Year: 2013

This past Saturday, the New York Times published an article, “Behind Flurry of Killing, Potency of Hate,” on the roots of monstrous evil. The article largely concerned a former paramilitary member of the Irish Republican Army, and as such was informative. But when it ventured into a larger discussion of evil, the moral confusion and […]

It’s clear to all but the most blinkered that the “Defund Now!” strategy for blocking the implementation of Obamacare has been worse than a failure. Obamacare will be funded, but the fight has exacerbated the already low standing of the Republican Party. Obama’s approval rating has ticked up during the shutdown, while Republicans are now […]

A new Associated Press-GfK poll reveals some troubling statistics for members of both major political parties, if they can be troubled, given what looks to be their lack of concern for what they are doing to the country. The poll finds fewer people approve of President Obama’s job performance (confirmed by a new Gallup Poll, […]

Some bad news for America, not on the political front this time, but on what corporate executives call human resources. It’s from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s report on adult skills, based on 166,000 interviews in 24 economically advanced countries in 2011 and 2012. The verdict on the United States: “weak in literacy, […]

If 40 million Americans don’t have health insurance by: January 1, they will be fined. But they can’t sign up. The ObamaCare website is broken, the Obama Administration can’t fix it in time, and Americans will pay billions of dollars in tax penalties. How can the Obama Administration require Americans to have health insurance when the […]

Numbers are slowly emerging, and they aren’t good for the president’s “signature piece of legislation.” The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has been an unmitigated disaster. After: three years and $634 million, healthcare.gov has proven itself unable to handle even the traffic a local supermarket website would get. In other words, it’s not a problem of […]

We ought to think about the cultural roots of the budget crisis in Washington. The political left says the shut down is all about an ideological tantrum of a handful of Republicans. Certainly Tea Partiers have an ideology and vision about what ground rules would produce a more prosperous, freer, and fairer America. But let’s […]

Boy, is technology making us ruder. I read with great delight a Wall Street Journal story about a couple of Boston lawyers. One, a 24-year-old woman, sent an e-mail to an older, established lawyer declining a recent job offer. The older lawyer, miffed the woman would e-mail a rejection after she’d already accepted the job […]