2nd Thought
Open-Armed, Despite All
GWYNNE DYERWhat if China, flush with its new wealth, opened its doors to mass immigration? It would make sense from an economic and social point of view, because its one-child-per-family policy has produced a young generation far smaller ...
A Virtual Economy?
Deborah RogersThe demise of Chesapeake Energy continues to unfold. After news of $1.1 billion in unreported loans, Reuters exposed a $200 million hedge fund that CEO Aubrey McClendon ran from company headquarters. This fund invested in the s...
Mr. Justice Kennedy Explains
(A Healthcare Satire)EVE PROCTOR
“Our tradition, our law, has been that you don’t have the duty to rescue someone if that person is in danger. The blind man is walking in front of a car and you do not have a duty to stop him.” — Supreme Court Justice A...
Shadows in Granite
The Vietnam Wall is deeply moving. The need for more such walls is tragic.GRAYSON HARPER
Say, how many war memorials are there in the world? Must be thousands, right? And how many do you suppose are engraved with the names of every single man and woman who died or went missing in the conflict they’re purporting...
Legion of Doom-kopfs
E.R. BILLSOK. Tell me if this sounds familiar. There’s this group of Anglo-Americans, mostly well-to-do and some wealthy. They’re not big fans of minorities (especially African-Americans) or the poor. They detest homosexuals. They fe...
Lost: Meanings
T. S. MCBRIDEThey say what has been seen can’t be unseen, that once you know the truth, you can’t unlearn it. That was before I saw The Glenn Beck Program. It started innocently enough. I am a journalism student. One of my professors wa...
A Season for Knives
Declaring a war seems a casual (and eternal) business.GRAYSON HARPER
It’s spring again. Must be time to start another war. Now it appears the target will be Iran. Or maybe Syria. John McCain wants to bomb Syria. Well, I guess it doesn’t matter as long as we bomb somebody. On the issue of Ira...
Wanted: Poets …
… to tell the world about itself.E. R. BILLS
Writer Don DeLillo once wrote that reading poetry makes us conscious of breathing. I can’t imagine a better way to put it. The first time I fell in love, really fell in love, it was not with a girl or a woman. It was with a s...
A Victory for Prevention?
The nexus between pollution and illness may get more attention.Mary Ann Swissler
They’re not co-pays or premiums yet there’s no doubt that polluted air and water exact a high price on our health. Still, the arguments over how to deal with that part of the healthcare equation have gone back and forth for...
A Pink Political Agenda
BETTY PINSONIn 2000, when I became a breast cancer activist, one of my first assignments was contacting the senators and members of Congress in my area to encourage their support for the Breast & Cervical Cancer Prevention & Treatm...