The Week: Most Recent News & Opinion:Bullpen

The messy tax fight that will ruin Christmas

The Week — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:15:00 -0400

Up and up they go, America's twin pillars of profligacy: The $1.3 trillion annual federal deficit and the $15.7 trillion total national debt. The numbers, so massive that they are nearly incomprehensible, grow ever larger while politicians in Washington blame each other for the mess.

It's about to get messier. Because Republicans and Democrats can't agree on how to soak up this ocean of red ink, automatic tax hikes and spending cuts — enormous and indiscriminate — are scheduled to rock the economy starting in January 2013. There's still time to avoid this meat cleaver approach, but...

Why we should be thrilled by NATO's lack of action

The Week — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:45:00 -0400

The weekend's Chicago North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit produced very few results. Thank goodness. A lack of action was actually one of the best possible outcomes. Yes, the summit did endorse the first stage of European missile defense, and it confirmed the alliance's withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, for the most part, the summit was remarkable for all the things NATO members chose not to do.

One significant omission was any progress for aspiring members in the Balkans and Caucasus. Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Georgia have all been named "aspirant" countries, and...

The real dangers of the Secret Service prostitution scandal

The Week — Tue, 22 May 2012 18:45:00 -0400

On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will open hearings on the U.S. Secret Service prostitution scandal. Mark Sullivan, the director of the Secret Service, will be called to testify. This will be his first public statement on the controversy, which involved agents soliciting prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, and later, very publicly and drunkenly, refusing to pay the tab. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) has already stated that he plans to ask: "What are you going to do, Director Sullivan, to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again?" ...

How to wean America from its dangerous food addiction

The Week — Tue, 22 May 2012 10:20:00 -0400

In ancient history, eating was for survival. Food was tough to come by and we consumed what we needed. Food was a necessity. In today's America, it is an addiction.

Much of the conventional wisdom about obesity, including what your doctor has probably told you, is wrong. My fellow doctors, for the past four decades, have preached a "calories in — calories out" approach, suggesting that weight loss must be achieved by restricting calories or expending more energy. That approach is failing… miserably.

Contemporary medical research, most of which has not yet made it to mainstream understanding...

The Catholic mega-lawsuit is a 2012 nightmare for Obama

The Week — Tue, 22 May 2012 10:10:00 -0400

On Monday, the Catholic Church offered a formal response to the Obama administration's refusal to extend the religious exemption to the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate on contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients to Catholic hospitals, charities, and schools. In a coordinated move, 43 Catholic institutions — including several dioceses — filed lawsuits in federal courts over the alleged infringement of freedom in religious practice that the mandate imposes on its organizations. The lawsuits serve notice on Barack Obama that he can expect the Catholic Church to fight...

Bain is just chapter one in the Book of Romney

The Week — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:00:00 -0400

The real Mitt Romney is finally running for president — but not in his own first television spot, a superficial checklist of issues which provides no insight into who he is or what makes him tick. It's the Obama commercial on Bain and the destruction of GST Steel that starkly reveals the real Romney as a vulture capitalist. And this is just the beginning of what we will hear about Bain, and of a narrative arc that will position Romney as the candidate of the few, by the few, and for the few.

The Obama ad is so powerful because, like the Ted Kennedy ads in Romney's losing 1994 Senate race...

What HBO's Girls can teach Obama and Romney

The Week — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:20:00 -0400

What, exactly, is the popular new HBO show Girls about? At face value, a bright idealist named Hannah (played by the show's creator Lena Dunham) who's unprepared to deal with a crappy job market, and who also might be seen as a spoiled, smart WASP who can't relate to 99 percent of America.

But my view? Girls is about the 2012 presidential election.

Of course, it's hard to imagine President Obama and presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney watching a TV show about twenty-something girls discussing their sex lives in New York City. So let's make it easier...

Ron Paul's true endgame

The Week — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:30:00 -0400

On Monday, the Republican nomination fight finally got reduced to a single candidate. This might surprise people who believed that the departure of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum had already made Mitt Romney the official nominee. But until Monday, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) had continued to raise funds and campaign in upcoming primary states.

That changed with a statement from the candidate himself — or at least it changed somewhat. Unlike Santorum and Gingrich, who suspended their campaigns entirely, Paul has instead decided not to contest any more states. Paul explained that his efforts...

Obama's gay-marriage endorsement is a moral and political win

The Week — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:40:00 -0400

Forty-nine years ago this spring, as he proposed the landmark civil rights reforms of the 1960s, John F. Kennedy became the first president to declare that ending racial discrimination was a moral issue — that "this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free." Now Barack Obama has taken the next step in the unfinished journey toward that ideal: He cut through a cacophony of political advice, the calculus of pre-election caution, to become the first president to endorse marriage equality — and thus to affirm that gay rights are...

Why America shouldn't panic over Putin

The Week — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:10:00 -0400

Contrary to what many Americans expect, Vladimir Putin's return to the Russian presidency need not cause a deterioration of relations between the United States and Russia. Many assume that Putin benefits politically from indulging anti-Americanism, and that in his new presidential term, he'll pursue increasingly adversarial policies. This underestimates Putin's willingness to strike pragmatic deals with Western governments. Putin has had a longstanding interest in cooperating with America — so long as Russian interests are respected and acknowledged. It would be foolish to ignore this in...

What the Chen Guangcheng debacle reveals about Obama

The Week — Tue, 08 May 2012 10:40:00 -0400

Talk about poor timing. Last week, during President Obama's well-deserved bin Laden anniversary victory lap, he handed Mitt Romney and his Republican friends a pretty good reason to question the incumbent president's competence on foreign affairs.

The issue: The administration's handling of the case of Chen Guangcheng, the human rights activist famous in the People's Republic of China for exposing forced abortions.

Chen's story is worthy of any Hollywood thriller. In late April, he fled the provincial home where he and his family had been under house arrest for 20 months (after serving four years...

How Facebook is reinventing organ donation

The Week — Tue, 08 May 2012 06:27:00 -0400

What do you use Facebook for? To keep up with friends, share pictures of your kids, or pass around the latest silly video? What if I told you that you can now use Facebook to save lives?

As of last week you can do just that.

Facebook has introduced a new "status update" that allows you to proudly share with all your friends your intent to be an organ donor. Not already registered as a donor with your state? No problem. With a few clicks, Facebook ushers you to the appropriate registry, where you can quickly make it official. With a permanent and prominent display on your Facebook site, you...

Joe Biden's calculated ploy to suck up to gay marriage advocates

The Week — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:30:00 -0400

No one expresses any surprise when Joe Biden goes off script. He's spent most of his political career providing amusement to observers with gaffes and misstatements, so much so that distinguishing rhetorical fumbles can be difficult. Most recently, the vice president attempted to evoke Teddy Roosevelt when describing his boss' foreign policy, telling an audience that "I promise you — the president has a big stick," which produced laughter that appeared to catch Biden by surprise.

That history played into the initial reception of Biden's remarks Sunday on Meet the Press. David Gregory challenged...

The GOP lost the European elections

The Week — Mon, 07 May 2012 12:15:00 -0400

Maybe Republicans are right in the wrong way: Europe is a political model — an unhappy one for them.

The easy consolation they can take from the past week's elections there is that Nicolas Sarkozy has just become the latest incumbent leader in the advanced nations, the eleventh in Europe, to lose office since the onset of the financial crisis. Doesn't Obama have to follow Sarkozy and the rest as night follows day?

The lessons actually point in the opposite direction.

Sarkozy is only the second president of the Fifth Republic to be denied a second term — because voters...

How to avoid another GSA boondoggle

The Week — Fri, 04 May 2012 06:25:00 -0400

In the age of the iPhone, does anyone still believe that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? Apparently certain officials from the General Services Administration (GSA) did, until the photos came back to haunt them. By now, the outrageous facts of the GSA scandal are old news: A lavish 2010 conference held by the agency in Las Vegas cost the government $823,000. The money was spent on extravagances like a clown, a mind reader, and a loft suite party. And all taxpayers got was this lousy photo of a boozy GSA commissioner beaming from a hot tub.

After news of the scandal broke, GSA chief Martha...

Obama's laughable inability to look forward

The Week — Wed, 02 May 2012 12:53:00 -0400

Finally, the Barack Obama re-election campaign has unveiled its new slogan. For months, the media had asked what the theme for the campaign would be. In 2008, Obama used "Change," and sometimes "Hope and Change," a clear definition of his candidacy as the antithesis to eight years of George W. Bush. While Obama had definite positions on issues, the main selling point was that he wasn't Bush, and any Republican candidate would be a repeat of the unpopular, retiring GOP president.

This time around, Obama chose "Forward." In January 2011, Obama tried using "Winning the Future," which the White...