BOSTON - It's been 11 years since I looked through a photo album smuggled out of Afghanistan by a brave young woman. "This is a doctor," she said, pointing to one picture. "This is a teacher." It was impossible to tell one woman from another under the burqas enforced by their Taliban rulers.
Nov 06, 2009 | 12:00 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - Actress Cate Blanchett, who has played Queen Elizabeth I, is performing here, portraying someone less than regal - flurried, anxious Blanche DuBois, in Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire." If Obama administration officials involved in formulating Afghanistan policy…
Nov 05, 2009 | 12:00 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - The next health care fight has already started. It's the battle to define the bill that President Obama will eventually sign as a victory for consumers, taxpayers and the common good.
Nov 04, 2009 | 12:00 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - The idea that the government of a major advanced country would default on its debt - that is, tell lenders that it won't repay them all they're owed - was, until recently, a preposterous proposition. Argentina and Russia have stiffed their creditors, but surely the likes of t…
Nov 04, 2009 | 12:00 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - During his immersion in his new job, Gil Kerlikowske attended a focus group of 7-year-old girls and was mystified by their talk about "farm parties." Then he realized they meant "pharm parties" - sampling pharmaceuticals from their parents' medicine cabinets. What he learned …
Nov 01, 2009 | 12:00 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - In the health care debate, the "public plan" is all things to all people. For supporters, it would discipline greedy private insurers and make health coverage affordable. For detractors, it's a way station on the path to a single-payer insurance system of government-run healt…
Oct 28, 2009 | 12:00 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - When I wrote a few days ago about the growing nervousness of moderate Senate Democrats over the approaching vote to raise the federal debt limit, I had no idea how quickly evidence of that shift in the political winds would appear.
Oct 28, 2009 | 12:00 am | Loading…
Presidents usually turn to their secretaries of state for foreign-policy advice. But Barack Obama must have been channeling Hillary Clinton when he decided to attack Fox News.
Oct 26, 2009 | 12:05 am | Loading…
BOSTON - This story begins, as do so many dramas, at the box office. We are standing in line, three generations defined by a three-tier price structure: senior, adult, child.
Oct 23, 2009 | 12:00 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - Will the young and hopeful abandon the political playing field to older voters who are angry? That is the quiet crisis confronting President Obama and the Democrats. Left unattended, it could become a formidable obstacle for them in next year's midterm elections.
Oct 23, 2009 | 12:00 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - Three years before Rep. Wilbur Mills, the Arkansas Democrat who then chaired the Ways and Means Committee, had his fling with a stripper named Fanne Foxe, aka "The Argentine Firecracker," he decided to seek the Democrats' 1972 presidential nomination. So in an almost admirabl…
Oct 22, 2009 | 12:00 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - Within the next few weeks, probably as soon as the votes on health care reform have been taken, the Senate faces the painful duty of once again raising the statutory limit on the national debt, as the House already has done.
Oct 22, 2009 | 12:00 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - What can government do to crank up America's creaky job machine? We'll be arguing ferociously about that in coming months, and the answer, frankly, isn't clear. Die-hard Keynesians insist that only more government spending and tax cuts will accelerate job growth. But many oth…
Oct 20, 2009 | 12:00 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - It has taken much longer than President Obama hoped, but we are finally at the point where he can - and must - put his personal stamp on his main domestic initiative, the overhaul of the health care system.
Oct 18, 2009 | 12:05 am | Loading…
Vast differences - in cost, coverage, ideology and pay-for techniques - need to be bridged among five measures approved by two Senate and three House committees.
Oct 18, 2009 | 12:05 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - Demure Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution but since then has not made many waves. It might, however, be part of a political wave a year from now, thanks to a direct descendent of Benjamin Franklin.
Oct 14, 2009 | 9:25 pm | Loading…
WASHINGTON - Every generation of Americans should live better than its predecessor. That's Americans' core definition of economic "progress." But for today's young, it may be a mirage. Higher health spending, increasing energy prices and stretched governments at all levels may squeeze fut…
Oct 13, 2009 | 12:00 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - It is a sign of our weird political moment that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama will probably hurt him among some of his fellow citizens.
Oct 11, 2009 | 12:05 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - It is a sign of our weird political moment that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama will probably hurt him among some of his fellow citizens.
Oct 11, 2009 | 12:05 am | Loading…
WASHINGTON - It is a sign of our weird political moment that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama will probably hurt him among some of his fellow citizens.
Oct 11, 2009 | 12:05 am | Loading…
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