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Robert Reich | Why our financial system cannot yet be trusted

May 15, 7:20 PM

Republicans have no problem intruding on the most personal and most intimate decisions any of us makes. But they don’t want the government to intrude on big business or Wall Street. They have it upside down.

Charles Krauthammer | In an eerie echo of 1967, a fractious Israel unites

May 15, 4:53 PM

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forfeited September elections that would have given him four more years in power. He chose instead to form a national coalition that guarantees 18 months of stability — 18 months during which, if the world does not act to stop Iran, Israel will.

Yael T. Abouhalkah

Lewis Diuguid

Derek Donovan
Reader's Representative

E. Thomas McClanahan

Miriam Pepper

Mary Sanchez

Barbara Shelly

Stephen Winn

RECENT STAR OPINION COLUMNS

Leonard Pitts Jr. | After ‘debt to society,’ then what?

May 14, 6:52 PM

I promised Russell I would ask you something.

Kathleen Parker | The evolution, the bully and the distractions

May 13, 5:23 PM

This past week’s news cycle has produced two narratives: One, Barack Obama is an evolutionary, 21st-century hero who supports equality for all. Two, Mitt Romney is a gay-bashing bully mired in the previous century, who also supports a war on women and, oh yeah, hates dogs. Let’s parse, shall we?

Jonah Goldberg | The ‘money primary’ pulls Obama to the left

May 12, 5:25 PM

Primaries force party bosses, activists and strategists to test their messaging, update their databases and, most especially, get the party’s fundraising apparatus going. Nearly everything we’ve seen from President Barack Obama in the last five months has been an attempt to re-create the institutional benefits of a primary season without having an actual opponent.

Joel Brinkley | Austerity is no answer to ailing world economies

May 12, 5:27 PM

The Obama administration argues that its stimulus spending in 2009 and 2010 staved off an even more serious economic contraction. While that seems logical, the assertion is unprovable. But imagine where the United States would be today if instead the president had imposed a harsh austerity plan.

Michael Gerson | GOP will have to change as the culture changes

May 10, 6:07 PM

President Barack Obama’s choice on gay marriage is a bet on the political future. Republicans and conservatives will be forced to make some adjustments over time.

George F. Will | Obamacare’s thoughtless damage to a key industry

May 9, 4:34 PM

B Bill Hewlett and David Packard, tinkering in a California garage, began what became Hewlett-Packard. Steve Jobs and a friend built a computer in the California garage that became Apple’s birthplace. Bill Cook had no garage, so he launched Cook Medical in a spare bedroom in an apartment.

Robert Reich | Lengthy slump is breeding ‘tinderbox societies’

May 8, 7:02 PM

It’s a combustible concoction wherever it occurs: Increasing productivity, widening inequality and rising unemployment create tinderbox societies. History tells us public anger and frustration can ignite in two very different ways.

Leonard Pitts Jr. | Trayvons was killed by a stereotype

May 8, 6:22 PM

The dirty little secret of the Martin killing is that Zimmerman could easily have been black. True, a black Zimmerman probably would not have been sent home by prosecutors who declined to press charges, but otherwise, yes. It is entirely possible. Why not? Blacks watch the same TV news as anyone else. We internalize the same message. We drink the same poison.

Charles Krauthammer | He who would once unify has become Mr. Divisive

May 7, 6:00 PM

Poor Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. Once again he’s been pilloried for fumbling a historic Supreme Court case. First shredded for his “train wreck” defense of Obamacare’s individual mandate, he is now blamed for the defenestration in oral argument of Obama’s challenge to the Arizona immigration law.

Joel Brinkley | A culture of cheaters grows in China

May 4, 5:58 PM

China hasn’t yet set up an effective regulatory structure to police its manufacturers. But there’s another problem: China is a nation of cheaters.

Jonah Goldberg | Liberals say Republicans simply have bad brains

May 5, 4:53 PM

A new fad has taken hold among academics and liberal journalists. The gist is this: Conservatives and liberals have different brains; the right and left are just hard-wired to think differently.

Kathleen Parker | Why a Chinese dissident’s plight matters to the U.S.

May 5, 1:44 AM

The U.S. not only may have saved Chen Guangcheng’s life but also will have invigorated the convictions of others who still look to us as a protector of human rights.

Michael Gerson | Justifying America’s push-button drone war

May 4, 1:01 AM

Scrolling through the headlines in The Long War Journal — a website dedicated to terrorism-related news — is an education in the global drone war.

George Will | An extra chromosome, but the gift of serenity

May 8, 6:25 PM

When Jonathan Frederick Will was born 40 years ago — on May 4, 1972, his father’s 31st birthday — the life expectancy for people with Down syndrome was about 20 years.

Robert Reich | We should not imitate the austerity of Europe

May 1, 6:53 PM

Europe is in recession. Portugal, Italy and Greece are basket cases. The British and Spanish economies have contracted for the last two quarters. It seems highly likely that France and Germany are in a double dip as well.

Leonard Pitts Jr. | An act of violence to memory

Apr 30, 6:28 PM

John Raese is feeling persecuted.

Charles Krauthammer | While Obama emits pieties, Syria is allowed to burn

Apr 30, 6:29 PM

Last year President Barack Obama ordered U.S. intervention in Libya under the grand new doctrine of “Responsibility to Protect.” Moammar Gadhafi was threatening a massacre in Benghazi. To stand by and do nothing “would have been a betrayal of who we are,” explained the president.

Kathleen Parker | Obama on late night TV excels as ‘cool’ president

Apr 29, 7:35 PM

President Barack Obama’s “slow jam” with late-night comedian Jimmy Fallon was, shall we say, a tad unusual for a sitting president. Wannabes will do nearly anything, as we’ve observed. But this particular skit went beyond the usual horn-tooting a la Bill Clinton.

George Will | An insider’s guide to LBJ’s political methods

Apr 28, 5:21 PM

Robert Caro’s “The Passage of Power” astringently examines Lyndon Johnson’s repulsive venality and bullying, but it devotes ample pages to honoring Johnson as the most exemplary political leader since Lincoln regarding race.

Joel Brinkley | Eritrea may be the world’s most repressive nation

Apr 27, 5:47 PM

Conditions in Eritrea are so bad that an estimated 25 percent of the population has fled in the last 20 years. The government classifies emigrants as “traitors,” and border guards are ordered to shoot them. A secret slogan among Eritrea’s youths is “Leave to live.”