Columnist.
"I must say I am perplexed," John Kerry told grandees at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, "by claims ... that somehow America is disengaging from the world -- this myth that we are pulling back or giving up or standing down." The secretary of state, whose website keeps a running tally of the miles he has flown since taking the job (320,961 as of Friday), insisted that nothing could be further from the truth. "The only person more surprised than I am by the myth of this disengagement," he said, "is the Air Force pilot who flies the secretary of state's plane."
Though president Obama keeps insisting that income inequality is the "defining challenge of our time," most Americans beg to differ. "What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?" asked Gallup in a nationwide survey this month. Dissatisfaction with the federal government -- its incompetence, abuse, dysfunction, venality -- topped the list, with 21 percent of respondents saying it was their key concern. The overall state of the economy was second, at 18 percent. Unemployment and health care were tied for third, with each cited by 16 percent as the nation's most pressing problem. How many shared Obama's view that the gap between rich and poor is the issue that should concern us most? Four percent.
For anyone having trouble understanding why the Massachusetts law requiring a 35-foot "buffer zone" at abortion clinics is so offensive to the First Amendment, there was a moment during the oral arguments in McCullen v. Coakley -- the Supreme Court case challenging the law -- that crystallized the issue perfectly. Massachusetts officials have always justified the 2007 buffer law as a narrow, impartial response to the problem of obstruction, disorder, and intimidation of women seeking abortions. That concern is understandably taken seriously in the state where John Salvi murdered two employees of Planned Parenthood clinics in 1994.
I've always liked Rudyard Kipling's 1895 poem "If—" , with its four stanzas of rugged, Victorian-era paternal advice. But it wasn't until this month, when my older son Caleb went missing for 80 hours and my wife and I were frantic with worry and fear, that I gained a real appreciation for the virtue with which Kipling's poem opens: "If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs..." Never before has the quality of levelheadedness meant quite so much to me. As my mind lurched among nightmare scenarios and my gut churned with anxiety, it took an effort of will just to process what was happening. I had no idea how to formulate a plan of action going forward. What are you supposed to do when your teenager has been gone for hours -- six hours, 12 hours, 24 hours -- and hasn't been seen or heard from? When you've called in the police and given them all the information you can think of? When you've checked your child's usual haunts and come up dry? When his friends, realizing that something is wrong, are beginning to sound the alarm on Facebook and Google Chat? And when the temperature outside is in the single digits -- and falling?
Evidence that misery *doesn't* love company is common at pro-life gatherings, where women holding poignant signs -- "I Regret My Abortion" -- urge others not to make a mistake that haunts them. As the US Supreme Court prepares to hear a constitutional challenge to the Massachusetts abortion-clinic "buffer zone" law this month, the justices are being reminded that the First Amendment protects more than just a speaker's right to express ideas. It also protects a listener's freedom to hear those ideas. Stifling that freedom near abortion clinics can mean -- as 12 women argue, from personal experience, in a compelling friend-of-the-court brief prepared by Carrie Severino of the Judicial Education Project -- that individuals in a crisis pregnancy are denied essential information at the moment they may need it most.
"I have been in almost constant practice as a journalist since the year 1899," wrote H. L. Mencken in the spring of 1920. He had "held every editorial job that newspapers have to offer, from that of drama critic to that of editor-in-chief," and the experience had convinced him that the news business wasn't as bad as its harshest detractors claimed -- it was worse. "The average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is ... devious, hypocritical, disingenuous, deceitful, pharisaical, pecksniffian, fraudulent, knavish, slippery, unscrupulous, perfidious, lewd, and dishonest." He would be hard-pressed, Mencken said, to name five papers that conducted themselves as fairly and honestly "as the average nail factory."
New Year's Day marks the 55th anniversary of Cuba's communist revolution. It is the oldest -- indeed the only -- full-blown dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere. As Human Rights Watch noted in April, no other country in Latin America is ruled by a regime that "represses virtually all forms of political dissent." More than half a century after Fidel Castro seized power with the promise that "all rights and freedoms will be reinstituted" -- and more than seven years since Raúl Castro succeeded his brother as tyrant-in-chief -- Cuba is consistently rated "Not Free" in Freedom House's annual index of political and civil liberties worldwide.
Christians regard Jesus as the "prince of peace," and the dream of a world at peace is woven into the story and meaning of the holiday celebrating his birth. As an angel shared good tidings of great joy with the shepherds abiding in the field, the Gospel of Luke recounts, the heavenly host sang of "glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." Two millennia later, what could be more familiar than Christmas cards sharing a wish for peace on earth, or the tender carol "Silent Night," with its image of a mother and her newborn sleeping "in heavenly peace"?
The federal court decision this month that struck down most of Utah's anti-polygamy law as unconstitutional is a fresh reminder that slippery-slope arguments, so frequently ridiculed, deserve more respect than they get. "Conservatives foresaw polygamy ruling," a story in the Washington Times was headlined last week. It cited the "we-told-you-so" reactions of several longtime opponents of same-sex marriage, who have long argued that the radical transformation of marriage wouldn't end with gay wedlock.
As the president's approval ratings decline, some of his most fervent critics want the House of Representatives to charge him with "high crimes and misdemeanors" and have the Senate vote on removing him from office. Grassroots activists stage small but energetic pro-impeachment rallies around the country. State-level political parties are adopting resolutions demanding that the president be impeached. In blog posts and op-ed articles, legal scholars and congressional experts argue that impeachment is a tool the Framers intended to be used when a president threatens American liberties. "There is no remedy short of impeachment to protect us from this President," writes one former House member, who served on the Judiciary Committee in 1974 when it recommended the impeachment of Richard Nixon.
The annual "Death to America" rallies across Iran last month were the largest ever. The outpouring of hate against the United States wasn't cancelled, or even toned down, by the new Iranian president, the purportedly "moderate, reasonable" Hassan Rouhani. Far from it. "Iran's propaganda machine had been working for weeks ahead of the ceremonies to mobilize maximum public participation," reported the BBC Persian service on November 4. The resulting demonstrations were "unprecedented in their scale and scope."
Back in 2006, around the time Al Gore's global-warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," was released, I started a file labeled "*What* Climate Consensus?" Gore was insisting that "the debate among the scientists is over," and only an ignoramus or a lackey for the fossil-fuel industry could doubt that human beings were headed for a climate catastrophe of their own making. But it didn't take much sleuthing to discover that there was plenty of debate among scientists about the causes and consequences of global warming. Many experts were skeptical about the hyperbole of alarmists like Gore, and as I came across examples, I added them to my file.
When it comes to charitable giving, America is a world-beater. According to Giving USA, an annual compendium of national data on philanthropy, Americans last year donated more than $316 billion to charity, or roughly 2 percent of GDP. Contrary to popular belief, most of that money didn't come from foundations or corporations. It came from individuals. In 2012, donations from private American households added up to about $223 billion.
Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday. Nearly four centuries have passed since that first celebration in 1621, when, as Edward Winslow wrote in a letter to a friend back in England, the settlers of Plymouth Colony paused to "rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors" and "for three days ... entertained and feasted" with 90 of their Wampanoag neighbors. What Thanksgiving was at the outset -- part joyful harvest festival, part expression of prayerful gratitude, part occasion for games and reunions -- it remains recognizably to this day.
They weren't wearing swastika armbands or chanting "Sieg Heil!" during the Islamic Jihad rally this month on the campus of Al-Quds University. They didn't need to. Everything about the event reeked of fascism and anti-Semitic bloodlust. Demonstrators at the Palestinian school paraded in paramilitary gear, with massed black flags, mock assault weapons, and arms extended in Nazi-style salutes. There were banners lionizing suicide bombers, and hand-drawn Israeli flags on which students trod. Islamic Jihad -- long identified as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union -- posted photos of the rally on its website. In one, students representing dead Israelis sprawl on the ground as black-clad jihadists brandishing weapons stride past.
Saturday Night Live skewered President Obama last weekend in a spoof so merciless -- a mock commercial for the antidepressant Paxil -- that conservative bloggers found themselves wondering if it marked some kind of a turning point in the president's political support. The skit featured impersonator/comedian Jay Pharaoh as Obama, desperately popping pill after pill, while a voiceover lists the many symptoms that "Paxil/Second-Term Strength" is good for: "Benghazi, the NSA scandal, the IRS scandal, the AP scandal, the Petraeus scandal … and, of course, Obamacare website problems." Along the bottom of the screen, the ad cautions that Paxil is not covered by Obamacare. "We promised that it would be, but it's not," the fine print notes. "And for that, we apologize."
Apple CEO Tim Cook, writing recently in The Wall Street Journal, urged Congress to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, which would make it illegal under federal law for employers to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Prejudice, Cook insisted, is bad for business. Indeed it is -- as defenders of free markets have pointed out for years, irrational discrimination tends to reduce an employer's profits. Far from strengthening the case for a new federal law, however, it seems to me that Cook's observation cuts the other way.
Horrific disasters like Typhoon Haiyan, which slammed into the Philippines last week with such devastating and lethal effect, have always raised the most excruciating questions: Why is the world so full of grief and cruelty? Why must bad things happen to good and innocent people? What philosophers of religion call "the problem of evil" is the greatest emotional obstacle to faith in God. How can a God of love and justice permit so much savagery and suffering?
Early next year, the Supreme Court will take up **McCullen v. Coakley**, a case challenging the Massachusetts statute that requires anti-abortion protesters and "sidewalk counselors" to stay at least 35 feet away from abortion-clinic entrances. Signed by Governor Deval Patrick in 2007, it is the strictest such "buffer zone" law in the nation; violators can be punished with up to 30 months in prison and fines as high as $5,000.
Sales of Incivek, the promising pill introduced by Vertex Pharmaceuticals for treating hepatitis C, are down -- *way* down. The Cambridge biotech company sold just $85.6 million worth of its trailblazing drug in the most recent quarter, a precipitous plunge from the same quarter last year, when sales surpassed more than $250 million.
