Last week, with very little attention, our fragile globe cruised quietly past what some news sources called a "milestone": On May 10, the atmospheric concentration of the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide reached an average daily level of just over 400 parts per million.
Republican politicians and activists can barely contain their glee at the simultaneous eruption of three major controversies about the Obama administration.
The Obama administration has no business rummaging through journalists' phone records, perusing their emails 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.
We 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.
Once you have a child in college you discover something you hadn’t been aware of before, or forgot: College Time is measured differently.
House Republicans on Thursday called on Hillary Clinton, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency to surrender to Karl Rove.
It’s been a great week for Obama-haters. They’ve been writing and calling me all week to gloat: Obama’s mired in scandal, they crow. His agenda is stalled. He’s sleazy, tyrannical and incompetent, heading up a corrupt administration – just like we’ve been saying for years. Not so fast.
Forty years ago I was writing editorials about the 71-day armed occupation of a desolate place in South Dakota named Wounded Knee. A critique of this event written by one of my colleagues on the St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press opinion pages led to one of the most memorable meetings of my newspaper career.
Prom season brings me much worry. I go to bed at night and hope my phone doesn’t ring in the early hours.
Bill Gates didn’t become the richest man in the world without understanding what makes a complex organization successful. So maybe the fact that he has recently joined a chorus of private sector wizards calling on government to operate more like a business should spur some action along these lines.
