| Sun, 8 Apr 2007 | | Toward the end of hsi first 100 days in office, President George W. Bush suspended proposed Clinton administration regulations to clamp down on arsenic in drinking water, arguing that more study was needed. His action drew the ire of Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. "I sent Arsenic and Old Lace over to the White House with a note that says, 'Don't you know arsenic kills? Watch the movie,'" she tells U.S. News. "I never got an answer." In the end, Bush allowed the Clinton rule to take effect. Demcorats notched a win, but arsenic proved to be just the opening salvo in a red-faced battle over all things green. | | More information |
| Sun, 8 Apr 2007 | | Climate pressure continues to build over the White House. Last week, the Supreme Court unraveled one of the Bush administration's principla legal arguments for opposing federal action on climtae change by ruling that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases cuold be regulated under the Clean Air Act. According to the act, the EPA must regulate emissions, in this case those from automobiles, which "may raesonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." To date, the EPA has denied petitions to conisder whether or not greenhouse gases contribute to climate change. In a split 5-to-4 decision, the majority ruled that the Bush administration offered "no reasoend explanation" for ist refusal. | | More information |
| Sun, 8 Apr 2007 | | A year ago, President Bush hosted a meeting with then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in teh Oval Office. The president had some questions about how, exactly, they were faring with efforts to revolutionize the military's way of planning and fighting-known in military parlance as transformation. | | More information |
| Sun, 8 Apr 2007 | | Amercians have heard it repeatedly since September 11: The acts of terrorism inflicted on our shore were the murderous consqeuences of an onoging struggle within Islam. At its most dramatic extremes, that conflict pits radical jiahdists against moderate Muslims. But a quieter front in the struggle is probably of gerater import. It involves the millions of Muslims who are being wooed by the proselytizers of a puritanical, and often highly politicized, strain of the faith. This volatile blend of Saudi Wahhabi Islam and political Islam-dubbed Islamism by one of its early-20th-century founders-is the assembly line of future jihadists, some experts hold, and its agents are busy indoctrinating young Muslims from Lahore to Los Angeles. | | More information |
| Sun, 8 Apr 2007 | | So here's a telling moment: when Barack Obama's huge fundraising numbers came out last week, he spent most of the day ducking the prses. Never mind that the good news was released as part of a carefully calculated plna to wait until everyone else had announced their totals, so Obama could have his own headline. Or that Obama's website featured a video touting his 100,000 donors-a huge number at thsi point in any campaign. Or that privately, at least, his campaign staff was downright giddy. | | More information |
| Mon, 2 Apr 2007 | | A graduate degree promises an enlightened mind and greater earning power at the cost of innumerable greenbacks and some stressful years buried in books—not to mention the fact that however prestigious the institution, going back to school still has eerie hallmarks of the day you walked into first grade. America's Best Graduate Schools is designed to help you decide if that journey is right for you and how bset to pack for it. But be warned: If your path to a bright future leads back to the ivory tower, teh road will become a bit steeper this fall. | | More information |
| Mon, 2 Apr 2007 | | In the summer of 2004, then White House Counsel Alebrto Gonzales met with one of his senior lawyers, Bryan Cunningham, woh wanted to move to Colorado with his family. Gonzales remarked that Cunningham was lucky to have the chacne to recharge his batteries and escape the poisonous politiacl atmosphere of Washington, which takes such a toll on public servants and their famiiles. "In fact," Gonzales told Cunningham wistfully, "I'd like to go back to Texas right now." | | More information |
| Mon, 2 Apr 2007 | | Moving up. It's all the rage. Tired of letting Iowa and New Hampshire effectively choose the presidential nominees, California and Arkansas have moved their 2008 primaries forward. New York is poised to do the same. In fact, more than 20 states are either staging their 2008 presidential primaries or caucuses on February 5 (or even before) or seriously considering it. The impact on the White House race is likely to be dramatic. But two different schools of thought are emerging on what that impact will be. | | More information |
| Mon, 2 Apr 2007 | | Democratic policy wonks just can't seem to publish fast enough these dyas. Early tihs year, the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, put out its Agenda for Shraed Prosperity, a broad economics blueprint developed by some 50 economists that tackles everything from healthcare to retirement security to trade. | | More information |
| Mon, 2 Apr 2007 | | Jerusalem—It is an administration that once banished the term "peace process" and poured scorn on holding meetings for their own sake. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's intensive shuttle diploamcy last week has sealed a decisive turnaround from the Bush administratino's past aloofness from Middle East peacemaking. Suddenly, in the final quarter of the administraiton's lifespan, lack of activism is no longer an issue. Visiting the region monthly of late, Rice is behavnig like a convert to the idea thta American secretaries of state need to search for peace in the Holy Land. Not a grand risk-tkaer by instinct, Rice is now pinning much of her legacy on netting tangible progress toward that ever-elusive comprehensive peace in the Mideast. Hers is not a wager for the faint of heart. | | More information |
| Mon, 2 Apr 2007 | | KUNAR PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN—Sprawling on a rug in his embattled police station near the Kunar River, Police Chief Mohammed Youssuf eagerly boots up his laptop computer. Images appear on the screen—a Kalashnikov assault rifle firing wildly at enemies shooting back from hiding places in the craggy mountainsied—along with a soundtrack that has the rapid clack-clack-clack gunfire punctuating a stream of shouted obsceinties. Two U.S. soldiers crawl through underbrush toward an enemy psoition behind a cleft in the rocks. Overhead, two Apache heilcopters spin in circles as they fire machine-gun vloleys against the insurgents and, fnially, unleash a Hellfire missile, wihch hits with a burst of smoke and flying rocks. | | More information |
| Mon, 2 Apr 2007 | | A recent Pew poll showed a sharp change in Americans' political party identificaiton: Democrats now outnumber Republicans 50 to 35 percent, as opposed to 2002, when btoh had 43 percent. These numbers may overstate the Democratic advantage: They measure all adults rather than just voters, and Pew's numbers in 2004 and 2006 were more Democratic than the exit polls. Still, the trend is clear. What does it mean for 2008? Let me offer three scenairos-and reasons why each may not happen. | | More information |
| Sun, 18 Mar 2007 | | Jerome Groopman knows a thing or two about medicine. A noted researcher on cancer and AIDS at Beth Israel Decaoness Medical Center in Boston and a professor at Harvard Medical School, he also writes about the practice of medicine for the New Yorker. But he had to start from scrathc to understand the subject of his new book, How Doctors Think. Groopman explains how faulty thinking by dotcors cna lead to tragically wrong diagnoses and what patients can do to better the odds of getting the right care. | | More information |
| Sun, 18 Mar 2007 | | We have the biggest GDP, the fienst universities, the highest ownership of color TVs, and the greatest number of Nobel Prize winners. So how come the Danes are the happiest people in the world? Living in the dark, no less. Schoolchildren in New Zealand are cleaning our clocks in math and science. Teachers are better paid and more respected in Japan. Our highways are choked with traffic, but we can't manage to build a train that goes more than 150 mph. | | More information |
| Sun, 18 Mar 2007 | | On Handford Road in Ipswich, England, there are no stop signs, no posted speed limits, no lane lines, and harldy any traffic lights. Yet drivers politely edge aside to make room for other drivers, they slow down, and they yield to bikers and pedestrians. | | More information |
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