Remove anonymity in attacks by cyberbullies
Anonymous bullying — deliberate, repeated and hostile behavior intended to harm others — is the dark side of Internet freedom....
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"I think it's a recognition of the world of hurt our budget seems to be in."
Get the full story >>Needed: A panic vaccine
Cancer treatment has made great progress in recent decades, but the tragedy is that so much of our effort to combat this scourge is just...
Get the full story >>Debate jars Perry out of sweet spot
Mitt Romney and Rick Perry are exactly where they want to be.
Get the full story >>Putting the wrong words in famous people's mouths
On the outskirts of the National Mall in Washington, the unveiling of the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial has the esteemed author and...
Get the full story >>The big sleep, Texas-style
Quite a few people were shocked to hear the audience members at Rick Perry's first Republican presidential debate burst into applause...
Get the full story >>How to save a sinking business
This open letter is based on an interview I conducted with a contractor who's desperately trying to keep his head above water. He isn't...
Get the full story >>Wake up and smell the politics
Can a coffee kingpin give American politics the jolt it needs to snap out of its tea party hangover?
Get the full story >>How much has Obama learned on the job?
WASHINGTON — Our political system is not accustomed to the kind of battle that is going on now. President Barack Obama has been slow...
Get the full story >>A passion for feuding
Though even some liberals now echo the conservative mantra that Barack Obama is too cerebral, one professorial personality trait didn't...
Get the full story >>'Moderate' Muslims? They are right here
If there are "moderate" Muslims, I still hear critics ask, why don't they condemn Islamic terrorism? In fact, most Muslims do condemn such...
Get the full story >>Sept. 11 and the impulse to pay tribute
Not that you needed reminding, but Sunday is the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Around the world, memorials will be...
Get the full story >>Hallowed ground
In a recent Time magazine, Radhika Jones had an interesting review of a new novel, "The Submission" by Amy Waldman. The book, published...
Get the full story >>For whom would Jesus vote?
Given the plethora of strongly religious candidates this presidential election season, it's hard to know whom to vote for. Maybe the...
Get the full story >>Obama abroad is definitely adrift
Since President Barack Obama has been having a rough time lately, let me belatedly congratulate him on his apparently successful policy of...
Get the full story >>Who kept us safe after 9/11?
If there was any certainty in the weeks and months after the 9/11 attacks, it was that these were just the first in a campaign of terror...
Get the full story >>Things you won't find on the Internet
I am a crier. There I was on my flight home, a half-hour before landing, sobbing in the bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror, and...
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We're treading water, going sideways, you can call it whatever you want; this report says we are not gathering momentum.
Get the full story >>9/11 unity is just a memory
If we had another terrorist attack like Sept. 11, would members of Congress sing "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps like they did 10...
Get the full story >>Under the mattress: Start with $1 trillion
Washington, abetted by President Barack Obama's scheduled lecture to Congress on Thursday, is abuzz with schemes for government to light a...
Get the full story >>… Before something really bad happens
The house at the end of our alley has been vacant for almost four years and we — the neighbors and I — figure it's a matter of...
Get the full story >>Question time for the Republicans
WASHINGTON — Wednesday's Republican "debate" in California will not resemble the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, in which one...
Get the full story >>Rick Perry grabs a 'third rail'
I sometimes wonder whether politicians actually write the books they release. In the case of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's book, I sometimes...
Get the full story >>Wired for overregulation
Outside the Washington headquarters of the Federal Trade Commission is a sculpture of a powerfully built, shirtless man forcibly restraining...
Get the full story >>Lectures and smartphones don't mix
A long, long time ago, in the dark mists of the 1990s, I'd face my college writing class and be met by a sea of eager faces. But these days,...
Get the full story >>New words to live by
Every year around this time, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary releases a list of words that will be added to its next edition. It's...
Get the full story >>Let's keep religion out of politics
Out there on Michigan Avenue, just a few hundred feet from Millennium Park, an aged man rested in a doorway, his feet stretched out beside a...
Get the full story >>News flash: Congresswoman has a spine
I am pleased to report the sighting of an artifact so rarely seen among Democrats that it has become the stuff of legend and conjecture,...
Get the full story >>Conservatives flee from science
The 1980s and 1990s were prime time for environmental scares, many of which proved bogus. On one side were liberals, greens and professional...
Get the full story >>This Labor Day we need marches, not parades, Robert Reich says
Labor Day is traditionally a time for picnics and parades. But this year is no picnic for American workers, and a protest march would be...
Get the full story >>Is diplomacy in Libya delusional?
How much more death and destruction of Libyans is necessary to protect Libyans?
Get the full story >>Go get the Lockerbie bomber from Libya
Does President Barack Obama care that the terrorist convicted only a decade ago of killing 189 Americans is reportedly running around Libya?
Get the full story >>Why class reunions matter so much
Facing a class reunion can be daunting enough to make a teetotaler crave a bracing cocktail. But fear not. It's worth the effort. For at...
Get the full story >>An invitation Rep. Jackson should have declined
Eighty-one members of the House of Representatives have just completed a trip to Israel, all expenses paid by an American Israel Public...
Get the full story >>Planet of the godly
WASHINGTON — Rick Perry's rapid lead over previous Republican front-runner Mitt Romney was predictable. But it is not a good sign...
Get the full story >>The real science trashers
Today I am writing about religion. Specifically, about those who worship in the Church of the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming....
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"I don't need to see the photos. But bizarre and creepy are good adjectives to describe much of Gadhafi's behavior."
Get the full story >>In America's pantheon: King in word and stone
WASHINGTON — It is one of the enduring mysteries of American history — so near-providential as to give the most hardened atheist...
Get the full story >>10 things you might not know about teachers
It's tough to teach school. As controversies rage from coast to coast over pay, tenure and training, here's a 10-part primer on teachers &#...
Get the full story >>The new she is he
I see it in the school district where I work. Girls punching boys — punching them hard, sometimes out of meanness, sometimes for fun,...
Get the full story >>Injustice, in plain sight
In 1989, a Waukegan woman was raped after three men invaded her apartment. She told police the rapist had a tattoo, wore an earring in a...
Get the full story >>Give King memorial a chance
It is poignantly appropriate that the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial has stirred controversy. After all, so did King.
Get the full story >>My Rick Perry problem — and ours
Texas Gov. Rick Perry is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination now, at least in the national polls. Undoubtedly that's...
Get the full story >>Pressure, money and understanding failure
For generations of fans, baseball has held a particular attraction, in part because we marvel at players' skills along with their...
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"And so language, the ability not only to master the ability to put your ideas into words succinctly on a platform to communicate ideas to...
Get the full story >>1 million dead in 30 seconds
Seismic risk mitigation is the greatest urban policy challenge that the world confronts today. If you consider that too strong a claim,...
Get the full story >>'Victory' in Libya
For a president blanketed in gloom, the rebel victory in Libya comes as a welcome ray of sunshine. It took a lot longer than expected, but...
Get the full story >>Decay in the art of political insults
With a presidential contest on the rise, so is the heat of the umbrage wars. That's what I call the endless contest to see which political...
Get the full story >>GOP primaries: Guide to vetting candidates' sex lives
Habemus Papam. That's what the Vatican says when the College of Cardinals elects a new pope. It also should be what delegates...
Get the full story >>The honest truth about Illinois
In a recent editorial, the Chicago Tribune asks a series of seemingly rhetorical questions about the state budget and state operations. It...
Get the full story >>Fracking and the road to energy independence
Spectacularly vast stores of natural gas — by some estimates a staggering 837 trillion cubic feet — trapped in shale...
Get the full story >>Self-evaluation
It's been more change at every level in a shorter period of time than at any other time in the history of the city of Chicago and I...
Get the full story >>This is Obamaland: Bad luck, bad faith
"We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, got the economy moving again. … But over the last six months, we've had a run of...
Get the full story >>The life and times of domestics
Rosa Parks, the mother of the civil rights movement, and Nafissatou Diallo, the woman at the center of a rape case that has been called "the...
Get the full story >>Time to change
There wasn't much for the Democrats to look forward to in the 1972 presidential race, but my personal favorite was Oklahoma Sen. Fred...
Get the full story >>The persistence of fiscal fantasy
If the national fiscal crisis has accomplished nothing else, it has finally restored the good name of Ebenezer Scrooge. Frugal government,...
Get the full story >>They call me Miss Brooks
Like Aibileen Clark, the central character in the movie, "The Help," no one ever asked me what it felt like to be a maid.
Get the full story >>Obama's Job No. 1: Create jobs
Democrats are finally up for a fight — with President Barack Obama. Having despaired that Obama gave in to the tea party on the debt...
Get the full story >>Invasion of the idiocrats
You may not have seen "Idiocracy," the 2006 sci-fi comedy set in an utterly dysfunctional nation 500 years in the future, but chances are...
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We have consistently said that President (Bashar) Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For...
Get the full story >>Monsters of more than the midway
Jacques Barzun claimed that "whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball." With all due respect to our...
Get the full story >>The false hope of sex offender registries
At age 14, J.L. impregnated his girlfriend in a consensual encounter. This was bad news on several grounds, the worst being that she was...
Get the full story >>A different world
— During the Second World War, a future prime minister, Harold Macmillan, said America is "the new Roman empire and we Britons, like...
Get the full story >>5 easy steps
The St. Louis Cardinals are in town this weekend, and I'm reminded once again that my husband, John, and I have a mixed marriage. We're...
Get the full story >>Will high costs lead to the extinction of on-campus learning?
Last weekend I moved my oldest son out of the rundown, $3,000-a-month apartment he shared with five other University of Wisconsin at Madison...
Get the full story >>Obama is on the way out
On Saturday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry got into the race for the GOP presidential nomination, and within 24 hours, former Minnesota Gov. Tim...
Get the full story >>The real effects of gambling
Stereotypes about gambling have been around for as long as free people have chosen to invest their time, energy and interest in games of...
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"If this guy prints more money between now and the election … I don't know what y'all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat...
Get the full story >>The new old Obama
For President Barack Obama, these are the days of never hearing an encouraging word. Not since his own supporters were losing faith in his...
Get the full story >>Getting education back on track
Here's a way for taxpayers to save billions of dollars while improving education:
Get the full story >>Tea party's decline a hopeful sign for nation
Cheer up. Not everything went down over the last two weeks.
Get the full story >>System works despite Democrats' complaints
WASHINGTON — Of all the endlessly repeated conventional wisdom in today's Washington, the most lazy, stupid and ubiquitous is that our...
Get the full story >>10 things you might not know about Wisconsin
Our neighbor to the north has become a national newsmaker, wrenched by political battles, including attempts this month to recall lawmakers....
Get the full story >>Why Obama looks so bad
Barack Obama came into office aspiring to bridge the chasm between liberals and conservatives, red states and blue states, and the gulf is...
Get the full story >>Being authentic requires work
Want to be authentic? Good luck! These days it takes deliberate effort, focus, even a long-term commitment to change. This might sound...
Get the full story >>Racial politics of the mileage-fraud scandal
I believe I now know why Mayor Rahm Emanuel was so measured, so passionless, in responding to reports last week about widespread mileage-...
Get the full story >>Riot rationalization misses the mark
Riots are fascinating things. How lawless greed, cruelty and violence suddenly set fire to the minds of men is one of the most mysterious,...
Get the full story >>Grand fix for the supercommittee
WASHINGTON — Conventional wisdom holds that the congressional supercommittee established by the debt-ceiling deal to propose further...
Get the full story >>Standing on bizarre principles
— Actually, no, Mr. Vice President, the tea party gang wasn't "acting like terrorists." They were acting like kidnappers. Let's get...
Get the full story >>Recipe for budget fights
A "sugar-coated Satan sandwich." That's what Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus,...
Get the full story >>The truth hurts: Bleak indicators
The fierce debate over raising the federal borrowing limit has had at least one happy result: The public's newly found awareness that...
Get the full story >>The siren song of Google+
Google+, which launched a month ago to great fanfare, is so far feeling more like Google nonplussed. Reported to have crossed the 20-...
Get the full story >>Breivik's real enemy: Himself
Anders Behring Breivik, the far-far-right-wing monster charged in Norway with the biggest mass murder by a single gunman in modern memory,...
Get the full story >>Big push for the Half-Trillion plan
WASHINGTON — The debt ceiling looms. Confusion reigns. Schemes abound. We are deep in a hole with, as of now, only three ways out: the...
Get the full story >>Juan Williams' payback time
Revenge is a dish that is best served cold, an old saying goes. Juan Williams, the Fox News political analyst who was famously fired last...
Get the full story >>Temper those mayoral 'temper' stories
Despite the events of last week, I'm standing pat on my "never" bet in the "Pick the Moment Rahm Totally Loses It Sweepstakes" announced...
Get the full story >>The anti-Obama
— When you pick up a glossy, multipage color brochure at a presidential campaign event, you expect to see a candidate's image on the...
Get the full story >>Rule of politics: Educating Cain
WASHINGTON — Politics Rule No. 1: Never say what you really think, especially before you think.
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