The Week: Most Recent News & Opinion:

Quote of the week: John Fund

The Week — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:50:00 -0400

“It irritates the White House to no end that former President Bill Clinton is a more popular draw for Democratic candidates in this fall’s election. But with polls showing the party in trouble everywhere, President Obama’s aides have little alternative but to grin and put their faith in the husband of the woman who ran against them in 2008. ‘He’s probably the most popular national Democrat we’ve got,’ says Rep. Artur Davis, a retiring Alabama Democrat, who was Obama’s 2008 state chairman in Alabama. Everywhere [Clinton] goes, he brings out the Democratic...

When religion diminishes women

The Week — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:19:28 -0500

Nicholas Kristof
The New York Times

Religion, at its best, offers an “ethical compass” for how to treat our fellow human beings, said Nicholas Kristof. Why, then, “do so many faiths help perpetuate the oppression of women?” Religious leaders who take the Bible and the Koran’s ancient texts literally still teach, in the 21st century, that “women are inferior beings in the eyes of God.’’

The New Testament quotes St. Paul as saying that women “must be silent,” while Deuteronomy declares that if a woman proves not to be a virgin on her wedding...

If it worked for Rangel, why not us?

The Week — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 06:13:54 -0500

Rep. John Carter
New York Post

If powerful politicians suffer no penalty for “forgetting” to pay their taxes, said Texas Republican Rep. John Carter, why should you? I have introduced legislation I’m calling the “Rangel Rule,” named after my colleague Charles Rangel, the powerful Democratic chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Rangel failed for years to pay taxes on some rental property in the Caribbean; after he was exposed, he apologized and paid up, but has not had to fork over any interest or penalties or suffer any prosecution. The new treasury secretary,...

The U.S. owes no apologies to Islam

The Week — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 06:08:57 -0500

Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post

“Every president has the right to portray himself as ushering in a new era,” said Charles Krauthammer, but President Obama has no right to apologize to the Muslim world on behalf of America. Last week, on Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya TV, Obama pledged to restore the “respect and partnership” we had with Islam “as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.” What kind of groveling is this? Over the past 20 years, “the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Muslim world,” America fought to liberate Muslims from oppression in Bosnia...

For Mormons, victory comes with a price

The Week — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:55:12 -0500

Stephen Stromberg
The Washington Post

The Mormon church has just waded into some precarious political waters, said Stephen Stromberg. Mormons provided at least half of the $40 million and much of the manpower employed to pass Proposition 8, the Nov. 4 ballot initiative in California that banned gay marriage. Now, with gay-rights supporters boycotting Mormon-owned businesses and picketing Mormon temples, “the church doesn’t seem to want to take much credit”—stressing instead that Mormons were merely part of a “broad-based coalition that defended traditional marriage...

Why a college education is overrated

The Week — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:55:19 -0400

Marty Nemko
The Chronicle of Higher Education

Americans now believe that every young person can benefit from going to college, said Marty Nemko. It’s just not so. For students who graduate high school in the bottom 40 percent of their class, college is usually a waste of money: More than two-thirds of such students who enroll as freshmen, research shows, fail to earn a college degree. Colleges, which are businesses first and foremost, gladly admit these ill-prepared students, cashing their tuition payments but doing little to prepare them for the real world. When they wind up dropping out...

Using abortion to rid society of little girls

The Week — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 04:54:00 -0400

Colleen Carroll Campbell
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

It’s a subject that makes pro-choice activists squirm, said Colleen Carroll Campbell, but the “chilling reality” is that millions of girls have been aborted for one simple reason: They’re not boys. The preference of many traditional cultures for male offspring has combined with modern medical technology to produce a veritable Holocaust for unborn girls. In India, up to a half-million female fetuses a year are aborted because of their gender, according to the Lancet, a British medical journal. In China, the “brutally enforced...

America, land of the unfree

The Week — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:33:23 -0400

Derrick Z. Jackson
The Boston Globe

What is the “world’s leading prison state”? asked Derrick Z. Jackson. You might think it is repressive China or Putin’s Russia. But as a recent Pew Center study recently revealed, it’s the U.S., where 2.3 million people—one out of every 100 adult Americans—now languish behind bars. Per capita, our rate of imprisonment easily exceeds that of Russia, is six times that of China, and seven times that of Germany and France. The primary crime behind this swelling population is not robbery or murder but the sale and possession...