Los Angeles will have a new mayor beginning July 1. His name is Eric Garcetti, the city councilman who won a Tuesday runoff and made some history. He’ll become the city’s first elected Jewish mayor and its youngest in more than … Continue reading →
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Most Topular Stories
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Who is Eric Garcetti?
The Fix22 May 2013 | 9:19 am -
Editorial Board: Apple is shifting its tax burden
Washington Post Editorials: Latest Editorial and Editorial Archive21 May 2013 | 5:17 pmAPPLE HAS BROUGHT American consumers such popular wonders as the iPad, iPod and iPhone and earned billions of dollars in the process. It’s in hot water with Congress now, however, because of something it has not done: regularly paid the top U.S. corporate income tax rate of 35 percent on every dollar it earns around the world. From 2009 to 2012, in fact, Apple managed to avoid taxes on nearly a third of its worldwide net profits, some $30 billion, which were booked to its Irish subsidiaries, according to a report by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Apple’s actions… -
Not a rotten Apple
Today's Opinion Columns22 May 2013 | 6:54 amYou know the world’s gone mad when I think Rand Paul is the only one who made sense at Tuesday’s Senate grilling of Apple CEO Tim Cook. Cook’s crime? Making sure his firm pays as little in taxes as the law allows. Read full article >> -
Only Republicans at Republican convention
Local Letters21 May 2013 | 2:33 pmRegarding the May 19 front-page article “Va. GOP’s nomineees stay true to ideals”: The reason Virginia’s Republican Party chose a convention rather than a primary was not to limit voting to “only the most committed activists,” but to limit voters to Republicans. Virginia’s policy of letting anyone vote in any party’s primary is rather ludicrous. Read full article >> -
The self problem
Achenblog20 May 2013 | 9:41 amToward the end of his book “Why Does the World Exist?” Jim Holt poses a brain-boggler about the self. “If you happen to be one of a pair of identical twins, try this thought experiment. Imagine that the zygote that … Continue reading →
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The Fix
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Who is Eric Garcetti?
22 May 2013 | 9:19 amLos Angeles will have a new mayor beginning July 1. His name is Eric Garcetti, the city councilman who won a Tuesday runoff and made some history. He’ll become the city’s first elected Jewish mayor and its youngest in more than … Continue reading → -
The search for the best state based political reporters continues
22 May 2013 | 9:12 amA few weeks back, we asked the Fix community to nominate the best state-based political reporters in each of the 50 states. The response — on the blog, on Twitter, on Facebook — was overwhelming, and we’ve (papal plural) spent … Continue reading → -
Anthony Weiner is running for mayor of New York City. But, can he win? And does it even matter?
22 May 2013 | 8:35 amWhile you were sleeping, Anthony Weiner was announcing his decision to run for mayor of New York City this year. Now that the debate over whether or not he will run is over, the one question that remains is this: … Continue reading → -
How do you handle an IG report? Ask an expert.
22 May 2013 | 6:11 amThe controversy surrounding the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration’s report on the Internal Revenue Service has highlighted how little most people know about the standard protocol for dealing with these investigations once they’re underway. David Sampson was in … Continue reading → -
Jimmy Kimmel on the Los Angeles mayor’s race (VIDEO)
22 May 2013 | 6:10 amABC’s Jimmy Kimmel’s latest installment of “Lie Witness News” focuses on the Los Angeles mayor’s race.
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Washington Post Editorials: Latest Editorial and Editorial Archive
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Editorial Board: Apple is shifting its tax burden
21 May 2013 | 5:17 pmAPPLE HAS BROUGHT American consumers such popular wonders as the iPad, iPod and iPhone and earned billions of dollars in the process. It’s in hot water with Congress now, however, because of something it has not done: regularly paid the top U.S. corporate income tax rate of 35 percent on every dollar it earns around the world. From 2009 to 2012, in fact, Apple managed to avoid taxes on nearly a third of its worldwide net profits, some $30 billion, which were booked to its Irish subsidiaries, according to a report by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Apple’s actions… -
Editorial Board: D.C. Council must stop micromanaging public schools
21 May 2013 | 5:15 pmONE OF THE FIRST things D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) did after taking over the newly constituted education committee was host a dinner aimed at establishing a new tone of collaboration for those involved in D.C. public education. The dinner was held on a night when D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson had long been scheduled to be out of town. That was an early tip-off to Mr. Catania’s notions about cooperation. Read full article >> -
Editorial Board: Burmese president’s visit gives glimmer of hope for change
21 May 2013 | 5:13 pmNOT MANY DICTATORS or military juntas willingly give up power. Will Burma’s regime prove the exception? That was the ever-present though mostly unspoken question as President Thein Sein toured Washington this week. Read full article >> -
Editorial Board: Virginia’s Republican slate picked by tiny sliver
20 May 2013 | 4:33 pmMORE THAN a quarter of Virginia’s electorate considers itself Republican, which translates to almost 1 million voters. Of that number, about 8,000 — less than 1 percent — showed up at the party’s convention in Richmond over the weekend to choose the GOP candidates in this November’s races for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. Read full article >> -
Editorial Board: Russia’s spy games
20 May 2013 | 4:32 pmIN THE DAYS of the Soviet Union, street maps of Moscow did not exist for most citizens, or they were deliberately misleading. In fact, the very best Moscow map was created by the CIA, and it was treasured by diplomats, journalists and spies. It was a spiral-bound wonder that could rescue you from almost any dead end. Read full article >>
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Today's Opinion Columns
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Not a rotten Apple
22 May 2013 | 6:54 amYou know the world’s gone mad when I think Rand Paul is the only one who made sense at Tuesday’s Senate grilling of Apple CEO Tim Cook. Cook’s crime? Making sure his firm pays as little in taxes as the law allows. Read full article >> -
In AP, Rosen investigations, government makes criminals of reporters
21 May 2013 | 5:35 pmThere are various reasons you might not care about the Obama administration’s spying on journalist James Rosen and labeling him a “co-conspirator and/or aider and abettor” in an espionage case. Liberals may not be particularly bothered because the targeted journalist works for Fox News. Conservatives may not be concerned because of their antipathy toward the news media generally. And the general public certainly doesn’t have much patience for journalists’ whining. Read full article >> -
Free genes from patent restrictions
21 May 2013 | 5:32 pmAngelina Jolie’s genes threatened to kill her. But, for the time being anyway, she doesn’t own them. Jolie revealed last week that she chose to undergo a double mastectomy after testing positive for the BRCA1 mutation. That genetic glitch meant Jolie’s risk of developing breast cancer was as high as 87 percent; her mother died at age 56 of ovarian cancer, which is also associated with the BRCA1 gene. Read full article >> -
Testing time for Syria’s rebels
21 May 2013 | 12:11 pmIt’s a rule of thumb in Middle East conflicts that whenever peace talks are announced, each side steps up the fighting so it can grab as much territory as possible before the cease-fire lines are drawn. Read full article >> -
Going Bulworth
21 May 2013 | 5:12 amGoing Bulworth. The New York Times reported last week that President Obama fantasizes with aides about “going Bulworth.” For those who don’t remember, Bulworth is a brilliant 1998 film by Warren Beatty, depicting a corrupted and suicidal liberal senator from California who is facing a primary challenge while dealing with financial ruin. Unable to sleep or eat, Bulworth suddenly busts out before an African American congregation in a black church in South Central Los Angeles and begins rapping the unspeakable truths about our politics. The Times report has led commentators to speculate on…
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Local Letters
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Only Republicans at Republican convention
21 May 2013 | 2:33 pmRegarding the May 19 front-page article “Va. GOP’s nomineees stay true to ideals”: The reason Virginia’s Republican Party chose a convention rather than a primary was not to limit voting to “only the most committed activists,” but to limit voters to Republicans. Virginia’s policy of letting anyone vote in any party’s primary is rather ludicrous. Read full article >> -
New neighbors for Kobe — and me
20 May 2013 | 2:32 pmSome recent horrific news stories have opened our collective eyes to knowing who our neighbors are. I had the experience recently of meeting some not-so-nearby neighbors I probably never would have met if it were not for my 10-year-old terrier, Kobe. Read full article >> -
Reasons to be wary over admitting gay Scouts
20 May 2013 | 2:31 pmI can understand Robert McCartney’s view that local Boy Scout leaders should state their positions on gays [Metro, May 16], but I find his position that those opposed to the admittance of gays are “resisting the 21st century” to be arrogant and demeaning. Read full article >> -
Child-care help that’s bound by red tape
20 May 2013 | 2:30 pmThe May 16 front-page article “Hurdles in D.C. child-care subsidy process” was timely and accurate, but it missed a critical point — namely, the harmful effects that uncertain, inconsistent and often inferior care can have on young children from poor families. Read full article >> -
Junk the junk mailings
20 May 2013 | 10:17 amI agree 100 percent with Ernest Nussbaum [“Why can’t junk mailers pay up?,” letters, May 14] regarding the U.S. Postal Service. At first blush, it would seem that the Postal Service would profit from handling bulk mail. But in reality, the bulk mailers require the Postal Service to have the necessary amount of equipment and personnel to move it. I continually have recycling bins full of unsolicited mail. Read full article >>
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Achenblog
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The self problem
20 May 2013 | 9:41 amToward the end of his book “Why Does the World Exist?” Jim Holt poses a brain-boggler about the self. “If you happen to be one of a pair of identical twins, try this thought experiment. Imagine that the zygote that … Continue reading → -
Remembering Watergate
17 May 2013 | 11:40 am[Cross-posted from The Fix.] I was 12 years old during Sam Ervin’s Watergate hearings, and watched them over the course of a long, hot summer, a time when I seemed to register the startling fact that my parents weren’t infallible … Continue reading → -
Martin Waldseemuller’s secret knowledge
16 May 2013 | 10:02 amToday, what’s hot in cartography! We need to talk about cartography more often here on the A-blog. Let’s just admit it: Most of us could easily spend an entire evening studying maps. And I don’t mean Rand McNally road atlases, … Continue reading → -
Why there’s something rather than nothing
14 May 2013 | 5:13 amIn the late 1990s I made a list of the 5 biggest unanswered questions in science. All obvious stuff, like how did life originate and how does consciousness emerge from the brain. But number one, the foremost mind-boggler, the ultimate … Continue reading → -
Oh, wait, before you go back to Earth
10 May 2013 | 8:35 amImagine if you’d been in space, weightless, for 5 months, and were scheduled to fly back to Earth on Monday, specifically to southern Kazakhstan (wouldn’t be my first choice but there’s no other option at the moment). But then you … Continue reading →
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Anne Applebaum: Most Recent Articles and Archives
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Polish orphans provide unlikely lessons in thriving
17 May 2013 | 2:27 pmWELLINGTON, New Zealand A fish restaurant in New Zealand seemed an odd place to discuss a war that took place several thousand miles away and several decades ago, but there we were: Sea bream was served, sauvignon blanc was poured, the rain drummed down outside and I listened while three septuagenarians smiled, laughed and told me of the unimaginable tragedy they had lived through as children. Read full article >> -
Australia, America’s test case in the Pacific
3 May 2013 | 4:56 pmSYDNEY Odd things keep catching my eye here, simply because they look familiar. The small fortress island in the center of Sydney Harbour makes me think of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay; the Harbour Bridge reminds me of Golden Gate. That San Francisco impression is reinforced by the city’s Victorian houses, though the billboard-lined airport road reminded me for an instant of Houston. There is an echo of Chicago in some of the 1930s apartment buildings, as well as something very San Diego about all of the landscaping. But when I see a row of cockatoos on a fence — lovely white birds with… -
The connection between Boston and Europe’s train bombers
19 Apr 2013 | 3:15 pmThere is much that we don’t yet know about Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings. But we do know that their family is ethnically Chechen, that they come from the Russian republic of Chechnya, where war broke out in 1994. Although that war began as a movement for Chechen sovereignty and independence, it escalated into two extraordinarily bloody, messy, vicious armed conflicts during which hundreds of thousands of people were killed. The Chechen capital, Grozny, was thoroughly destroyed. Photographs taken there after the war’s end look eerily… -
Anne Applebaum: Calm replaces the controversy of Margaret Thatcher
17 Apr 2013 | 10:35 am"After the storm of a life lived in the heat of political controversy, there is a great calm." The Bishop of London's sermon at Margaret Thatcher's funeral Wednesday morning moved at least one member of the British cabinet to tears. But what was really remarkable about the sermon was its measured tone. Somehow one felt that the bishop might not have been a fervent Thatcherite himself, and yet he found something kind to say to those close to the former prime minister -- "it must be difficult for those members of her family and close associates to recognize the wife, mother and grandmother in… -
Margaret Thatcher recognized the big issues
8 Apr 2013 | 1:29 pmMargaret Thatcher had no small talk. At a private lunch which I can’t quite date — her husband, Denis, was there, drinking whiskey out of a large tumbler, so it must have been well over a decade ago — I was seated across from her, and at one point I became the object of a tirade about the Russian president. “What are we going to do about Mr. Yeltsin?” she demanded, as if either she or I could do anything at all. She’d been out of power for several years at that point and was already forgetting thoughts in the middle of sentences. But whatever else she was losing, the desire to…
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Richard Cohen: Most Recent Articles and Archives
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IRS scandal inspires a Kafka-esque tale
20 May 2013 | 4:49 pmIt was only when they put the cuffs on her and led her out of the Cincinnati federal office building that she finally realized how much trouble she was in. Her husband, in one of his rare sober moments, had urged her to get a lawyer, and her neighbor, the know-it-all with the snow blower, urged her to leave the country. But she had a touching faith in America, and she felt that sooner or later everyone would understand how a big federal office works — or, actually, doesn’t. Instead, there she was doing the perp walk, cameras clicking, reporters shouting questions: “Mitzie, Mitzie,”… -
Angelina Jolie went public to help other women
15 May 2013 | 7:49 amAs it happens, I do not read op-eds written by celebrities, mostly because I don’t care what they think — if and when they ever do. It was for that reason that I went right by the New York Times op-ed written by Angelina Jolie and returned to it only after my sister called to talk about it. She has just finished a bout of (preventive) radiation to stop what could be breast cancer in its tracks. Jolie, she said, had done a wonderful thing. Yes, indeed. Read full article >> -
Symptoms of Benghazi Syndrome
13 May 2013 | 4:49 pmThe American Psychiatric Association’s latest handbook — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) — is about to be published. It is the handbook of mental health, and if you’re not in it, you are among the fortunate few. Even though the hour is late, I beseech the DSM’s publishers to consider one additional entry, the seriousness of which will be apparent to anyone who watches Fox News: Benghazi Syndrome. Read full article >> -
Obama's loss for words on Syria
6 May 2013 | 5:46 pmIt turns out that President Obama did not mean to say “red line” after all. The New York Times tells us the president misspoke. Maybe like a lot of people new to Washington, he got confused by the Metro system. Maybe he meant to warn Syria not to cross the Green Line. It goes from Suitland through Washington to Greenbelt. Chemical weapons are forbidden throughout the length of the line — a zoning infraction, I believe. Read full article >> -
Red lines as red herrings in Syria
29 Apr 2013 | 6:09 pmWatching PBS’s “NewsHour” the other night, I caught a debate between two academics about whether the United States should intervene in Syria. The British, French and Israelis say that Damascus has used chemical weapons, although Washington is not as sure. (Do you think George Tenet could find out?) So in the meantime the president will adhere to his policy of doing next to nothing and thus ensure that the war continues. One of the academics wanted America to intervene while the other did not. He kept saying, “We don’t need another war in the Middle East,” having apparently not…
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E.J. Dionne Columns and Blog Posts
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Political dysfunction spells trouble for democracies
19 May 2013 | 5:25 pmWe know American politics are dysfunctional. But after a week of scandal obsession during which the nation’s capital and the media virtually ignored the problems most voters care about — jobs, incomes, growth, opportunity, education — it’s worth asking if there is something especially flawed about our democracy. Read full article >> -
The false god of ‘narrative’
15 May 2013 | 5:00 pm“What if the government starts enforcing the espionage statute whenever there’s a leak?” Steve Roberts, a former New York Times journalist who teaches at George Washington University, observed to the Baltimore Sun. “It’s going to have a tremendously chilling effect on this interplay between sources and reporters.” Read full article >> -
Raising the political heat on opposition to gun control
12 May 2013 | 6:39 pmMilwaukee Public officials are very selective about when violence and death matter. Massacres and terrorist incidents cannot be ignored, but the day-to-day toll from gun violence is often swept aside. Politicians who tout themselves as advocates of law and order don’t want to be unmasked as caring even more about their ratings from gun lobbyists. And opponents of the most moderate gun reforms engage in a shameless game of bait-and-switch. Because measures such as background checks would not stop every murder, they’re declared useless even though they’d still save lives. Then the gun… -
Mark Sanford’s Appalachian spring
8 May 2013 | 10:17 am“I want to publicly acknowledge God’s role in all of this,” declared a victorious Mark Sanford as he celebrated an unlikely political rebirth Tuesday night with a sermon praising the Supreme Being and the many “angels” who helped the once-disgraced former governor along the way. Read full article >> -
Obama needs to ask himself why even his supporters are growing impatient
5 May 2013 | 6:31 pmPresident Obama got roughed up by the pundit class last week. The question is what lessons he draws from the going-over. Here’s one he should take: The nation’s political conversation has grown stale, and many Americans have lost the sense of what he is doing to improve their lives. Read full article >>
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Michael Gerson: Most Recent Articles and Archives
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GOP fear of Common Core education standards unfounded
20 May 2013 | 4:48 pmModern conservatism comes in two distinct architectural styles. The first seeks to build from scratch, using accurate ideological levels and plumb lines, so every wall is straight and every corner squared. The goal of politics is to apply abstract principles in their purest form. But there is another type of conservatism, often practiced at the state level, which attempts to build out of flawed, existing materials, resulting in some odd angles and incongruous additions. These conservative reformers assemble unexpected alliances, accept reasonable compromises and welcome incremental progress. -
Government’s heavy hand felt in IRS, AP scandals
15 May 2013 | 5:02 pmSo, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has investigated the IRS investigation of conservative groups. And the FBI has launched a criminal investigation of the IRS. And the State Department’s Office of Inspector General is investigating the Accountability Review Board that investigated the administration’s response to the Benghazi terror attack. And House committees including Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Judiciary, Oversight and Government Reform, Ways and Means and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are variously investigating the Benghazi matter, the… -
Political corruption at the IRS
13 May 2013 | 12:12 pmSuppose that the Environmental Protection Agency were to admit offhandedly that the fluoridation of water had only modest communist mind-control effects. Or the United Nations were to concede it had been running fleets of black helicopters over U.S. cities, but only in the course of conducting extensive goodwill tours. Read full article >> -
Incompetence, not criminality, in Benghazi investigation
10 May 2013 | 5:25 amIn some cases, the fog of war is initially thick, then dissipates. After the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, the facts were initially clear. The fog was a later addition. Read full article >> -
Elevated by the common good
7 May 2013 | 7:24 amThe Rev. Jim Wallis is a man of the left — perhaps the defining figure of the evangelical left. So it is not surprising that I should find some of the policy views expressed in his new book, “On God’s Side,” badly mistaken. But this does not prevent Wallis from being resoundingly right in his central premise: that American politics would be elevated by a renewed commitment to the common good. Read full article >>
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David Ignatius: Most Recent Articles and Archives
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Testing time for Syria’s rebels
21 May 2013 | 12:11 pmIt’s a rule of thumb in Middle East conflicts that whenever peace talks are announced, each side steps up the fighting so it can grab as much territory as possible before the cease-fire lines are drawn. Read full article >> -
The Benghazi e-mails’ backside-covering
17 May 2013 | 3:41 pmThe hundred pages of Benghazi e-mails released this week tell us almost nothing about how four Americans came to die so tragically in that Libyan city. But they are a case study in why nothing works in Washington. Read full article >> -
In IRS and AP scandals, a frighteningly impotent government
15 May 2013 | 5:00 pmAt a time when Congress can’t pass a budget and the president can’t win approval of any important legislation, the public is indignant about the threat of an overreaching, all-powerful federal government that uses the IRS and the Justice Department to harass its enemies. Read full article >> -
A beginning for Syria talks
8 May 2013 | 4:48 pmIt shouldn’t have been this hard, but Secretary of State John Kerry has finally gotten Russia to back the peace plan on Syria that it endorsed in principle last June. This isn’t a breakthrough, but at least it’s a beginning. Read full article >> -
The limits of surveillance
2 May 2013 | 6:15 pmAmerica’s top intelligence official said Thursday that there is no evidence so far that the Boston Marathon bombers had help from foreign terrorist networks. “At this point, I haven’t seen anything that raises a concern there was a bigger plot, but we’re still investigating,” James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said in an interview. He was responding to a query about a recent newspaper story citing two Russian militants as possible accomplices. Read full article >>
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Ruth Marcus: Most Recent Articles and Archives
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Free genes from patent restrictions
21 May 2013 | 5:32 pmAngelina Jolie’s genes threatened to kill her. But, for the time being anyway, she doesn’t own them. Jolie revealed last week that she chose to undergo a double mastectomy after testing positive for the BRCA1 mutation. That genetic glitch meant Jolie’s risk of developing breast cancer was as high as 87 percent; her mother died at age 56 of ovarian cancer, which is also associated with the BRCA1 gene. Read full article >> -
IRS, AP, Libya scandals are a trifecta with little payout
16 May 2013 | 6:07 pmFolks, deep breath time. This is not the end of the Obama presidency. It’s a bad stretch with an unfortunate confluence of unfortunate events. None of which will make the first paragraph — not even the first page — of the account of the Obama administration in the history books. Read full article >> -
IRS has been too lax on tax-exempt status
14 May 2013 | 5:34 pmSputtering adjectives — outrageous, appalling, intolerable — can scarcely do justice to the fiasco involving the Internal Revenue Service’s reported targeting of conservative groups. But the current scandal obscures — and, ironically, threatens to prevent action on — another, equally corrosive failure on the part of the IRS when it comes to scrutinizing political groups. Read full article >> -
Military leaders’ wrongheaded victim-blaming
10 May 2013 | 5:41 pmGenerals say the darndest things. Especially when it comes to issues of gender and sexual assault. Witness the comments of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh at a hearing this week before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Read full article >> -
The administration's Plan B blunder
7 May 2013 | 4:26 pmAs a mom, I can’t help but cringe. As a thinking adult, I can’t help but reconsider. I’m referring to the continuing controversy over making emergency contraceptives available, without a prescription, to — and here is the standard, incendiary formulation — girls as young as 11. Read full article >>
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Harold Meyerson: Most Recent Articles and Archives
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Mending factory conditions after Bangladesh
14 May 2013 | 5:35 pmThe most dangerous job in the world, outside war zones, isn’t that of an undercover police officer or a firefighter or a bullfighter or aerialist. It’s sewing garments — particularly in Bangladesh. The death toll in the April 24 collapse of Rana Plaza has topped 1,100 and continues to rise. But Rana Plaza is merely the most deadly of an unbroken string of preventable disasters that have plagued garment manufacturing in Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest exporter of clothing, behind only China. It’s not even the most recent preventable disaster: Since the cataclysmic building… -
Labor wrestles with its future
8 May 2013 | 6:09 pmSince the emergence of capitalism, workers seeking higher pay and safer workplaces have banded together in guilds and unions to pressure their employers for a better deal. That has been the approach of the American labor movement for the past 200 years. Read full article >> -
How to ease economic anxiety
30 Apr 2013 | 5:52 pmThe American public knows it’s downwardly mobile. What it doesn’t know is what it can do to arrest, much less reverse, that trend. The public’s awareness of its plight was evident in the Allstate/National Journal poll released last Thursday. Half of the respondents – 49 percent – said that only the upper class could realistically expect to be able to pay for their children’s college education. Another 46 percent said that only the upper class could realistically anticipate having enough money to cope with a health emergency or job loss, while 45 percent said that only the upper… -
What would the Koch brothers do to the Los Angeles Times?
23 Apr 2013 | 3:28 pmOn May 21, Los Angeles voters will go to the polls to select a new mayor. Who will govern Los Angeles, however, is only the second-most important local question in the city today. The most important, by far, is who will buy the Los Angeles Times. Read full article >> -
Taking the ‘service’ out of the service sector
16 Apr 2013 | 4:22 pmFor decades, U.S. corporations have been told to slim down. Not to abandon corporate jets or cut CEO pay, mind you, but to produce more with fewer employees. The conventional wisdom couldn’t have been clearer: The minimum number of required workers yields the maximum level of profits, all else being equal and the creek don’t rise. Read full article >>
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Eugene Robinson Columns and Blog Posts
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Obama administration mistakes journalism for espionage
20 May 2013 | 4:48 pmThe Obama administration has no business rummaging through journalists’ phone records, perusing their e-mails and tracking their movements in an attempt to keep them from gathering news. This heavy-handed business isn’t chilling, it’s just plain cold. Read full article >> -
Republicans lead a witch hunt on Benghazi
9 May 2013 | 4:31 pmThose who are trying to make the Benghazi tragedy into a scandal for the Obama administration really ought to decide what story line they want to sell. Actually, by “those” I mean Republicans, and by “the Obama administration” I mean Hillary Clinton. The only coherent purpose I can discern in all of this is to sully Clinton’s record as secretary of state in case she runs for president in 2016. Read full article >> -
Questioning Syrian Intervention
6 May 2013 | 5:46 pmFor all the armchair generals advocating U.S. military intervention in Syria, I have a few questions: Is human suffering the reason for the United States to act? That is the noblest and most altruistic of motives, and the estimated 70,000 lives that have been lost in Syria constitute a tragedy. But is there a numerical benchmark that constitutes a trigger for intervention? Read full article >> -
Obama goes wobbly
2 May 2013 | 6:07 pmPresident Obama had the opportunity this week to make an irresponsible Congress face the consequences of its own dumb actions. For reasons I cannot fathom, he took a pass. Rather than use the veto pen that must be gathering dust in some Oval Office drawer, Obama signed legislation that cushions air travelers from the effects of the crude, cruel budget cuts known as the “sequester.” The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is now allowed to shuffle funds around to avoid furloughing air-traffic controllers — thus avoiding flight delays. Read full article… -
In Syria, U.S. inaction is better than intervention
29 Apr 2013 | 6:10 pmPresident Obama is right to resist the mounting pressure for military intervention in Syria. Action by U.S. forces may or may not make the situation better — but certainly could make things worse. This assessment could change, of course. It would be reasonable to consider intervention if such action were necessary to protect U.S. national security interests or prevent the kind of genocide we saw in Rwanda. At present, neither condition is met. Read full article >>
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Robert Samuelson: Most Recent Articles and Archives
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Is the health-care spending slowdown for real?
19 May 2013 | 5:22 pm“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” — Stein’s Law , after economist Herbert Stein (1916-1999) We all know that Stein’s Law will someday apply to health-care spending, which has risen from 5 percent of the economy (gross domestic product) in 1960 to almost 18 percent now. What we don’t know is how and when its share of the economy will stabilize. Will this result from spending controls imposed by Washington; or from delivery-system “reforms” that spontaneously cut “waste”; or from rationing, which limits spending by denying people treatment; or by some… -
The $642 billion excuse
16 May 2013 | 9:49 amIn any other time and place, $642 billion would qualify as a lot of money. But in the Washington of 2013, it has been reduced to pocket change. When the Congressional Budget Office announced that it has cut its projected 2013 federal deficit to $642 billion — compared with 2012’s deficit of $1.1 trillion and an earlier 2013 estimate of $845 billion — there was an almost-palpable sigh of relief. The budget problem is taking care of itself. Congress and the White House can relax. No more self-destructive budget brawls. No more unpopular choices between tax increases and spending cuts. -
The jury’s out on whether Dodd-Frank will save capitalism
12 May 2013 | 6:19 pmIt’s been five years since the onset of the financial crisis — the rescue of Bear Stearns in March 2008 — and we still don’t know whether the financial system is safe. In a recent speech, Daniel Tarullo, the Federal Reserve’s point man on regulation, contended that substantial, though incomplete, progress has been made. As an example, he cited the doubling of equity capital for the 18 largest bank holding companies from $393 billion in late 2008 to $792 billion at the end of 2012. Equity capital is shareholders’ money; it acts as a buffer against losses. Interestingly, JPMorgan… -
Why Obamacare is oversold
9 May 2013 | 10:47 amIt’s the great moral imperative behind the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”): People should not be denied health care because they can’t afford insurance. Health status and insurance are assumed to be connected, and opponents have often been cast as moral midgets, willing to condemn the uninsured to unnecessary illness or death. The trouble is that health status and insurance are only loosely connected. This suggests that Obamacare may result in more spending and health services but few gains in the public’s health. Read full article >> -
Employers lack confidence, not skilled labor
5 May 2013 | 6:26 pmAre we missing a couple million jobs? These would be jobs that exist but lack workers to fill them. The notion that the recovery is being hobbled by too few skilled workers is seductive. It might explain today’s stubbornly high unemployment and why aggressive government policies to promote recovery have been so ineffective. Low interest rates and big budget deficits can’t cure bottlenecks in the job market. They can’t make construction workers into computer scientists. Read full article >>
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George F. Will: Most Recent Articles and Archives
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Obama’s tapped-out trust
16 May 2013 | 1:21 pmLeaving aside the seriousness of lawlessness, and the corruption of our civic culture by the professionally pious, this past week has been amusing. There was the spectacle of advocates of an ever-larger regulatory government expressing shock about such government’s large capacity for misbehavior. And, entertainingly, the answer to the question “Will Barack Obama’s scandals derail his second-term agenda?” was a question: What agenda? Read full article >> -
In IRS scandal, echoes of Watergate
13 May 2013 | 11:43 am“He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.” Read full article >> -
On immigration, Charles Dickens matters
10 May 2013 | 5:53 pmCharles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” is a gooey confection of seasonal sentiment. It also is an economic manifesto that Dickens hoped would hit with “twenty thousand times the force” of a political tract. It concerned a 19th-century debate that is pertinent to today’s argument about immigration. Read full article >> -
Obama’s false hopes for 2014 — and his legacy
8 May 2013 | 6:05 pmThirty-one months ago Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell affronted the media and other custodians of propriety by saying something common-sensical. On Oct. 23, 2010, he said: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” He meant that America needed conservative change from the statist course of Obama’s presidency (the stimulus, Obamacare, etc.), therefore America needed a president who would not veto such change. Read full article >> -
Muzzling free speech about taxes
4 May 2013 | 9:00 pm“The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.” — James Madison, Federalist 48 But under today’s regulatory state, which Madison could hardly have imagined, the legislature, although still a source of much mischief, is not the principal threat to liberty. Suppose a federal executive department flagrantly abused its regulatory powers for the unmistakable purpose of suppressing truthful speech that annoys the government. If you assume the Supreme Court would rectify this assault on the First Amendment’s…
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Going Out Guide
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Ambar’s all-you-can-eat brunch is heavy business
22 May 2013 | 8:31 amIn the food-versus-human struggle that is an all-you-can-eat brunch, food will win. That’s especially the case at Ambar, the Barracks Row Serbian restaurant that recently unveiled a $35 bottomless brunch. It’s a formidable task anywhere, but especially at a restaurant … Continue reading → -
A Dozen Weeks of Doughnuts, Week 9: Raulin’s Bakery and Safeway
22 May 2013 | 3:00 amOur internists are not happy with us. Over the course of the past eight weeks, we have noshed on more than 160 doughnuts in our quest to discover the best the D.C. area has to offer. We have sampled wares … Continue reading → -
Glen’s Garden Market makes concessions to ‘local only’ approach
21 May 2013 | 1:26 pmJust a month into her ambitious Glen’s Garden Market, which promised to source its products from the states of the Chesapeake watershed, Danielle Vogel has discovered the hard reality of running a business. The upstart grocer has had to add … Continue reading → -
Todd English returning to D.C. with MXDC
21 May 2013 | 1:00 pmThis post has been updated. When he took over the former Galileo III space downtown last year, Aziz Safi was mum about his intentions, other than to say the replacement restaurant at 600 14th St. NW would be Mexican in flavor. … Continue reading → -
D.C. area fundraisers for Oklahoma tornado victims
21 May 2013 | 11:14 amThis post has been updated. You can help victims of the deadly tornado that swept through Oklahoma on Monday by making a donation to the American Red Cross or other established charities working in the disaster area. We’ll also be … Continue reading →
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Carolyn Hax: Latest Carolyn Hax Articles, Carolyn Hax Archive
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Carolyn Hax: Girlfriend’s odd complaint about beau’s freelance career sparks concerns
21 May 2013 | 9:00 pmDear Carolyn: I’ve been thinking of asking my girlfriend to marry me, after several years of happy and fulfilled dating. The other day, for the first time, my girlfriend expressed that she really didn’t like that I work at home. I freelance and really love it. I have a lot saved and I’m in a much better financial place than she is, which gives me a lot of latitude. Read full article >> -
A new mother wonders how to get past the ‘am I doing it right?’ anxiety
20 May 2013 | 9:00 pmAdapted from a recent online discussion. Hi there: I’m a new mom of a pretty fun but challenging 6-month-old boy. I am a naturally decisive person, but the anxiety I’m feeling over making the “right” decisions or providing him the “right” things has been difficult to cope with. Read full article >> -
A mother’s loss and the questions she can’t bear to face
19 May 2013 | 9:00 pmAdapted from a recent online discussion. Dear Carolyn: I’m returning to work after a two-month absence. What was supposed to be maternity leave turned into a nightmare — my son was stillborn and I suffered a number of serious complications from a very difficult delivery. I needed the time away from work to recuperate. Although physically I am doing much better, emotionally I am anything but. Read full article >> -
Carolyn Hax: Fear of confrontation gives kids green light to bully
18 May 2013 | 9:00 pmCarolyn: I’m having trouble dealing with my violent niece and nephew, 5 and 7. I have two children of my own a little older. We are a tight family that (mostly, despite this big issue) enjoys hanging out together quite often. It’s common for the 5-year-old to hold my 7-year-old down and just swing punches. Read full article >> -
Carolyn Hax: Thinking of playing matchmaker; how to be monogamous
17 May 2013 | 3:02 pmAdapted from a recent online discussion. Dear Carolyn: One of my friends has asked me to set her up with a guy friend of mine. I happen to know the guy friend is not looking for the same things she is looking for and will probably (though not definitely) wind up blowing her off, even if he seems interested at first (which he probably will). Is it my job to share this with her, or should I just set up the initial contact and then butt out? Read full article >>
