The Week: Most Recent News & Opinion:

Childhood obesity: Michelle's new cause

The Week — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:49:11 -0500

First Ladies have a tendency to take on noble but meaningless causes, said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial. But perhaps Michelle Obama’s new anti-obesity campaign “will be different.” The fit First Lady, who announced her “Let’s Move” campaign last week, certainly is taking aim at a serious problem. Stuffed with sweets and starches, and parked for long hours in front of TV screens and computer monitors, a third of our youngsters are now overweight or obese. That’s a 300 percent increase since 1980. These chubby children usually become flabby adults...

The pope: Welcoming an anti-Semite

The Week — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:08:06 -0500

For someone supposedly infallible, said the London Times in an editorial, Pope Benedict XVI sure makes a lot of “lame” mistakes. The Vatican, once again, is in damage-control mode, trying to explain why His Holiness has lifted the excommunication of four traditionalist renegade bishops, one of whom, Richard Williamson, is a rabid anti-Semite who dismisses the “so-called Holocaust” as a bunch of “lies, lies, lies.” As Jewish groups denounced Benedict’s bewildering gesture, Vatican officials rushed to explain that the pope is simply trying to heal a schism...

Limbaugh: Did he get in Obama’s head?

The Week — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:00:03 -0500

“In case you missed it,” said Jessica Heslam in the Boston Herald, “Round One of the Right-Wing Talk-Show Host vs. the liberal Leader of the Free World goes to … the Right-Wing Talk-Show Host!” It all started last week when Rush Limbaugh assailed President Obama on his nationally syndicated radio program, saying, “I hope he fails.” Soon thereafter, Obama was trying to persuade some House Republicans to support the Democratic stimulus package. “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” Obama warned them. This must have...

Gupta: The next surgeon general?

The Week — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:18:21 -0500

I guess Marcus Welby was too old, said Michael Giltz in Huffingtonpost.com. Barack Obama, it was reported last week, is strongly considering naming Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s “chief medical correspondent,” to be the next U.S. surgeon general—an appointment that would be “dismaying” on several levels. It isn’t just the questionable advice Gupta has given his viewers over the years, or the factual corrections CNN had to issue after his on-air spat with Michael Moore over the sorry state of U.S. health care. What really makes this a “dumb pick” is...

Canada: Free speech on trial

The Week — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:51:40 -0400

The Canadians may be our next-door neighbors, said David Harsanyi in The Denver Post, but that doesn’t mean they share our values. In a “disturbing demonstration” of this cultural gulf, Canada’s government thought police are currently deciding whether Maclean’s, the nation’s biggest-selling magazine, broke the law by printing an article that Muslims found offensive. The article, by the well-known conservative writer Mark Steyn, warned that “extremist” Muslims will become “a successor population” in Europe because of their high birth rate...

Cuba: The democracy option

The Week — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 08:47:21 -0400

President Bush isn’t usually known as an environmentalist, said Carl Hiaasen in The Miami Herald, but his speech last week on Cuba was a masterpiece of recycling. Before a hand-picked crowd of Cuban exiles in Washington, Bush delivered the same old macho speech that every president since Kennedy has delivered, vowing to continue the U.S.’s economic embargo on the island, and urging Cubans to rise up and demand democracy when the ailing Fidel Castro dies. In 40 futile years, the ban on trade and travel between Cuba and the U.S. has brought hardship only to the Cuban people, and has... More