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Calm. That's not a word one hears much these days, but calm is what some are urging in the wake of a federal report on breast cancer screening.
The Sarah Palin phenomenon — for that is what it is, because her celebrity flows singularly from John McCain's choice of her as a running mate — offers an opportunity for conservatives to choose their path to the future. Will it be a path of the angry and disenfranchised outsider? Or will it be something of substance that produces triumphs in both politics and policy?
In 1987, two Rutgers University researchers ignited a prairie fire by suggesting that much of the High Plains, including a large swath of Kansas farmland, should be returned to its natural state — what they called a Buffalo Commons.
Now we can say, with no real doubt, that the Obama administration has suffered its first major foreign policy failure, and it's hard to see a way to recover.
Terrorists by definition try to frighten you into changing the way you do things. In the run-up to his trial as an alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's success as a terrorist is showing in us. A lot of good, patriotic, law-and-order Americans suddenly sound frightened by our own civilian judicial system.
Perhaps you've long believed that extremist Islamic terrorism poses the greatest danger to America. Well, the Republicans wish to disabuse you of that notion.
See Jerry Moran run. See Jerry Moran run fast. See Jerry Moran build a big lead in the polls and a big, big lead in fundraising.
I get where President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are coming from. They think that if we change our way of life, the terrorists will have won.
The Obama administration has chosen the wrong New York venue to try five co-conspirators in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Instead of a Manhattan courtroom less than a mile from the site of where the World Trade Center stood, the government should have chosen the Bronx Zoo, because a zoo is what will be created when this terrorist trial is held.
If you're a progressive like me, and you're upset by the Stupak amendment, which bars federally subsidized insurance from covering abortions, consider this: What if we had a single-payer health care system and someone like Jeb Bush or Sarah Palin were running the country?
Growing concern about incivility is one of America's more appealing trends. Increasingly, individuals and institutions are seeking ways to burnish the Golden Rule.
Something as sweeping as health care reform, we're being told, should have bipartisan support. The creation of the interstate highway system did. And the Civil Rights Act. Ditto the Social Security Act of 1935.
They killed a killer last week. I kept waiting to feel something when news came that John Allen Muhammad had been executed in Virginia. As a staunch opponent of capital punishment, I wanted some nugget of remorse at the knowledge that the government had taken his life.
Let me say up front, I don't think President Obama is to blame for the Fort Hood shootings, and I don't think it's fair to say otherwise.
The subjugation of women under the Taliban — who forbade them to work, attend school or leave home without a male relative — once galvanized Americans' emotions. The freeing of women was a big achievement of the Taliban's ouster. But that issue is receiving little attention as the debate heats up over what our Afghan strategy should be.
For nearly three decades, Kansas hospice leaders, staff and volunteers have been working to improve the care provided to people during their last days, weeks and months of life. In recognition of November as National Hospice Month, I want to thank hospice for its contribution to improving the quality of life for so many Kansas families.
For millions of American children, the Great Depression was more than an economic crisis. Their schools were closed, medical and dental care was hard to come by, and their parents were struggling to make ends meet.
As expected, the House took the first swing last weekend at passing a plan to overhaul the nation's health care system. The bill includes some long-needed reforms, such as preventing insurers from turning down patients with pre-existing conditions. But it misses the mark in numerous other ways, including the risk the proposal poses to the deficit over the next two decades.
There is a profound difference between watchfulness and a witch hunt. In the aftermath of the Fort Hood shootings, that's a crucial distinction, though nothing the authorities — and particularly the U.S. Army brass — have said so far has done much to help people make it.
Last week, the voters began applying the brakes to the Obama administration's leftward joyride. If the Democrats are listening, they'll get the message. What we saw had an undeniable intensity. The voters are restive and fearful.
Once again, state voters — this time in Maine, hardly a conservative stronghold — have voted down same-sex marriage. Leaving what she thought would be a victory party after last week's balloting, an emotional Cecelia Burnett said, "I don't understand what the fear is, why people are so afraid of this change."
Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan demonstrated many things when he allegedly committed treason in the war on terror. For starters, he showed — gratuitously, alas — that evil is still thriving.
Does the U.S. Constitution stand for anything in an era of government excess? Can that founding document, which is supposed to restrain the power and reach of a centralized federal government, slow down the juggernaut of czars, health insurance overhaul, and anything else this administration and Congress wish to do that is not in the Constitution?
The Berlin Wall was one of the shameful symbols of the Cold War and the dangerous division of the world into opposing blocks and spheres of influence.
Student testing —First, the good news: The nation's elementary and middle school students are scoring better on achievement tests. Now, the bad news: States are dumbing down the tests to meet No Child Left Behind benchmarks and receive funds. Education Secretary Arne Duncan released a press statement accompanying new research by the National Center for Education Statistics. NCES researchers attempted to translate scores from the tests that the states administer as part of the No Child Left Behind program to the more rigorous federal National Assessment of Educational Progress, know as the "nation's report card." The findings are not promising. A total of 15 states lowered standards for the grade of "proficiency" on at least one test, while only eight raised them. More shocking than the dumbing down of tests is the gap between states like Massachusetts and South Carolina, with the highest standards, and states like Tennessee and Mississippi, with the lowest standards. For a fourth-grader to score proficient in math in Tennessee requires 198 out of 500 on the NAEP exam. Massachusetts requires a score of 254. How does Kansas score on the thoroughness of exams? Like most other Great Plains states, Kansas set lower proficiency levels for fourth-graders in reading than those used on the 2007 national exam. Congress probably placed the bar too high by expecting absolutely everyone to magically score at a basic level by 2014. Mandates like that only encourage teaching for the tests and lower standards to meet the requirements in writing, but not in spirit. Raising standards is absolutely the right thing to aim for, but the implementation is crucial. Without a strong plan for improvement, No Child Left Behind has unfortunately become No Child Put Ahead.— David Shaub, Wichita State University's the Sunflower
