of the most puzzling letters of his presidency. He reminded Greeley that the great mission of the war was restoration of the Union. He continued, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others I would also do that." Read full article >>   | | Takes a negotiator to know a negotiator Jan 18th 2013, 22:39 Robert J. Samuelson's Jan. 14 op-ed column, "What will Lew do?", cited House Speaker John Boehner's complaint that White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew was impossible to negotiate with. Maybe it wasn't Mr. Lew who was the problem. Recent events demonstrate that any negotiation with Mr. Boehner is a waste of time, inasmuch as he is unable to speak for his caucus. Read full article >> | |
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