Reuters reports that U.S. officials intend to move ahead with plans to locate a missile defense system in central Europe despite pointed protests made by Vladimir Putin of Russia. "We are continuing negotiations with those countries (Poland and the Czech Republic)," Daniel Fried, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, told a news conference in Baku. "We…
Op-Ed Blog
Refusing Medical Care
In the U.K., Emma Gough, a young Jehovah’s Witness woman recently died after refusing to accept a blood transfusion that could have saved her life: She had signed a form refusing blood transfusions, and her family would not overrule her. Couldn’t doctors have intervened? If they had, they may well have been charged with a…
Mukasey and Liberals
At the Huffington Post, Nora Ephron writes that “It’s hard to be a Democrat“, saying: It’s hard to be a Democrat, don’t you think? There’s no alternative, of course, but it’s hard. Someone asked me the other day to write something about why I was a Democrat, and I had no trouble making a list…
Saudi, Forgotten Terrorism Sponsor
Printed in in big, bold letters, the Times Online’s headline reads: “Saudi Arabia is hub of world terror“. Perhaps that’s why King Abdullah recently received a less-than-warm greeting in when he arrived in Britain for a state visit, the first such in two decades. Evidently not all the English were happy to see him: Beyond…
Should Schools Dispense Birth Control?
Demonstrating that a lot of Americans aren’t too bright, 30% of those surveyed by AP said that public schools should give out birth control to students regardless of whether their parents have given their consent or not. (The media is reporting 67% of parents agree with the idea, but that includes the 37% who think that…
Lawsuit May Bankrupt Phelps’ "Church"
After members of Reverend Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church demonstrated at the funeral of Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder his father was justifiably upset. But Albert Snyder didn’t just get mad – he got even: A grieving father won a nearly $11 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals in the…
Diplomats Say "No" to Iraq
There is a lot of good news coming from Iraq these days: Violent deaths of U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians appear to have fallen sharply in Iraq in October, according to the latest Associated Press tally. The AP’s figures mirror other reports that the levels of bloodshed are falling here. But the meaning of these…
Of Youth and Discipline
The NY Times Board wrote today: The Government Accountability Office exposed a national outrage earlier this month in a report that found thousands of allegations of abuse and neglect at treatment programs that sell military-style discipline as a way to set delinquent youngsters straight — sometimes known as boot camps. The GAO report, unveiled at…
SCOTUS to Halt Executions?
The NY Times says: Moments before a Mississippi prisoner was scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday evening, the Supreme Court granted him a stay of execution and thus gave a nearly indisputable indication that a majority intends to block all executions until the court decides a lethal injection case from Kentucky next spring. ……
Blackwater Shooters Given Immunity
Why? Three senior law enforcement officials said all the Blackwater bodyguards involved — both in the vehicle convoy and in at least two helicopters above — were given the legal protections as investigators from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security sought to find out what happened. The bureau is an arm of the State Department. The…