Previous Headlines

Steve Adubato / Where's the line on gambling?

Published: 02/07/10

I grew up in a neighborhood in Newark where gambling was part of everyday life. Many of my relatives gambled. The guys gambled on games and, later, on horse racing, and many aunts gambled on "the number," which was different in every neighborhood that was into gambling. I never actually knew anyone who won it, but it didn't stop anyone from gambling.

Steve Adubato / Where's the line on gambling?

Published: 02/07/10

I grew up in a neighborhood in Newark where gambling was part of everyday life. Many of my relatives gambled. The guys gambled on games and, later, on horse racing, and many aunts gambled on "the number," which was different in every neighborhood that was into gambling. I never actually knew anyone who won it, but it didn't stop anyone from gambling.

Online bonus column / Kevin Huffman / In the race for education reform, some false starts

Published: 02/05/10

In the brave new world of data-driven education reform, most states have learned how to talk the talk. Start with “global competitiveness,” add in some “longitudinal data” and “transparency,” garnish with “accountability” and serve.

Online bonus column / Geng He / Will the U.S. help my husband?

Published: 02/05/10

One year ago this week, China kidnapped my husband.

Neely Tucker / ‘Who dat’ thinks he can mess with Saints fans’ mojo?

Published: 02/05/10

Dear NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell:

Ruth Marcus / Actually, the filibuster is a good thing

Published: 02/05/10

This won't comfort Democrats mourning the loss of their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but the existence of the filibuster is, on balance, a good thing.

William McKenzie / We need to make the tough calls on the nation's debt

Published: 02/05/10

David Walker is not your typical holy roller. Bald, bespectacled baby boomers don't make passionate preachers. Nothing against them; I'm a bald, bespectacled baby boomer, myself. We don't bring the house down.

Online bonus column / Harold Meyerson / Pushing Obama on jobs

Published: 02/04/10

The Democrats have shifted their focus, they tell us relentlessly, to jobs, jobs, jobs.

Online bonus column / C. Fred Bergsten / A clear route to recovery: Exports

Published: 02/04/10

President Obama has smartly suggested that a new export strategy could support 2 million very good American jobs, more than created by his stimulus initiative. The United States already sells about $1.5 trillion worth of goods and services annually to the rest of the world, which creates about 10 million high-paying jobs. Every $1 billion of additional exports will produce about 7,000 very good jobs. Robust export expansion would also reduce our large trade deficits and resultant need to borrow abroad to finance them.

Dana Milbank / Would Obama be better off with a Republican Congress?

Published: 02/04/10

Last week the opposition party wrote a startling new entry in the Annals of Obstruction: Republicans were so determined to deny President Obama an achievement that a group of them voted against their own proposal.

George Will / While China invests in future, America invests in past

Published: 02/04/10

On Day One of his vow to take "meaningful steps to rein in our debt," Barack Obama asked Congress to freeze portions of discretionary domestic spending. This would follow an astonishing permanent expansion: Republicans on the House Budget Committee say appropriations bills Obama has signed, along with his stimulus spending, have increased discretionary domestic spending 84 percent. He almost certainly will not keep his promise to veto spending bills when Congress largely disregards his request.

Leonard Pitts Jr. / Obama's speech to GOP a reminder of what matters

Published: 02/04/10

"Come now, let us reason together ..." Isaiah 1:18

Online bonus column / Tim Rutten / A Super Bowl ad we can do without

Published: 02/03/10

Today, there are few corners of our communal life untouched by rancorous political division.

Online bonus column / Doug Smith / The million-billion mistake is among the most common in journalism. But who’s counting?

Published: 02/03/10

The difference between a million and a billion is a number so vast that it would seem nearly impossible to confuse the two.

Ben Manski and Lisa Graves / Amend Constitution to counter campaign-finance ruling

Published: 02/03/10

You just lost the heart of your citizenship, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Robert J. Boyce Jr. / Job No. 1: Get Revel completed to revive Atlantic City

Published: 02/03/10

In recent days, much has been written and said about the Revel Entertainment Group project and how state and local support may finally get it finished. With very few exceptions, everyone agrees that Atlantic City needs Revel to create jobs and increase economic activity.

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey / Give nurses more of a say in fixing health care

Published: 02/03/10

Skilled health provider. Sympathetic caregiver. Trusted dispenser of medicines. Capable interpreter of complicated medical instructions. Coordinator of care. Triage expert.

Online bonus column / Jack Goldsmith / Can we stop the cyber arms race?

Published: 02/02/10

In a speech recently on “Internet freedom,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decried the cyberattacks that threaten U.S. economic and national security interests. “Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences and international condemnation,” she warned, alluding to the China-Google kerfuffle. We should “create norms of behavior among states and encourage respect for the global networked commons.”

Online bonus column / Gilbert Arenas / Learning to be a better role model

Published: 02/02/10

The Washington Post suggested on Dec. 31 that I send a message to young fans “about guns being neither glamorous nor desirable.” I am grateful for the opportunity to do something good in the face of the very bad situation I created.

Curbing property taxes is grassroots effort

Published: 02/02/10

New Jersey faces an immediate budget crisis at all levels of government and a long-term fiscal problem that can no longer be solved by gimmicks. The estimated state budget deficit for the upcoming fiscal year is more than $8 billion and there is a more than $1 billion hole to plug in the current budget. While an improving economy will help, costs such as unfunded pension liabilities mean that our budget problems will be with us long after this recession has passed.

Leonard Pitts Jr. / Contempt for poor is still a prejudice society will accept

Published: 02/02/10

If he'd said it of Jews, he would still be apologizing.

Robert Laszewski / A smaller, bipartisan health care bill: Here's how to start

Published: 02/02/10

I've heard many people say it won't be possible to pass a bipartisan health-care bill in today's poisoned environment. But we will ultimately have real health care reform in this country for a very simple reason: We have no choice and both Democrats and Republicans understand that. More important, the American people know it.

Joachim von Amsberg / Rebuilding after 2004 tsunami can be a model for Haiti

Published: 02/02/10

The official death toll of the recent earthquake in Haiti is more than 110,000. That tens of thousands more may have been killed puts this tragedy on par with the tsunami that struck South Asia in December 2004, killing about 200,000 people and displacing more than a half-million people just in Indonesia's Aceh province. There are other parallels between these disasters. Haiti is a poor country long plagued by governance issues. Even though Indonesia is a well-functioning state, Aceh at that time had been ravaged by decades of conflict between the Indonesian government and Acehnese groups fighting for independence. Whatever government had existed in Aceh was severely diminished by the tsunami.

Online bonus column / Eva Rodriguez / Alito's gesture

Published: 02/01/10

Those of you who claim that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s “not true” during the State of the Union address constitutes a “Joe Wilson moment” are wrong. So are those who argue that President Obama was out of line with his criticism of last week’s Supreme Court decision.

Online bonus column / Paul Sarvadi / Recovery depends on jobs at small businesses

Published: 02/01/10

The latest job-market news is bleak.

Petula Dvorak / Many moms actually pay to work

Published: 02/01/10

I really thought it wouldn't get much worse than the unpaid college internship.

Barbara Shelly / What changed? Americans still need health reform

Published: 02/01/10

I took a little stroll down memory lane last week. Back to the glorious days of June.

Margaret Carlson / Tea Party may be too hot to handle

Published: 02/01/10

The Tea Party activists claimed a huge victory in Massachusetts when Scott Brown, a former Cosmopolitan centerfold driving a pickup, captured the hallowed seat of Ted Kennedy.

Joel Brinkley / Let’s go into Pakistan and get bin Laden

Published: 02/01/10

When the World Food Program suspended operations in south Somalia last month because Islamic extremists were hassling and murdering aid workers,

Charles Krauthammer / Block funding for terrorist trial

Published: 01/31/10

The real scandal surrounding the failed Christmas Day airline bombing was not the fact that a terrorist got on a plane - that can happen to any administration, as it surely did to the Bush administration - but what happened afterward, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was captured and came under the full control of the U.S. government.

Online bonus column / Jonah Goldberg / Obama letting it ride on a bad bet

Published: 01/29/10

In 1964, Barry Goldwater gave an uncompromisingly conservative and liberty-loving speech to the Republican Convention. A reporter in the audience couldn’t believe his ears. “My God! He’s going to run as Barry Goldwater!”

Online bonus column / Jim Landers / Betting on oil can turn speculation into manipulation

Published: 01/29/10

Oil demand is sluggish. Oil producers have plenty of spare capacity. Yet prices are up, and the futures market is bullish on the long-term outlook for oil.

David Boghossian / Can Google run for president?

Published: 01/29/10

The Supreme Court decision that enables corporations to become full-throated participants in our political process by protecting their right to free speech raises a vexing philosophical question: If corporations are to get the same rights as people, why can't they vote?

Frida Ghitis / Helping Haiti - Israel to the rescue

Published: 01/29/10

For once, the main topic of discussion in Israel has no connection to war, politics or even the Middle East. From huge newspaper headlines to private conversations in small towns, Israelis can't get enough information about the tragedy crushing Haiti.

George Will / Obama’s speech reveals Democrats’ split personality

Published: 01/29/10

Barack Obama tiptoed Wednesday night along the seam that bifurcates the Democratic Party's brain. The seam separates that brain's John Quincy Adams lobe from its Sigmund Freud lobe.

Online bonus column / Celestine Bohlen / Sniping at U.S. Haiti role shows EU weakness

Published: 01/28/10

PARIS — Most Americans are probably unaware that the rapid dispatch of U.S. troops and military equipment to Haiti after the Jan. 12 earthquake was an occupation.

Online bonus column / Jules Witcover / On being a one-term president

Published: 01/28/10

Of all of President Obama’s recent musings, none seems more fanciful than his observation in an ABC News interview with Diane Sawyer, “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.”

Susan Antilla / Protecting consumers won't cripple business or hurt economy

Published: 01/28/10

Flouting the efforts of lobbyists to shut down his plan for a consumer protection agency, the newly combative President Barack Obama is digging in his heels. Thus, we open another round in the brawl between Obama and business groups that claim the bill covering mortgage and credit-card lenders is a death sentence for small companies, expensive for consumers, and will "change the way Americans do business forever."

George Will / So much unfounded alarm over sensible high court ruling

Published: 01/28/10

Last week's Supreme Court decision that substantially deregulates political speech has provoked an edifying torrent of hyperbole. Critics' dismay reveals their conviction: Speech about the elections that determine the government's composition is not a constitutional right but a mere privilege that exists at the sufferance of government.

Leonard Pitts Jr. / All-white basketball league has a lesson for whites and blacks

Published: 01/28/10

Don Lewis thinks white men can't jump.

Online bonus column / Kathleen Parker / Obama's fight club

Published: 01/27/10

WASHINGTON — In the run-up to Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, the so-called narrative question is whether the president will be — pick a curtain — party leader, president, conciliator or fighter.

Online bonus column / Richard Sale / Bill Clinton, the reluctant warrior, reinvented the American battle strategy

Published: 01/27/10

I recently wrote a book, “Clinton’s Secret Wars: The Evolution of a Commander-in-Chief,” that was to me an attempt to right a wrong. The motivating passion behind the book was to correct the snide trivializing of President Bill Clinton’s foreign-policy performance. Since I am not a Democrat and harbor great suspicion of anything political, I felt I could attempt the task without disfiguring it with bias.

Erwin Chemerinsky / Apparently, the right is just fine with judicial activism

Published: 01/27/10

The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision holding that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money in election campaigns is a stunning example of judicial activism by its five most conservative justices. In striking down a federal statute and explicitly overturning prior decisions, the court has changed the nature of elections in the United States. At the same time, the conservative justices have demonstrated that decades of conservative criticism of judicial activism was nonsense. Conservative justices are happy to be activists when it serves their ideological agenda.

Paul J. Gorrell / Obama's real problem is golf; he needs to be playing hoops

Published: 01/27/10

There has been a great deal of reflection recently on President Barack Obama's challenges during his first year in office. My sense is that critiques of Obama's leadership style should factor in the symbolic shift that occurred when he went from candidate to president: We elected a basketball player who has become a golfer.

E. Thomas McClanahan / Obama has no choice now but to move to the center

Published: 01/27/10

It will take a while for the Democrats to sort out what happened to them last week.

Online bonus column / Gene Weingarten / Is it worse to let a drug dealer go free, or to reward the police for lying under oath?

Published: 01/26/10

WASHINGTON — Last week I was a juror in the trial of a man accused of selling a $10 bag of heroin to an undercover police officer. At the end of the two days of testimony, I concluded that the defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I also concluded that he should be acquitted.

Online bonus column / Richard Cohen / The flash candidate

Published: 01/26/10

Some years ago, I was having lunch with John McCain in the Senate dining room when a new senator stopped by to say hello. He was John Edwards. His smile was capacious. He exuded happiness. He was articulate and friendly, and when he left, he got a behind-his-back endorsement from McCain: Keep your eye on him, McCain counseled. And so I did.

Deroy Murdock / GOP needs positive agenda: Here's a start

Published: 01/26/10

Congressional Republicans are right to savor Senator-elect Scott Brown's stunning victory last Tuesday. Democrat Martha Coakley's self-destructive gaffes notwithstanding, conservative Republican Brown's formidable 52 percent to 47 percent triumph is akin to Democratic Rep. Barney Frank surfacing in Salt Lake City and, three weeks later, zooming past a pro-market entrepreneur into the Senate.

Michael Waldman / Court's campaign-finance decision ominous for Obama

Published: 01/26/10

The Supreme Court on Thursday upended a century's worth of campaign finance law. An immediate question raised by the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision is whether this will flood elections with suddenly legal corporate money. Less understood but deeply significant is what this shows about the court and its relationship to the Obama administration and Congress.

David Blanchflower / Credit crisis creating a lost generation

Published: 01/26/10

There is now a danger that the biggest fallout from the credit crisis is the creation of a lost generation of young people who never make the transition from school to work.