Much has been written about President Obama's decisive firing of General Stanley A.McChrystal from his command in Afghanistan.Yet it should have come to no one's surprise given an event now near forgotten over a year ago.Minimal in scale compared to the McChrystal affair, it clearly set forth President Obama's visceral understanding of responsibility toward service and his insistence on accountab
As budget crises force cities to cut back public services, private companies are stepping in to profit from the unmet demand.But there's a cost to communities when markets take over what were once public functions: the new private services are often more expensive and with less public oversight, they may also offer lower quality.In California, revenue-strapped community colleges are struggling to
Let's face it.Republicans are pretty masterful at creating catchy, effective soundbites to define the issues, frame the debate and sway public opinion.Case in point, Taxpayer Bailout, Death Panels and Drill, Baby, Drill. And while they're making things simple for voters, Democrats bore them to death with long-winded, over-intellectualized, nuanced explanations.If the left's ever gonna take
In Animal House, John Belushi famously demanded, Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?!? Thanks for the lesson, Bluto.It's more relevant than you think to what's happening right now on climate & energy policy because Big Oil and dirty coal companies have opened a second front -- just like we faced in World War II -- in their fight to kill competition.On the first front, Congress ha
America's international broadcasting operations are a key element in our diplomatic efforts to communicate our values to the rest of the world and to bring news and information to closed societies.Through traditional outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and newer ones like Radio Free Asia and the 24-hour Arabic-language Alhurra TV, the U.S government distributes pro
In reality, credit pollutants pose the same kind of threat to our economy as chemical toxins do to our environment.Like their chemical counterparts, they tend to concentrate in the weakest and most vulnerable parts of the financial system, and that's where the toxic effects show up first: the subprime mortgage market collapse is essentially the Love Canal of our ongoing risk-pollution disaster. E
Journalism is an act of seduction.Many times I've done the seducing, in writing big stories and small; I've also been the seduced, slammed with the gut-wrenching morning-after upon reading stories written about me.So I know just how both Michael Hastings and Stanley McChrystal (& staff) are doing right about now.They are feeling betrayed.They are stunned by the blast wave from Hastings's article
House Democrats on Thursday narrowly eked out a majority for a campaign finance reform package tightening rules on political spending by outside groups. The bill, called the DISCLOSE Act, passed 219-206 after Democratic leaders managed to convert enough holdout liberal and black lawmakers concerned with an exemption tailored for the National Rifle Association.Thirty-six Democrats voted against th