Regime's paranoia worsens cyclone tragedy in Burma Since 2005, Hurricane Katrina has been shorthand for government incompetence in managing the aftermath of a devastating storm. But in the Southeast Asian nation of Burma, struck by a similar storm last weekend,...

Our view on the judiciary: Send in the clones? Judges should be independent thinkers, not political partisans. John McCain has a record of reasonableness on judicial politics. He voted to confirm Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, the two Supreme...

Opposing view: Restrain judicial activism Judges should interpret the law and leave legislating to the people. By Tony Perkins John McCain's graceful and serious speech this week at Wake Forest University puts one of the most important issues of 2008...

Sluggish junta fails in natural disaster Arab News, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in an editorial: "If only the junta (of Burma, also known as Myanmar) had been competent enough to respond rapidly to the calamity and then seek international aid, it...

Biggest albatross: Bill, Bush, Wright? Plain Talk by Al Neuharth One of the three will be our next president. Each has strong credentials. But each also has an albatross around his or her neck.

A soldier, a CD and a mother's wish By Madeleine Tavares When the envelope from our son arrived in the mail, I opened it. The CD was there inside just as he had promised. I wish he hadn't. I was...

A bailout for mortgage lenders and other friends of Barney.

Congress seems ready to spend billions on a new "Manhattan Project" for green energy. Here's what our energy subsidy dollars are buying now.

Congress tries to impose collective bargaining on cities.

The sniper never knew what hit him. The airman who fired the missile was 8,000 miles away.

The candidate now has to prove how different he is from Rev. Wright.

Foreign-owned companies employ more than five million people in the U.S.

Congress should realign its tax and subsidy programs to encourage the biofuels that will not compete for the world’s food supply.

The alarming rates of trauma and suicide among war veterans cannot be neglected any further, especially when the solutions are so clear.

Since he became New York’s governor, David Paterson has lost his zeal for the reform that Albany desperately needs.

The art world’s ever rising valuations are a symptom of the unprecedented concentration of the spoils of growth at the very top.

It is increasingly difficult to pry records that should be open out of federal agencies.

To the Editor:.

After six decades, the Jewish state's hopes for peace are near death. Israel at 60 is a sad place. It is sad despite the prosperity that is apparent at every turn.

The planet is nearing a tipping point on climate change, and it gets much worse, fast. Even for Americans -- who are constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start -- even for us, the world looks a little terminal right now.

America failed to heed Walter Reuther's ideas for a social safety net. But we may get a second chance. Recently, i heard three European journalists express astonishment at the primitive state of America's social safety net. "Do you have private pensions?" they asked. The system is unraveling, I explained. "Healthcare?" Some folks get it, some don't. "Public pensions?" Vastly underfunded.

Israelis and Palestinians must share the land. Equally. There is no longer a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Forget the endless arguments about who offered what and who spurned whom and whether the Oslo peace process died when Yasser Arafat walked away from the bargaining table or whether it was Ariel Sharon's stroll through the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem that did it in.

The meddler and the martyr. That's what Achilles and Odysseus had to deal with. Today marks the 100th observance of Mother's Day; the first one was on May 10, 1908, in a Methodist church in Grafton, W.Va. By now most people know that it started with Anna Reeves Jarvis, who in the mid-1800s tried to improve health conditions in Appalachia through her Mother's Work Days; that, in 1870, Julia Ward Howe issued a Mother's Day Proclamation, calling for peace after the Civil War; and that Jarvis' daughter, also named Anna, was behind the 1908 celebration, to honor her mother. She finally saw Woodrow Wilson make Mother's Day an annual holiday in 1914 but came to despise its devolution into a card, a box of candy and a buffet brunch.

L.A. County's cultural life may depend on who fills Yvonne Burke's board seat. At a time when the California Arts Council is handing out only one-tenth of the grants funding it did a decade ago, and when the city's Department of Cultural Affairs will take a 6.1% hit to its 2008-09 budget, the race to succeed retiring county Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke is of intense interest to the local arts community.

TOKYO -- China and Japan have been reliable enemies for a thousand years. Their leaders have always been able to count on each other to stir nationalist anger and distract their followers from other problems by trading insults, threats or at times blows.

Three days after last Tuesday's primaries seemingly tilted the Democratic presidential nomination decisively toward Barack Obama, the surprising fact was that almost half the party's senators had not announced a choice between him and Hillary Clinton. Twenty-one of the 49 Democratic senators were publicly silent as the last six primaries approached.

"Obscene" is still the word that comes to mind when we think of maternal mortality -- and it has been almost 25 years since we first witnessed death in childbirth. In 1983, as students in one of central Haiti's fetid clinics, we prepared to celebrate a birth. Although we'd just met the young woman about to become a mother, her desperate expression as she began to hemorrhage haunts us still. National statistics could have predicted the outcome: A 1985 survey pegged Haitian maternal mortality at 1,400 deaths per 100,000 live births. By comparison, maternal mortality in the United States last year was 14 deaths per 100,000 live births.

Barack Obama called himself an "imperfect messenger" in his victory speech in North Carolina last Tuesday. That was a refreshing touch of humility, but it was also a fact. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is far from perfect. But he has demonstrated the most mysterious and precious gift in politics, which is grace under pressure.

SOUTHAVEN, Miss. -- The 1st Congressional District, the northernmost in the most culturally Southern state, has given the nation William Faulkner and Elvis Presley, and on Tuesday it will have a special congressional election that will test the Republican hope that Barack Obama and his former pastor can be the basis of a Republican strategy to nationalize congressional races to the disadvantage of Democrats. A Senate seat also could be affected by the cascading consequences of Republican Trent Lott's December resignation.

Hamas claims that former president Jimmy Carter's recent meeting with its leader, Khaled Meshal, marks its recognition as a "national liberation movement" -- even though Hamas rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, which Hamas rules as an elected "government," continue to rain down on Israel's civilian population. While Hamas is clearly trying to bolster its legitimacy, the conflict along Israel's southern border has a broader legal dimension -- the question of whether, as a matter of international law, Israel "occupies" Gaza. The answer is pivotal: It governs the legal rights of Israel and Gaza's population and may well set a legal precedent for wars between sovereign states and non-state entities, including terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.

Laura Hodes: There's an underlying disparity: The naked female body is a source of sexual arousal and objectification. The penis is played for laughs.

On the outside, there is no quit in the Clinton campaign. They keep talking about finding a way to count the votes and seat the delegates for her from the Florida and Michigan primaries that were ruled rogue operations by the Democratic National Committee.

U ncle Sam says your economic stimulus rebate checks are in the mail (I know, I've heard that joke too). Soon, American taxpayers will decide how to spend a windfall that was sold in Washington as a way to boost the economy.

O h, no, she didn't.