Congressis payinglip serviceThe Senate favors importing cheaper drugs from Canada, and voted Friday to make it so. That is, if the secretary of Health and Human Services considers the foreign drugs to be “safe.”None of Secretary Tommy Thompson’s predecessors ever considered Canadian drugs safe; Thompson doesn’t consider them safe and says he never will.Under these […]

Four months after hammering the military for deploying women and mothers overseas, the e-mail is flooding in, denouncing this columnist for daring to express such an opinion.As the cosmos goes, the opinion is insignificant. But the answers aren’t.Two things are troubling about the mail. First, the vile language and hateful insistence that dissent is un-American […]

Gregory Peck, who died earlier this month, had many roles for which he will long be remembered. The one that may have had the most influence on this country was the “voice-over” he provided in 1987 for a TV commercial falsely characterizing Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork as favoring poll taxes and literacy tests, among […]

Which is more sad? That the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland has issued guidelines to employees and volunteers who work with children to guard against sexual impropriety, or that we live in a world when impropriety is so commonplace that the church is among the last to issue these instructions?Both are equally sad.Last week, the […]

When a successful (single) career woman pokes fun at women with babies in strollers, you know she’s either feeling unsure of the choices she’s made or she’s down to her last idea for a Father’s Day column.Maureen Dowd, femme fatalist for the New York Times, may be feeling a little woozy after the sturm and […]

In May the General Accounting Office looked at the public funding of election campaigns in two states, Maine and Arizona, and said that it was too soon to tell whether the programs were working.“Too early to draw causal linkages to changes, if any, that resulted from the public funding programs,” said the unofficial U.S. bureau […]

My tax return is my business and no one else’s – aside from the Internal Revenue Service and my wife who also signs it. How much I earn (or don’t earn) is for us alone to know, as is how much we claim for medical expenses, pay on a mortgage, or give to charity. Having […]

Some causes take more time than others to gather support. The story goes that one of the Pharisees decided to test Jesus with this question: Which commandment is the greatest?Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and […]

Columnist Charles Krauthammer was one of the many war-party conservatives who pounded the drums for war against Iraq because Saddam Hussein had weapons of destruction.But for weeks now, he and his friends have been reminded of a little problem. No one can find the weapons.Don’t worry, Krauthammer insists. The real issue isn’t the weapons, but […]

Trainingto reduceaccidentsThe post-conflict U.S. death toll in Iraq has reached 50 and Americans are agitated. We want those troops held safe.Where is matching outrage for ongoing noncombat military deaths, averaging five a day every day for the past 30 years?The post-conflict deaths in Iraq are definitely disturbing. We are responsible for the servicemen and women […]