| Obama's quest for greatness Jan 21st 2013, 00:51 The "legacy thing" may be harder than Barack Obama imagines. Beginning his second term, Obama has a focused, though unstated, agenda: to achieve presidential greatness in the eyes of historians and Americans. In this, he will almost certainly fail. He is already a historic president as the first African American to be elected, but there is a chasm between being historic and being great. Read full article >>   |  | The liberation of Barack Obama Jan 21st 2013, 00:50 Barack Hussein Obama can begin his second term liberated by the confidence that he is already a landmark figure in American history. His task is not to manufacture a legacy but to leave his successors a nation that is more tranquil because it finally resolved arguments that roiled it for decades. Read full article >>   | | Chavez is not going quietly Jan 21st 2013, 00:49 Imagine that Barack Obama failed to appear for his swearing-in Monday — and had not been seen or heard from in a month. Imagine that Vice President Biden informed the nation that Obama, though sequestered in a foreign hospital, would remain president and would be sworn in at some unspecified date. Suppose that requests by Republicans for information on the president's condition were rejected, even as Biden and leading Democrats huddled with foreign leaders to discuss a possible transition. Read full article >>   | | Ignoring North Korea's gulags Jan 21st 2013, 00:16 As Americans celebrate President Obama's second inaugural and Martin Luther King Jr. Day — events that symbolize the power of human freedom and perseverance against oppression — for many others such freedom is a distant dream. Among the most repressive countries in the world, North Korea holds as many as 200,000 people in the vast gulag system known as the kwan-li-so. Under the guilt-by-association system established during the dictatorship of Kim Il Sung more than 50 years ago, real and imagined dissenters and as many as three generations of their relatives are punished to eliminate "the seeds" of bad families. Those imprisoned have almost no hope for release, and it is nearly impossible to escape the camps, meaning these people are almost guaranteed to die as prisoners. Over the past few decades, hundreds of thousands have perished, the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea estimates. Read full article >>   | | Getting our money's worth from health records Jan 21st 2013, 00:00 The Jan. 15 editorial "The wrong prescription" highlighted an important example of how Washington could better manage taxpayer dollars. In the "stimulus" bill, Democrats included incentive payments for health-care providers who use electronic health-record technology. I support the use of electronic health records, but as the editorial noted, it has to be done right. That is why Republicans offered an amendment to make the electronic health-records program accountable to taxpayers by demanding that no money be spent until standards were in place to ensure that systems used by different providers could "talk" with each other. Democrats defeated it. Read full article >> | | What to do about guns? Jan 20th 2013, 23:55 Thanks so much for the analysis of President Obama's constitutional exegesis in support of more gun control ["In arguing for firearms restrictions, Obama points to Constitution," news story, Jan. 17]. The Post provided an admiring picture of Mr. Obama's effort to "turn a perceived strength of gun advocates — the constitutional right to bear arms — into a potential weakness." He did this, we read, by claiming that Sikhs in Wisconsin were denied the right to worship freely and that shoppers in Oregon and movie goers in Colorado were deprived of the right to peacefully assemble. Read full article >> | | Editorial Board: Martin Luther King Jr. Day Jan 20th 2013, 23:34 IT WAS 50 years ago this August that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. closed his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with his rendering of a dream he had for the country's future. The soaring final sentences were somewhat extemporaneous — he let his emotions and sense of the occasion carry him past parts of the prepared text and on to the right words, concluding with the rousing "Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last." It was an exultant moment for much of this country, and in the national memory it has acquired the gauzy image of a happy ending to our long struggle with racial inequality and bigotry. Less vibrant in memory is an image from less than three weeks later: four girls dressed all in white because they were to lead youth day services at their Birmingham, Ala., church, their lives suddenly ended by a racial terrorist bombing. Read full article >>   | | Editorial Board: Keeping the Internet free Jan 20th 2013, 23:31 INTERNET FREEDOM is not something to be taken lightly, as anyone who has tried to gain access to forbidden sites in China will tell you. The countries that would like to censor Internet content, including Russia, China, Iran and others, were eager to see their authority to do so etched into a United Nations treaty debated at a conference last month in Dubai. The United States and other nations committed to a free and open Internet refused to sign the treaty. It was a largely symbolic protest but the right thing to do. Read full article >>   | | Jennifer Rubin: Hagel must renounce past views and comments Jan 20th 2013, 18:15 Much of the attention regarding the Chuck Hagel defense secretary nomination has centered on his past views and voting record and his serial recantation in which Hagel has praised and pledged to follow the president's policies, many of which he opposed throughout his Senate career. What we haven't heard is a specific repudiation of his prior positions. Does he now acknowledge that a ground zero nuclear position is ill-conceived and dangerous? And if so, when did he figure this out? How did he originally come to such a flawed policy judgment? Read full article >>   | | Jennifer Rubin: Distinguished Pol of the Week Jan 20th 2013, 12:45 There were lots of people last week hitting above their weight, the defining qualification for being a distinguished pol. The hardscrabble anti-Hagel forces have made big strides in surfacing concerns about Chuck Hagel and keeping his confirmation as defense secretary in doubt. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) showed that he is looking to establish himself as a policy heavyweight, attracting more praise for his immigration plan and putting on staff a respected national security expert, Jamie Fly. Read full article >>   | |
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