The Week: Most Recent News & Opinion:Bullpen

Why Washington needs backroom deals

The Week — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:00:00 -0500

Aspiring aisle-crossers everywhere bemoaned the news last week that Sen. Olympia Snowe, the famously moderate Republican of Maine, had decided to forfeit her safe seat in the U.S. Senate rather than face another six years of dodging the partisan manure that has come to be flung day and night through the hallowed halls of that institution. My reaction was just a wee bit different: Snowe's retirement is a reminder that we ought to bring back the smoke-filled room and the deals that used to get made in it. We should hope that our top leaders hold more top-secret meetings, and pray that they keep...

What Ireland can teach the U.S. about separating church and state

The Week — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 07:10:00 -0500

I never thought I'd find myself living Rick Santorum's dream, but here I am. After all, I live in Ireland, where there has never been any of the "absolute separation of church and state" that Santorum and a politically significant, passionately committed bloc of like-minded religious conservatives abhor. Far from limiting state involvement in religion, the Irish constitution enshrines it. There isn't just prayer in most public schools; there is full-on Christian — almost always Catholic — education. (Just last week, on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, my 6-year-old skipped in from...

5 reasons the GOP should give Jon Huntsman another look

The Week — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:05:00 -0400

What is so wrong with Jon Huntsman?

I mean, other than the fact that more than three and a half months after declaring himself a candidate for president, the ex-governor of Utah and former U.S. ambassador to China is barely a kernel in the Republican primary field? In fact, Huntsman has only recently won 2 percent in three separate polls, thus narrowly escaping elimination from CNN's next debate, on October 18.

Maybe he's just godawful at running for president — a perfectly legitimate deal-breaker, so long as leading America involves convincing Americans. Apart from a widely derided campaign...

Why Republicans should stop dreaming of Chris Christie

The Week — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:45:00 -0400

The governor of New Jersey is named Christie, not Christ. This seems like a good thing to mention at the moment. For in the GOP's distress at Rick Perry's failure to capture America's awe like a suddenly unconcealed weapon, some Republicans are still hoping against hope that no matter how many refusals Christie issues, they can draft the tough-talking titan of Trenton to run for president.

What are they smoking?

That question should not be taken to mean that Christie is a bad governor, or that he mightn't be a good presidential candidate. But no matter how deservedly praised a speech he has just...

5 questions for the Republican candidates

The Week — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 07:00:00 -0400

Wolf Blitzer did a great job moderating Monday night's combative CNN/Tea Party debate among the Republican presidential candidates. Nonetheless, I find myself left with a few lingering questions.

1. Did this debate take place before or after the global economic meltdown?

Yes, I know it happened after. But as I listened to the exchanges on the desirability of privatizing Social Security and the intrinsic evils of regulation, I could have sworn it was before.

To be fair, whatever Democrats may say now, these points of view are neither new nor entirely without merit. As of the late...

Quit picking on the TSA

The Week — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:58:00 -0400

It looks as if the Transportation Security Administration has overdone it again.

On June 25, TSA agents enforced an "enhanced pat-down" procedure on a wheelchair-bound, 95-year-old leukemia patient. Wow, that seems like an even creepier overreach than the incident back in April, in which 6-year-old Anna Drexel was patted down in New Orleans, and became a YouTube sensation in the process. And it gives a certain credibility to the likes of former Miss USA Susie Castillo, who claims to have been effectively "molested" by TSA personnel at about the same time.

Isn't it enough already? Now, at long...

Anthony Weiner and the 'ewww' factor

The Week — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:36:00 -0400

Ewww.

I hate to open on such an inelegant note, but when the word of the week is "Weinergate," how else to start? "Yuck," "ick," "you've got to be kidding," "not again," "his poor wife," and "how can anyone be so stupid?" just don't seem to fully capture it.

Not that the present national mood of revulsion vis-a-vis power and prurience should be blamed solely upon the distinguished gentleman from Oscar Meyer. On the contrary: Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) would appear to exhibit by far the mildest strain yet seen in the alarming outbreak of toxic crotch syndrome that is now imperiling...

Every picture tells a story

The Week — Wed, 04 May 2011 15:13:00 -0400

President Obama gets it right yet again with his decision not to release photos of the slain Osama bin Laden.

What would such a move have accomplished? Advocates, led by CIA chief Leon Panetta, seem to think that it would dispel doubts in the minds of people, particularly Arab Muslims, who do not believe that bin Laden is really dead. But think about that. By definition, in order to question the veracity of the kill, one would have to accept at least the following: After more than a decade of famously failing to track down its No. 1 mortal enemy, the United States now has chosen to stage a proxy...

In defense of Christians

The Week — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 14:57:00 -0400

Thankfully, Koran-torching moron Terry Jones has come and gone as a news sensation, at least till his next Muslim-baiting stunt. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Islamist fury that Jones all too easily tapped. With or without the pyromaniac pastor, tensions between America and the Islamic world would still be burning steadily. It is time for President Barack Obama to do one of the most positive, if counterintuitive, things he could do to put out this fatal fire: Stand up for Christians.

Lord knows they need it. So far this year, Pakistan has seen the assassination of two very...

Unintended consequences in Wisconsin

The Week — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:33:00 -0500

It's official: After three weeks of increasingly hostile political fighting between public-sector unions and forces led by Republican Gov. Scott Walker, all-out war has been declared in Wisconsin. On Monday, March 9, the GOP-controlled state Senate passed legislation that will basically strip public-sector unions of their right to collective bargaining. In retaliation, Democrats are vowing to strip Republicans of their elective offices — not only in Madison but across the country.

If current popular sentiment holds steady, they may well make good on this threat: According to a New York Times...

The strange justifications of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange

The Week — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 10:39:00 -0500

Is there a bigger hypocrite on earth than Julian Paul Assange?

That is far from the greatest or most socially significant question raised by the WikiLeaks revelations that have been breaking over all of us with increasing regularity and force. But as the Australian cyber-avenger wields his new and singularly idiosyncratic power to upend anyone with the slightest bit of the old, institutional kind of power, it is a question that begs to be asked.

In his own mind, I wonder, how does he justify a policy of denying any modicum of privacy to his targets while demanding total secrecy for himself? Assange...

Ireland needs a dose of reality

The Week — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 10:04:00 -0500

Where am I living, Ireland or Ethiopia?

Actually, as officials from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union agree to inject this recently-rich country with more than $100 billion in emergency aid, it feels most like Neverland: a fantasy world overrun with boys who are determined never to grow up. But there could be a silver lining to the emerald isle's mortifying forfeiture of fiscal sovereignty, and a valuable silver lining indeed: it could force Ireland's leaders to lead.

Even now, with their public-approval rating circling the drain at 11 percent, Ireland's leaders seem...

Tyler Clementi and the case against 'hate crimes'

The Week — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 10:50:00 -0400

Weren't you sickened by the recent death of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University freshman whose roommate secretly turned a webcam on him while he was having a sexual encounter with another male, streamed the images onto the Internet and thus apparently drove him to throw himself off the George Washington Bridge?

I was.

Couldn't you just die at the notion that in the year 2010, a gay man could be lured to a house, then beaten, tortured, and sodomized by a gang that had already assaulted two gay teens — one of whom was forced to participate in the second attack — as happened last week...

Autism journal: 'There is nothing wrong with my son'

The Week — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:30:00 -0400

His aunt, noting his heap of golden ringlets and his overall celestial glow, calls him "a beam of light with hair."

His sister, being four years old and Irish-bred and therefore incapable of saying "th", calls him "Ma-tyy-us."

His father and I call him “Mathias” because he's a junior, and it saves confusion to know him by this, his middle name.

Pretty soon, when it's no longer possible to mistake being insistently rambunctious, fascinated with matchbox cars, and full of sounds but not of words for being a toddler, most people will call him “autistic.”

These days, an awful...

Three cheers for Christiane Amanpour

The Week — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 22:00:00 -0400

For all I know, Christiane Amanpour could be the most craven, cutthroat shrew in the history of the network diva. As the new host of ABC’s This Week, she might turn out to be the biggest news-babe disaster since Face to Face With Connie Chung. But as the replacement for George Stephanapoulos in the Sunday-morning slot, Amanpour is an inspired and inspiring choice, and I heartily hope she succeeds.

Washington Post critic Tom Shales evidently wishes otherwise. In a blistering critique of Amanpour's debut, Shales objected...

Remembering the real Robert Byrd

The Week — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:30:00 -0400

Do you long to be lionized as one of life's great legends? Would you just love to have your triumphs played up and your failings all but forgotten? Can you imagine having your weaknesses portrayed as strengths and your strengths portrayed as miracles? This may sound impossible to achieve. But as has been clearly shown by the coverage of Senator Robert Byrd's recent passing, it is, in fact, available to anyone through a simple, two-part process. First, get very, very old. Then, die.

I know, that's a terrible thing to say, especially so soon after the poor man breathed his last. Really and truly...